On Being Judgmental

 

Ezekiel 33: 7-9

7 So thou, O son of man, I have made thee a watchman to the house of Israel: therefore thou shalt hear the word from my mouth, and shalt tell it them from me.

8 When I say to the wicked: O wicked man, thou shalt surely die: if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked man from his way: that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but I will require his blood at thy hand.

9 But if thou tell the wicked man, that he may be converted from his ways, and he be not converted from his way: he shall die in his iniquity: but thou hast delivered thy soul.

Matthew 18: 

15: But if thy brother shall offend against thee, go, and rebuke him between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou shalt gain thy brother.

16 And if he will not hear thee, take with thee one or two more: that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may stand.

17 And if he will not hear them: tell the church. And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican.

18 Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven.

19 Again I say to you, that if two of you shall consent upon earth, concerning any thing whatsoever they shall ask, it shall be done to them by my Father who is in heaven.

20 For where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

The postmodernists insist we must never be “judgmental.” We must never accuse others of wrongdoing. This Sunday’s readings demonstrate that this attitude is unbiblical and immoral.

We are all the sons of men. Ezekiel makes plain that this gives us an obligation to point out to others when they are sinning. If we do not, we will be held accountable for their sin. We have aided and abetted it. Above all else, we owe it to the sinner to advise them of their sin.

A point it seems lost on Pope Francis.

At the same time, this obligation is limited to the “House of Israel.” There is, after all, no point in trying to help someone who does not believe, in the first place, in right and wrong, in ethical monotheism. They are bound for hell in any case.

This principle is shown again in the second reading: one has both a right and a duty to point out when a fellow Christian has sinned, against us or against another. If he (or she) does not accept this and seek atonement and reconciliation, he has, by this, demonstrated he is not a Christian and not a brother. He is “a heathen.”

A second common distortion is also revealed by the second reading. The last verse is often misquoted as “wherever two or more of you are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” And this is used to stress the need for community over against the individual conscience, and so demand conformity. 

But the original is “two,” then “two or three.” If “one” is excluded from God’s presence, so too is any group larger than three. The ideal unit imagined is something the size of a couple or family, not even a typical church congregation. 

Accepting the authority of the latter is simply the ad populam fallacy. If a larger group automatically has more authority than a smaller group, Christianity itself is disproven.

The point is the presence of love; which necessarily requires more than one, as in the Trinity. 

Hence too no doubt the reference to a fellow Christian at the beginning of the passage, and in general,  as “brother.” The reference is to brotherly love, filos.

Whoever has such love is your brother. Whoever does not, is not.

Unconditional Love

 

Xerxes proposes that there are two competing images of God: for some, God is “unconditional love.” For others, he is a “ruthless judge.”

This is a neat example of the fallacy of the false alterative: it implies that, if you do not believe God is unconditional love, you believe he is ruthless. You are therefore driven to accept that he is unconditional love.

Yet he clearly is not, if by “unconditional love” you mean that he sets no conditions. He does from the very beginning, with not eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God’s love is expressed as a series of covenants: he has obligations, man has obligations, and if man does not meet his obligations, punishment can be swift and severe.

Caritas or agape, divine love, does not mean overlooking faults and flaws; any more than married love does. It means keeping contracts, and at all times wanting the best for the other. It also implies respecting the other’s moral agency. A “love” that demands nothing of the other does not. That would be seeing the other as an object. It is the sort of love one might have for a good steak. It is a form of hate.

This is why the Bible says “One who spares the rod hates his son, but one who loves him is careful to discipline him.”

So is God a “ruthless judge”? The flaw here is in seeing justice as in opposition to love or mercy. Perfect justice is the ultimate mercy.

The Devil and Bishop Barron

I think Bishop Barron goes off the rails a bit in this consideration of the Devil. Unsurprisingly—as he explains, the Devil was not even considered real in his seminary formation. The modern church has lost touch with its own teachings here. As a result, he is more or less forced to wing it, and draw his own conclusions. The gap can too easily be filled by pop culture beliefs floating in through the Overton window.

The Bishop notes that the old Hebrew term “satanas,” Satan, means “the accuser.” He concludes that we are doing the Devil’s work when we accuse anyone of sin.

The Holy Spirit, he explains, is always affirming. Negative feelings about ourselves or others must come from the Devil.

