Judge With Right Judgment

J. Budziszews­ki has a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle over at Bound­less about what it means to “not judge.”

“Zack, where Jesus instructs his dis­ci­ples ‘Judge not,’ what do you think He means?”

“What is there not to get?”

“You did­n’t answer my ques­tion.”

“It means don’t — judge. Don’t make judg­ments. Don’t sit in judg­ment. Stop judg­ing peo­ple.”

I laughed. “It’s a good thing you don’t write dic­tio­nar­ies. ‘Judg­ing’ means sev­er­al dif­fer­ent things. Would­n’t it be good to know which one Jesus was talk­ing about?”

“He did­n’t say, so He must have meant all of them.”

“In that case, you’re guilty.”

“But I told my friends not to judge. I con­demned their judg­men­tal­ism.”

“Did­n’t you judge that Anton did­n’t mean what he adver­tised? Did­n’t you judge that Cleo was­n’t try­ing to be sleazy?”

“But I was­n’t, like, sit­ting in judg­ment.”

“Sure you were. You judged them ‘inno­cent.’ ”

does­n’t that just make you want to read it all?