I hear a lot of people today quote Jesus from Matthew 7:1; "Judge not that you be not judged." Most of these people are not of the Christian faith and their point is that Christians are way too judgmental. As someone who has been a Christian for many years I agree to a great extent. We are too judgmental and it is a huge problem.
But having admitted that, we must understand that Jesus is not prohibiting all judgments by His followers. He qualifies it by saying that before we make a judgment we must remove the 'log' in our own eye. In other words, we need to be sure of the righeousness of our motives and the correctness of our perspective before we make judgments about others.
You may ask, 'How do I know that it is okay with Jesus to judge others?' In Matthew 7:6, in the immediate context, Jesus tells his followers not to 'throw pearls before swine'. This requires us to make a judgment about people. People do not usually walk around with shirts that say, "I am a swine". We have to talk to them, observe them, and listen to them in order to make this judgment. Having carefully done that, Jesus commands His followers to make a judgment in this case, and I believe from His other teachings, in many other situations as well.
So who are the 'swine'? These are people who truly have no interest in or regard for spiritual truth. They just want to argue, put others down and trash anything that is morally pure or related to God. When we throw 'pearls' of spiritual truth out to them, they just tear them up and 'trample' them. Jesus commands us not to throw out spiritual truth before those who are definitely opposed to it.
This creates a problem for bloggers. They cannot control who reads their blogs, myself included. I am starting this blog after much time and prayer to throw out what I believe is spiritual truth from years of study and meditation on God's Word, the Bible. My goal is for people who are interested in spiritual truth to interact with it. I hope it will encourage them to think critically about what is truth and how it relates to their lives.
But, I know there will be people who will read this blog and disagree with me and what I am saying. That's okay as long the person is interacting with Holy Scripture and is ultimately pursuing truth. But some will come to this blog seeking to assault the truth or me. When this happens, I will not respond to personal attacks nor will I continue to engage in a dialogue with those I perceive are not really interested in the truth of Scripture. This is how I propose to follow Christ's command in Matthew 7:6.
What do you think? Is it possible for us to make righteous judgments about people? Is blogging inherently and unavoidably throwing pearls before swine? I'd like to hear your thoughts.
