Judge Not by Mark Guy Pearse

International Tract and Missionary Society · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Feb 4, 1886

"Judge Not."

By Mark Guy Pearse

It is strange, almost startling, to find this in the forefront of the precepts concerning the life of holiness. It scarcely seems an offense at all, it is surely one of the lightest. Who was ever troubled with anxiety to keep this precept? or who was ever troubled with much grief for having broken it? Yet its position indicates its great importance. Let us earnestly set ourselves to get at the heart of this command.

There are two or three things which it certainly cannot mean. It cannot mean that we are not to discern between good and evil. It does not mean that we are to paint black white because it looks better—that we are to tell lies or think lies and call it charity. It does not mean that we are to baptize foul things with pretty Christian names, and think we have regenerated them.

Nor does this mean that we are not to try to form an estimate of a man's character, or of his actions, when duty calls to it, or when important trusts depend upon the judgment or relationships involving sacred interests. Such judgment is in itself a careful, earnest, righteous act, neither indulging any personal curiosity nor ministering to any evil.

Nor does it mean that we are not to form an estimate of men in their public character, or in relation to their public work, or that we are not to form any opinion of each other's characters, as earnest or indolent, gentle or harsh, weak or strong. Yet here we may be standing on the verge of the forbidden.

One meaning of the command is this: Keep your mind free from needless judgments of others. Remember how mistaken you may be in your impressions. Remember that there are in all men surface currents that have nothing at all to do with the tide. There are in all of us moods and moments by which we should think it most unjust that we should be judged. "Therefore I say unto you, Judge not." You are liable to see wrongly, and liable to interpret wrongly even that which you may rightly see. And you are always blind to the inner self, and blind as to the circumstance. How, then, can you presume to judge any man?

But there is another meaning to these words, a far more solemn and earnest one. It is in relation to ourselves that the words have their fullest force. What we are to guard against is the judging which comes from a notion of our own moral superiority.

I have kneeled in the inner chamber of the divine presence, and have called God Father. I have been admitted to high and holy privilege, and advanced to the honor of this relationship, a child of God. And now, as I come forth to mingle with others, myself, my feelings, my thoughts, my ways, become the standard by which I begin to measure everybody else. I put on the robes of my dignity, and climb up into the judgment-seat of my exalted virtue, and look down upon the less favored humanity at the bar and pass judgment upon him.

It is this against which the word is spoken, "Judge not." This self-righteousness, this notion of being better than other people, see how earnestly and solemnly Christ guards us against it. There is in the Master's words a touch of that fiery indignation with which he ever rebuked the Pharisee. And no wonder; for this is the very essence of Pharisaism—that hopeless darkness which Christ himself could not illumine, for which there was nothing but the most terrible denunciation. This is the spirit which is condemned, the presumption, the self-confidence, the spiritual conceit, in which lies the peril of the most hopeless damnation. For is it not a law that holds good in every sphere, that the higher and more complex the organization, the greater is the corruption, if it becomes corrupt? There is a corruption possible to an egg which is impossible to a stone. It takes an angel to make a devil. Pharisaism is the corruption of a great religious privilege and light and knowledge. Therefore saith the Lord, "Thou hypocrite!" because he is so keen at seeing the mote in his brother's eye, but is blind to the beam in his own; that is to say, that the fault which he may condemn in another is little beside this Pharisaism, this self-righteousness. Nothing can be more destructive of all that is Christlike within us; nothing is more hopeless as a soil in which to grow holiness. "Blessed are the poor in spirit," the mourner, the meek, the pure in heart; but here is a swelling conceit, here is a man who triumphs in his own superiority.—M. G. Pearce.