Commentary

Does the Bible teach that all judging of other people is wrong?

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Policeman investigates crime scene for evidence
Policeman investigates crime scene for evidence

Today, most people seem to think that the most wonderful thing is to not judge anyone else. We’re told that morality is like personal preference… you just choose what you like. There is no standard of morality that exists objectively, in the same way as mathematics or logic exists. And besides, even if there were, the only reason to judge someone else would be to hurt them. Right?

I found an interesting article about judging from Christian apologist Timothy Fox, on the Freethinking Ministries web site. He starts out right away with one very good reason for judging – judging allows people who have experience and demonstrated ability to help those who are making mistakes to get better.

Timothy writes:

When you study to be an educator, you have to spend a certain number of hours as a student teacher, under the guidance of a veteran teacher. I remember my cooperating teacher telling me one of my strengths was that I took criticism well and was very open to it. I was shocked to hear this! I wanted to tell him he was crazy and that I hate criticism! But I was also well aware that he was the master and I was the apprentice and that it was his responsibility to help me to be the best teacher I could be. So I needed his criticism. (And I received a lot of it!) Whenever he gave me feedback, positive or negative, it wasn’t intended to stroke my ego or hurt my feelings. It was so I can learn and improve, to keep doing the good and to change the bad.

The same goes for many other things, such as sports. Athletes have coaches that train and guide. But what about normal, everyday life? That’s when we want people to leave us alone. Don’t tell me how to live. Don’t judge me.

In my life, I’ve been able to have success at a few things. Education for sure – I have a BS and MS in computer science which has allowed me to earn a good living. Finances… well, I’ve made a lot of mistakes with investing, but I was able to succeed (eventually!) just by maxing out my 401K and Roth IRA contributions every year. And I’m just coming up on my 21st year of full time work. So when I give people advice, it’s usually in those areas, or maybe in apologetics.

But that advice is not always well-received. Usually, the people I’m advising just find themselves some nice yes-men and yes-women who will agree with them that having fun “in the moment” won’t close any doors down the road. It doesn’t work, but that’s how judging is received. Cut off the judge, and find yourself some yes-men and yes-women. And when your plan doesn’t work, just say that it wasn’t your fault.

People often cite a passage in the Bible about not making judgments, Matthew 7:1-6. But does it really say that?

1“Do not judge so that you will not be judged.

2 For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.

3 Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye?

5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

6 “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

Here’s what Timothy Fox had to say about those verses:

Jesus’ point is not not to judge (note the double negative). It’s “Don’t be a hypocrite!” Verse 5 commands us to clean up our own junk, then to help clean up your friends’. He’s stating the obvious, that when you criticize people, they will turn around and criticize you back. So make sure your closet is clean first! And how do you know who the “dogs” and “pigs” are (v. 6)? Wouldn’t you have to judge them?

And then there is John 7:24: “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” Here Jesus is differentiating between proper and improper judgement. But he still commands to judge!

The reason for many of Paul’s letters is to correct some kind of nonsense going on in a church. In 1 Corinthians 5, he writes angrily that the church is not judging sin in their midst (and it’s quite the sin – go read it!). In verse 12, he rhetorically asks “Are you not to judge those inside [the church]?” And in the following verse, he plainly states to remove the “wicked person” from their midst. Here Paul is criticizing the church for not judging when they should have, even to the extent of excommunicating an unrepentant church member.

He concludes:

More often than not, the ones who cry “Don’t judge me!” the loudest are the ones who need it the most, whether it’s due to insecurity, pride, or flat-out rebellion. But let us not forget that Jesus was full of truth and grace. We desperately need both in our dealings with our brothers and sisters in Christ, when we give correction as well as when we receive it. It’s never pleasant to hear some hard (but loving) truth, but remember the first half of Proverbs 27:6: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” Do we like it? Of course not. But we need it. And more than that, the Bible commands it.

Obviously, it doesn’t feel good to admit you’re wrong, but if you want to achieve results, then the quickest way to do that is to listen to people who have already achieved results. The world isn’t as “random” as many people want to believe. You get to make choices, and there are best practices. When you see someone failing to achieve their goals, it doesn’t do them any good to tell them to follow their hearts and it’s not their fault when they fail. The best thing to do is to show them what to do differently, and help them to do it.

News

What are some of the arguments against gay marriage?

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A family praying and reading the Bible
A family praying and reading the Bible

Here are 10 from the Family Research Council.