 If so, Jesus himself regularly did the Devil’s work, as he regularly accused the scribes, Pharisees and others of sin. John the Baptist was an agent of the Devil, when he accused Herod Antipas of adultery and incest. And, of course, the Catholic Church is an agent of the Devil for making an unholy fuss over abortion.

It is obviously wrong as an interpretation; but it conforms to our “non-judgmental” postmodern ethos.

My own formal religious education understood this title, “the accuser,” or “the adversary,” as a survival of an older Jewish conception of Satan as a kind of prosecuting attorney, declaring our sins before the throne of God. His conduct in the Book of Job is supposedly an example.

Satan in the Book of Job: Blake.

But this too is not quite right. God would have no need of such a functionary being; He is omniscient. This usual mythological explanation thus requires us to believe that the original conception of the Hebrew God was either polytheistic, gnostic, or badly thought out—“primitive.”

And it does not actually fit the Book of Job. In Job, Satan is not pointing out Job’s sins; Job has not sinned. Satan claims Job reveres God only because he has been rewarded, and, if he faces suffering, will turn away from Him. This is an accusation, but it is a false accusation—for it is accusing Job of a sin he has not committed.

This is an important distinction. That is a different matter from merely judging others. That is, in a word, “prejudice”—pre-judging others. Significantly, judging others is not condemned in the Ten Commandments; “bearing false witness against your neighbour” is.

This is what Satan apparently does.

Bishop Barron misses it, remarkably, even though he immediately then notes that the Devil is called “the Father of Lies.” And this is just how lying is defined in the Ten Commandments.

Another part of Bishop Barron’s treatment also does not quite ring true.

John’s Gospel calls the Devil “a murderer since the beginning.” The Bishop takes this as meaning only that the Devil is behind a broad “culture of death.” He cites as confirming evidence the mass murders of the Twentieth Century, suggesting they can only be explained by the existence of an independent spirit that seeks murder.

But this doesn’t really work. In principle, the difference between one murder and a million is only one of scale, not of kind. So the difference in itself does not seem to require us to postulate the action of an independent spiritual being. And this reading does not explain why murder is singled out as coming from the Devil, and not the other sins--other than lying, which is also repeatedly singled out.

And there remains that phrase “since the beginning.” Why is it there?

The mass killings of the Twentieth Century are in no sense primordial, at the beginning of something. There seems to be something else here, that Bishop Barron is not addressing.

Let’s look at the phrase in context:

Jesus therefore said to those Jews who had believed him, "If you remain in my word, then you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." They answered him, "We are Abraham's seed, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How do you say, 'You will be made free?'" 

Jesus answered them, "Most certainly I tell you, everyone who commits sin is the bondservant of sin. A bondservant doesn't live in the house forever. A son remains forever. If therefore the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham's seed, yet you seek to kill me, because my word finds no place in you. I say the things which I have seen with my Father; and you also do the things which you have seen with your father." 

They answered him, "Our father is Abraham." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God. Abraham didn't do this. You do the works of your father." They said to him, "We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father, God.” 

"Therefore Jesus said to them, "If God were your father, you would love me, for I came out and have come from God. For I haven't come of myself, but he sent me. Why don't you understand my speech? Because you can't hear my word. You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and doesn't stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks on his own; for he is a liar, and its father. But because I tell the truth, you don't believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? He who is of God hears the words of God. For this cause you don't hear, because you are not of God."

Jesus is making a distinction here between one’s physical parent and one’s spiritual parent. His listeners are Abraham’s “seed,” but Abraham is not their true father. Everyone is the child of only two fathers: God or the Devil.

And he is making a distinction between those who sin—who are thereby bondservants to the Devil—and those who consciously throw in their spiritual lot with the Devil, becoming his children.

The Devil shown in a 15th century manuscript.

And when he comes to calling the Devil a murderer, again we see the issue of false accusation: “When he speaks a lie, he speaks on his own; for he is a liar, and its father. But because I tell the truth, you don't believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin?”

This is apparently how, according to John’s passage, the Devil murders: he murders with false accusations.

False accusations “from the beginning.”

Which most naturally implies, from the victim’s earliest childhood. Hence too perhaps the reference to parentage, fatherhood. This seems to conform with his role in Job: a young child, below the age of reason, is incapable of sin. So any such accusations in early childhood must be false.

