Our American culture today says “I’m okay; you’re okay.” Labeling something as “judging” can be a very quick way to silence almost any sort of disagreement or disapproval. But again, it is simply impossible to follow our culture’s logic consistently so that we refuse to morally disapprove of any sort of action. The fact is that everyone, including people who rail the most against what they call “judgmentalism,” makes moral judgments all the time.

If we really want to understand Christ’s teaching against judgmentalism, we need to look carefully at the whole passage ofMatthew 7:1-6, in which Jesus elaborates on what exactly He means by His warning against judging others.

One of the things we notice right away is that Jesus does not question the existence of unacceptable spiritual and moral evil in people, symbolized by wood in people’s eyes. In fact, Jesus makes clear that the spiritual and moral evil in people is such a problem that it needs to be taken out.

Already, we see that the biblical, Christian basis for avoiding judgmentalism is very different from our 21st-century American culture’s knee-jerk reaction against anything that may be labeled “judgmental.”

Our American culture today says “I’m okay; you’re okay.” Labeling something as “judging” can be a very quick way to silence almost any sort of disagreement or disapproval.

But again, it is simply impossible to follow our culture’s logic consistently so that we refuse to morally disapprove of any sort of action. The fact is that everyone, including people who rail the most against what they call “judgmentalism,” makes moral judgments all the time.

We simply cannot escape our responsibility to support somemoral standards. All that is accomplished by claiming that we are not supporting any particular moral standards is that we become much less honest and thoughtful about the particular moral standards we are, in fact, supporting.

Jesus offers a much more honest, and ultimately more hopeful, approach. He realizes that things are not really “okay” with people. No matter how “successful” they seem. None of us has completely been the men or women we have wanted to be. We strive for beauty, truth, justice, and joy, but cannot find anything in the world that satisfies us, at least not in a reliable, lasting way. We fill our schedules with activities or our bodies with substances, hoping to distract our minds from the pain, disappointments, and personal failures that our lives in this fallen world are so full of. But we cannot hide from the hard facts of reality forever.

Churches are far from being the only places where people feel the need to “fake it” and act like everything is awesome, even if their lives are falling apart. But churches that are truly following Jesus have very unique resources for allowing us to be safe and honest about our brokenness and wood in the eyes.

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