The list:

  1. Children hunger for their biological parents.
  2. Children need fathers.
  3. Children need mothers.
  4. Evidence on parenting by same-sex couples is inadequate.
  5. Evidence suggests children raised by homosexuals are more likely to experience gender and sexual disorders.
  6. Same-sex “marriage” would undercut the norm of sexual fidelity within marriage.
  7. Same-sex “marriage” would further isolate marriage from its procreative purpose.
  8. Same-sex “marriage” would further diminish the expectation of paternal commitment.
  9. Marriages thrive when spouses specialize in gender-typical roles.
  10. Women and marriage domesticate men.

The eleventh one they missed is that a husband’s leadership is beneficial to a woman because it gives her direction and balances her emotional highs and lows. It’s not politically correct to say what women need from men in marriage, but it’s true. Just like men, women have weaknesses that can be corrected and compensated for by the opposite sex. The twelfth one they missed is that same-sex marriage is incompatible with religious liberty, as recent court cases have shown.

Anyway, here are the details on #7:

7. Same-sex “marriage” would further isolate marriage from its procreative purpose.

Traditionally, marriage and procreation have been tightly connected to one another. Indeed, from a sociological perspective, the primary purpose that marriage serves is to secure a mother and father for each child who is born into a society. Now, however, many Westerners see marriage in primarily emotional terms.

Among other things, the danger with this mentality is that it fosters an anti-natalist mindset that fuels population decline, which in turn puts tremendous social, political, and economic strains on the larger society. Same-sex marriage would only further undercut the procreative norm long associated with marriage insofar as it establishes that there is no necessary link between procreation and marriage.

This was spelled out in the Goodridge decision in Massachusetts, where the majority opinion dismissed the procreative meaning of marriage. It is no accident that the countries that have legalized or are considering legalizing same-sex marriage have some of the lowest fertility rates in the world. For instance, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Canada have birthrates that hover around 1.6 children per woman–well below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1.

I chose this one because I wanted to comment.

I think it’s common today for men and women to not put the production and development of children at the center of their marriage plans. They are not working a financial plan to prepare for children. They are not developing the skills they need to mentor and nurture others. They are resentful of any demands placed on them that restrict their freedom. And they want marriage to be about fun and self-fulfillment. This is not compatible with children, however. And that’s the point. The more we redefine marriage to be about adult selfishness – first with no-fault divorce, then with same-sex marriage – the less emphasis there is on the pre-marital preparations for making and raising children.

If you want to know what you should be doing with your life before marriage, then think of the process of having children and raising children. Think of how much it costs, what skills you will need, and how your character has to be trained. Many of the things that you see young people doing these days – binge drinking, hooking up, running up debt, cohabitating, avoiding things that are hard to do – are not preparing their character for the responsibilities, expectations and obligations that people face when they have children.

Suppose you have a friend who is not good at driving a manual transmission car or not good at weight lifting or not good at doing apologetics – are you able to help them do it, or are you incapable of taking responsibility? If you can’t take responsibility for helping an adult, you certainly can’t take responsibility for a child – children are much less capable. Now are you able to say no to doing things for your own happiness? If you are not able to give up your own happiness – and this is a thing that gets easier as you practice more – then you’re liable to look on your duties to your children with resentment – that you are being “manipulated” into it. You don’t suddenly learn how to put up with children just by walking down the aisle at a wedding. It takes training to get good at being generous with your time, money and effort. It takes practice.

In fact, a smart man who is courting a woman would be trying to get her to practice the behaviors of a wife and mother before he marries her. And the same for a smart women who is being courted by a man. For example, a man has to comfortable giving things to the people around him – he can’t be resentful about it. Even when he doesn’t particularly like those people, he has to focus on their needs, think about where he is trying to lead them, and then work a plan to provide for their needs so they get where he wants them to go. If a man doesn’t like the feel of caring for others who may not be grateful – or who may even hate him – then he should take steps to prepare his character to learn to like it. When a little kid says “I hate you!” to his father, who is paying thousands of dollars for him to grow up, it’s not an easy thing. Always being selfish before you marry is not good preparation for what children will demand of you. This is something I struggle with personally – being content to invest in others who turn out to be ungrateful, and even destructive.

So I think this focus on parenting is a wonderful way for people to work backwards from the goal (healthy, happy, successful children) to the interim tasks and required skills. It helps us to get away from thinking that marriage is about us – our happiness, our needs. Unfortunately, not everyone who runs around telling people that they want to get married “some day” is really taking steps to prepare for marriage and parenting right now. Marriage is a commitment to self-sacrificially love another person – however much they change – for the rest of their lives, and to love any children who appear, too. People don’t like to read about marriage and think it through. But just saying “I want to marry someday” is not a proof of preparation for marriage, as the divorce rate attests. To get married, you have to train yourself to think of others, and to do hard things that don’t make you feel “free” or “happy”. There is no path to a successful marriage that does not involve responsibilities, expectations and obligations for husband and wife. It’s not “happily ever after”. It’s hard work!

