Getting Facts Before You Judge (May 29, 2005)

A writer to "Dear Abby" complained that her son's friends never reciprocated invitations to their home. Someone later wrote to say that when she was a child she couldn't invite anyone to her house because her father was a violent drunk. She never dared explain why she wouldn't have people over. Friends just thought she was inhospitable.

A friend once told me how he berated a girl for looking away whenever he talked to her. She said, "I have a lazy eye." He felt awful and apologized.

Last night playing basketball at the Y one of our regulars complained to me about the behavior of a guest player. I said, "I think he's slow-witted."

Maybe he wasn't. But I remember one time when I was working as a security guard and an early-arriving kitchen worker fussed irritably about some door being locked and I almost said, "Good grief lady, would you lighten up?" I'm glad I didn't say that, because it soon became apparent that she was borderline retarded. A locked door had thrown her off routine, and she did not know how to cope.

I think of cases like these when it comes to interpreting the difficult words of Jesus in Matthew 7:1: "Do not judge." Do not judge? What can he mean? Open the Bible to almost any page at all and you will find judgment on it. In 1 Corinthians 5 and 6, St. Paul actually condemns the church for not judging its own. If the commandment, "Do not judge" were a simple absolute, then Jesus was the worst of hypocrites, since he was one of the most judgmental individuals you will ever see. (I laugh at people who say that Jesus was tolerant. They have not read his words.) Judgment is necessary. We must have police and courtrooms and judges and prisons; we must have teachers who maintain order and parents who discipline and friends who say, "You must not do that." Eliminating judgment altogether is a recipe for chaos.

But Christians must temper judgment with mercy. We are to extend grace as much as we can, and remember all those times when we were misunderstood (or worse, misunderstood others) because the accusers didn't have all the facts. We must be eager to forgive and happy to discover reasons why the bad behavior wasn't as bad as we thought.

So while it may be that the friend who failed to invite you was just inhospitable, the person who looked over your shoulder was rude, and the ballplayer who fouled you was mean, it might also be that they were less able to control things than you would have been. Assume that - assume that they all had good reasons, and you'll find yourself becoming a gracious person. Of course, if you gauge it wrong, you may just turn out to be a dupe. Even so, it is better to be a dupe than a crank.