Why are Christians so judgmental?

There ought to be no question of the Lord's meaning here. No fault was more prevalent then or now. Censoriousness is not only the habitual bane of religious professors, but the snare to which true disciples are too prone. Gracious men who set their face in general against detraction are often bitter against what they themselves dislike, and thus slip into judging motives wrongly like others. He who is Judge of quick and dead discerns every heart, and enjoins what is comely and just on His followers. For this sin tends to hypocrisy; and what saint would regard such a thing lightly?

Then there is another danger, and that is of censoriousness. The habit of always seeing faults in others is exceedingly to be deprecated and watched against. "And why lookest thou on the mote that is in thy brother's eye?" What is the true root of it? Invariably, where there is the habit of beholding faults in others, there is an overlooking of our own. "Why lookest thou on the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" In that state of things we cannot help others: we must have our own evil dealt with first. "For how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, allow [me], I will cast out the mote that is in thine eye" (love would meet another's want: self is blind and busy, forgets its own faults, but can be zealous in correcting others for its own glory) — "thyself not seeing the beam that is in thine eye?" Our own fault, unjudged, always obstructs our affording real aid to another. Whereas, where we have judged ourselves, it is not only that we can see more clearly, but we can enter upon the work more humbly and lovingly. It is this that makes a man spiritual. Nothing but self-judgment can ever do it, coupled with the sense of the Lord's great grace and holiness, which is the crown of self-judgment, by the Spirit's power. But it is only the sense of the Saviour's grace and regard for His holiness, which produces self-judgment; as, on the other hand, the exercise of self-judgment increases our sense of that grace, and keeps us bright in it, instead of letting ourselves be lowered to the level of surrounding circumstances, and the state to which the allowance of flesh would ever reduce us. The Lord speaks very severely of such — "Hypocrite!" and I believe censoriousness as a rule does tend directly to hypocrisy. It leads persons to assume a spirituality which they do not possess; and is this truthful? A person who is continually commenting on others you may set down as more or less hypocritical in pretending to a holiness which is certainly beyond his measure. Such is the Lord's judgment; and you may be sure that the word which He has spoken will so decide at the last day. People forget that there is no way of pretending to spirituality more cheap and more imposing on thoughtless minds than this readiness to speak of the faults of others; but there is scarcely anything that the Lord Jesus more sternly refutes and condemns. "Hypocrite! cast out first the beam out of thine eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote that is in thy brother's eye."

The judging of one's brother is a very deep-seated tendency in our heart. The judging of things, or of teaching, is not forbidden, but encouraged — as we see, for instance, in 1 Corinthians 2:15; 10:15 — but the judging of persons is forbidden. The church is called upon to judge those who are of it, in certain cases, as 1 Corinthians 5 and 6 show, but, apart from this, the judging of persons is a prerogative of the Lord. If, in spite of the Lord's forbidding, we indulge in it, two penalties are sure to follow, as He indicates here. First, we ourselves shall come under judgment, and have measured to us just what we have meted to others. Second, we shall drift into hypocrisy. Directly we start judging others we become blind to our own defects. The small defect in our brother becomes magnified to us, all unconscious that we have a big defect of a nature to impair our spiritual eyesight. The most profitable form of judgment for each of us is self-judgment.

We have to take care that we go not before God, lest we might find ourselves in detail, if not in the main, against God. We must not break that which is bruised by yielding to personal or party feelings. What a danger this is. The inevitable effect of a judging spirit is that we get judged ourselves. The soul, whose habit is censorious, is universally ill spoken of. "With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged." Then the Lord puts a particular case: "Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" (ver. 3). That is, where this proneness to judge is, there is another still more serious evil — an habitually unjudged evil in the spirit, which makes the person restless, and desirous of proving others to be wrong too. "Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?" (ver. 4). The mote, of course, was but little, but it was made a great deal of, and the beam, an enormous thing, was passed by. The Lord is bringing out, in the most emphatic way, the danger of a suspicious judicial spirit. And He shows that the way to deal rightly, if we desire the good of His people and their deliverance from evil, is to begin with self-judgment. If we really wish to have the mote out of our brother's eye, how is it to be done? Let us begin with the grave faults we know so little, corrected and confessed, in ourselves: this is worthy of Christ. What is His way of dealing with it? Does He say of the mote in our brother's eye, Bring it to the judges? Not at all; you must probe yourself. The soul is to begin there. When I judge the evil that my conscience knows, or that, if my conscience does not know now, it may learn in God's presence — if I begin with this, I shall then see clearly what concerns others; I shall have a heart fitted to enter into their circumstances, an eye purged from what unfits the heart to feel with God about others. "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye" (ver. 5). This may be found in a believer, in principle; though when the Lord says, "Thou hypocrite," He alludes to the evil in its full form; but even in ourselves, we know it in measure, and what can be more opposed to simplicity and godly sincerity? Hypocrisy is the most hateful evil that can be found under the name of Christ — a thing that even the natural conscience writhes under and rejects. "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