This seems to mesh in turn with something else Jesus says in the Gospels, about the gravity of misleading children:

“but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him that a huge millstone should be hung around his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depths of the sea.” (Matthew 18:6) 

“It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, rather than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble.” (Luke 17:2)

The word translated “stumble” here is open to interpretation; it suggests either sin or error, being misled.

Technically, however, once again, it cannot refer to sin, because a young child is incapable of stumbling in this sense.

It would seem to fit the case of a child wrongly told they had sinned when they had not; misled about their sinfulness.

And this might be said to murder their soul.

At least, to complete the Christian message, were it not for Jesus, who sets such bondservants of the Devil free, even raising them from the dead.

How to Spot a Goat in the Wild

Michelangelo's "Last Judgment."

The world is composed of two kinds of people: good and bad.

If you dislike this analysis, your problem is not with me. Take it up with Jesus and the New Testament. Take it up with God.

This being so, it is important to spot the bad guys. Before you find the knife in your back.

Here are a few pointers I have learned from hard experience:

1. Beware anyone who is seriously critical of anyone being “judgmental.” Obviously enough, those who are most opposed to judgment are those conscious of having done wrong—and the more important they consider the issue, the graver their sins must be.

Note too that anyone who condemns another for being “judgmental” is automatically outing themselves as a hypocrite. They are being judgmental of the one being judgmental.

2. Beware anyone highly critical of all religions (or other beliefs) other than their own.

More naturally, bad people are against all religion—it implies judgment. But there is also strategic value for them in pretending to be religious. This is so natural that “Pharisee”—religious authority—becomes almost a synonym for a bad person in the New Testament. The very worst people are liable to be rabbis, Catholic cardinals, Buddhist monks, imams, and so forth. This has been known since New Testament times, and following the news shows it is still so.

Their attitude towards the religions of others is the giveaway. Their base assumption is that, because they profess religion X, they are exempt from moral requirements. It follows that they will hold anyone not professing religion X to be bad and damned. It is the necessary corollary.

A good person will recognize and honour good people of other faiths.

This rule can also be applied to other fields. Anyone who demonizes all those who do not hold the same political beliefs as they do is acting on the same impulse. They are hiding some grave guilt. Anyone who demonizes those who do not adhere to the same psychology as they do—this too seems a growing phenomenon—is again masking some guilt.

In theory, at least, there are limits to this principle—some political ideologies, religions, and potentially psychologies can be objectively immoral. But there is something wrong if it is asserted to be all but one, or one narrow set of beliefs.

3. Beware anti-Semites.

This might sound arbitrary, but I find this most consistent of all. Hating Jews is a sure sign of a bad person.

This makes sense theologically: if God chose the Jews as a light unto the nations, turning against the Jews is rejecting God.

But putting aside theological considerations, it is objective fact that Jews left alone are consistently better educated, more successful, and wealthier than the surrounding populations. Higher IQ alone may explain it.

Accordingly, any anti-Jewish sentiment is most likely to be an expression of envy, a deadly sin.

4. Some will suggest that a love of animals is a clear sign of a good person. It is not. Like religion, it is too convenient as a cover for a bad person. Precisely because everyone thinks it is a clear sign of a good person. Hitler was a vegetarian and a big animal lover.

To the contrary, anyone who is too extravagant and aggressive about asserting their love for animals is probably a bad person. They are covering for something. Beware the aggressive vegans and the ecofascists. The best test is: are they making demands on others?

5. The same logic applies to those who make a big deal of their love for small children. All the worst dictators know enough to pose for propaganda photos surrounded by small children. The best test is whether they advocate things that, while immediately pleasing to children, are not in their long-term interests. All toys and candy, say, and no discipline. Anyone who spoils a child is revealing their own sense of guilt. And their fundamental rejection of morality.

6. Beware anyone who makes a big deal about having read Nietzsche. They are declaring themselves free of all moral constraints.

More blatantly, anyone who asserts that “there is no right or wrong” is doing so. And some these days—postmodernists—do this openly.

7. Beware anyone who seems to be always smiling and friendly. This is especially true of women; far fewer men are always smiling, and they are more readily suspected if they try. Someone who is always smiling is necessarily wearing a mask, and hiding their true feelings. Which can accordingly be assumed to be malicious.

I’m sure there are more. Suggestions welcome.