Judging Others

Judging Others by Jason Misleh (Dec. ’01)

Do you judge people? I bet you do! We all do. Our society has raised us to judge on the basis of many things. Sex… Race… Religion… Ethnicity... you name it; we judge it. Is this wrong? Is there a difference between judging people and making a judgment call against someone?

“Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given back to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.” (Luke 6: 37-38) I know what you’re thinking! “Hey, Jay! What’s your point?!” Well, my point is this. The Bible states that we will be judged with the same judgment we judge with. So, does this mean that we should judge everyone as a good person so we are also judged as good people? Well, what about those of us who have to judge people as bad? Police officers, detectives, loss prevention personnel…. They have to make judgment calls every day of their lives.

Working as an undercover loss prevention team member for a popular store, I make judgment calls on people every day. Christmas shopping makes this one of the busiest and most challenging times of the year for me. From the time a person walks into my store until when he or she walks down the liquor or CD aisle, I have to evaluate them. Now, I don’t just make stupid or ignorant judgments — they are based on tons of statistics. They include race, sex, age, and body language. I have to occasionally crawl on the floor, peer around shelving units, watch from a camera room to see if a person is concealing merchandise — all just to make a judgment call. If it goes against them, I follow the person out of the store and ask them to place their hands behind their back. I’ve had to make negative judgment calls against more than a few people. Now, I do admit, there are the times when I’ve followed perfectly honest people around, who don’t steal. That was a bad judgment call on my part; but hey, I’m human too!

So, how does this all tie into the Bible verse at the beginning? There is a great difference between making a judgment call versus judging a person. Due to my job, I am required to make judgment calls against people I don’t know every day.

Another example would be in a relationship. You have to judge whether or not you want to have a relationship with someone. As a police officer you would have to judge whether someone was dangerous or not. That is a judgment call. As Orthodox Christians, we are called to be “in the world, but not of the world.” I find this extremely different from making a personal judgment, for example, of a beggar on the street and his reasons for being in the position he is in. Is he lazy and shady, or is he desperately seeking help to get out of a situation he does not want to be in?

We are all guilty of occasionally jumping to conclusions about people. This is especially true of us teenagers who are very caught up in what our society feeds us about looks, behaviors, relationships, etc. The need to fit in, be accepted, or develop a personal identity often blurs how we view others or even how we treat others.

As far as our faith as Orthodox Christians is concerned, we are called to see the image of God in our fellow human beings. Despite how society conditions us to relate to each other, we must work hard to distinguish ourselves and live our lives in a way that is over and above society.

We must continually strive to overcome the temptation of judging others and seek, rather, to judge ourselves in light of how we deal with others. In doing this, we might just start seeing in others what God sees in them.