Often and often we find that when the beam is gone, the mote is not to be seen, having already disappeared. And where the heart is set upon the Lord, would we be sorry to find ourselves mistaken about our brother? Should I not rejoice to find the grace of the Lord in my brother, if I discover in self-judgment myself only to be wrong? This, may be painful to one, but the love of Christ in the believer's heart is gratified to know that Christ is spared this further dishonour.

But you say we must "not judge," and you quote Matt. 7:1, "Judge not that ye be not judged." This is an important word of the Lord's, but it is misused to cover our cowardice and want of zeal for the glory of the Lord in not judging sin in ourselves and others. But read on and in ver. 6 you will find we are directed not to give that which is holy unto the dogs, neither to cast our pearls before the swine. Is not that an injunction to judge? How can anyone act upon the word without judging? The fact is, my dear friend, there is carnal judging which is only the indulgence of an evil propensity at the expense of our neighbours, and there is a godly spiritual judging which is a duty we owe to the Lord and to each other, and which begins with ourselves. He knows which is which, if we do not.

There is a wrong spirit of judgment: if I occupy myself needlessly in thinking of others, and expressing an opinion of them; if in questionable cases I ascribe, even in my mind, wrong motives; nay, if I do not hope in such cases that the right motive is at bottom, I am in the spirit of judgment, and away from God. If severity of judgment on the person, when I am bound to judge he is faulty, possesses my soul, this is not the Spirit of God. But to weaken the plain, unequivocal and avowed estimate of right and wrong under the pretence of not judging; or to deny the knowledge of one another, and mutual love among the saints, under pretence that we have not a right to judge, is of the enemy, and a mere cover to a man's conscience to avoid the conscious pressure of that judgment on himself. If I am to maintain a divine standard of right and wrong, I must judge those who do wrong to be doing so. I am not always called to occupy myself about them - then, if volunteered, the spirit of judgment comes: but if I am, I must judge according to the word of God. If I am to love the disciples of Jesus, the saints of God, "the brotherhood," I must know who they are. If there is a disposition to distrust, or to impute motives, then the spirit of judgment is at work.

God in His mercy is offering untold blessing to men, and the devil is blinding the eyes of those that believe not lest the light of the glorious gospel should shine in and they should be saved; under his influence they resent the truth. True believers are marked by loving righteousness and hating iniquity, and that is very quickly detected by men of the world, and it is a rebuke to them. The men of this world put Christ upon the cross, and in their thoughts the matter is closed, but to their dismay the testimony to Christ is here in His people and God will maintain it in the power of the Spirit.

Again, is it not true that even those, who scoff at the Bible, and at what is contained therein, really do in their hearts believe in its power, else why are they so ready to sneer at the shortcomings of those, who profess faith in Christ? Why does the world expect so much more from the one, who is a professed believer than from others? If an agnostic, deist, theosophist, unitarian or even a careless nominal Christian falls into sin no special surprise is manifested, but if one, who has made a decided profession of Christ does so, how much is said about it. Does not this show that much is expected of them?

Rashness, because one judges before knowing all the circumstances; Injustice, not knowing the motives of the other before having spoken to him in brotherly love; Arrogance, because the judging one elevates himself above the brother; Hypocrisy, because one takes love and zeal for the Lord as cloak for one's own reputation Merciless, because open weaknesses are all too easily interpreted as 'evil'.

'Judge not...' does therefore not mean judging sin in the right spirit and attitude. The Lord Jesus here judges something totally different, that is the spirit of judgment, the 'Pharisaic' inclination to constantly elevate ourselves above others and to judge not only their deeds but also their motives in a negative light and loveless manner.