Judge not…

Everyday you hear people saying they want to live their own way – that its their life and they can do what they want. Have you ever noticed if you try to offer advice to these people, you often get the, “Stop judging me!” response? Maybe you hear “The Bible says not to judge!”. Indeed the Bible does say:

Do not judge so that you will not be judged. – Matthew 7:1

So if it says not to judge in the Bible, we shouldn’t judge right?  That guy that just shot someone shouldn’t be judged. We shouldn’t say that he is a bad man? The wife beater shouldn’t be frowned upon? The adulterer who is cheating on his wife should be treated the same as everyone else, right? The lady who just had an abortion did nothing wrong? People practicing promiscuous or homosexual life-styles should be given their freedom?

I happen to think that the English language is loaded with faults. Not that I would ever switch to another language, as English is the only one I know. You have words and phrases that just don’t make sense, especially when you are reading them. To read the sentence “You should read the book I just read” you see that there are issues. However, I will blog about this more another time. For now, the issue I want to focus on is that saying “Do not judge” is really a poor translation. I recently heard an expert in languages say that a better translation is “Do not Condemn”.

Early in the Bible, God tells Moses to appoint judges from amongst the people to help settle disputes. These people JUDGED who was right and who was wrong. God tells us to judge between right and wrong. We should know that the guy who shot another guy is not doing good. We should see that the wife beater is not doing right. We should see that the adulterer is really sinning against God. The lady who just had an abortion killed her child. The homosexual couple is living a life of sin. We must open our eyes and determine what is right and what is wrong.

The bottom line is when we see someone doing something wrong, we should judge that this thing is wrong and try to avoid it ourselves. If we are in a position to do so, telling that person they are wrong is not only the right thing, it is our responsibility. Let’s judge what we need to judge, but remember that no matter how grievous the sin, that it is not above God’s mercy and therefore, we cannot condemn another for that is God’s duty.

And now I’m back to my mission…