News

Why should a conservative Christian have an alias when posting online?

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Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign
Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign

This post isn’t for the vast majority of church-attending Christians. Most Christians think of their Christianity as having a Christian family, attending churche services, playing a musical instrument, putting up a Christmas tree. But if you look at what they consume in entertainment, it’s indistinguishable from non-Christians. This post is about the minority of Christians who take it seriously.

So, if you’re on social media, or if you have a blog or a podcast, did you know that people can be so offended by your conservative or Christian views that they will come after you?

Take a look at this article from Caldron Pool:

A family doctor has been suspended from medical practice in Australia after sharing his Christian beliefs online.

Dr Jereth Kok was investigated by the Medical Board of Australia last year after they received two complaints about posts he had shared on social media.

Despite not knowing Dr Kok, the complainants allegedly searched through ten-years of his personal feed before taking exception to his views about a broad range of political topics, including abortion, sexuality, “LGBT” issues, and gender “transition” treatments.

“The material is very diverse,” Dr Kok told FamilyVoice during a recent interview. It includes political and theological discussions with other Christians on Bill Muehlenberg’s blog, the most recent from 2012.

“It includes posts and comments I’ve made on my own personal Facebook page, and ‘memes’ and articles that I’ve shared there; including articles by the American political commentator Matt Walsh, and the satire site Babylon Bee,” Dr Kok explained.

“I never dreamt that publicly sharing a Matt Walsh or Babylon Bee article would be career-ending; hindsight is a wonderful thing,” he said.

Dr Kok’s list of offences also included sharing a Facebook post from National Pulse, Editor In Chief, Raheem Kassam, which highlighted the evolution of the arguments used to justify abortion over the last half-century.

Also in question was an opinion piece Dr Kok had penned on the subject of transgenderism for Christian magazine Eternity back in 2015.

Hired a private investigator:

[…]It wasn’t until nine months after the initial complaints were made that Dr Kok learned he was under investigation and that the Board had hired a private investigator to run a dragnet over the internet for content he had written.

Got fired:

On a Friday afternoon in 2019, while consulting with patients, Dr Kok was suddenly given notice that he was to be summarily removed from practice to protect “public interest.”

The following week, Dr Kok attended a 15-minute hearing where he was informed his registration was suspended, meaning he could no longer provide care or speak to his patients.

Dr Kok has said despite there being a legal obligation to provide regular updates, he hasn’t heard from the Board in over a year – not a single update during the 30 months of investigation.

During this time, Dr Kok has not been provided with an opportunity to properly respond to any of the allegations that led to his suspension.

Significantly, the allegation that Dr Kok was providing compromised healthcare to “LGBT” patients was not brought forward by any of his patients or colleagues.

No LGBT patients ever complained:

“I’ve practised medicine for over 15 years,” Dr Kok said. “I’ve looked after many people who would identify as ‘LGBT.’ None of them has ever complained about rudeness, discrimination, etc.

He’s been fired and his family has no income:

Following his suspension, Dr Kok was left without a job, and his family without his income.

Many other doctors affected:

Since his suspension, Dr Kok has been made aware of more than half a dozen doctors who have been in trouble with the Medical Board for expressing their personal opinions about similar topics away from their practice.

“They have been after a doctor for speaking at a pro-life event, a doctor who campaigned against ‘Safe Schools,’ several who have said things on Twitter against abortion and gay marriage, one who left a comment about euthanasia on a website, one who said that gender transition therapies are damaging for children,” Dr Kok said.

According to Dr Kok, each of these doctors have been put through similar investigations, been given warnings, had conditions placed on them, or forced to undergo ‘sensitivity training.’ At least one other has had his medical career effectively ended.

I thought it might be useful for me to say something about this, because most people who claim to be conservative or claim to be Christian might never imagine something like this happening to them. But conservatives and Christians who read a lot of good evidence from scholars often are more passionate than cultural conservatives or cultural Christians. And that’s why we often speak out like the doctor in the story. I want these informed conservatives and Christians to use an alias. I would also their more casual brothers and sisters to be aware of the risks and keep the secrets of their allies who speak out more boldly.

If you know anyone with an alias, protect their secrecy. Team Secular Left is filled with people in lifestyles that don’t exactly major in sobriety, chastity and self-control. They get very angry when anyone makes them feel bad about being progressive or rebelling against God or both. Lacking any God-grounded moral compass, they find it easy to use power to silence, coerce, threaten and assault those who disagree with them. The stories of this happening are everywhere. We all need to be a lot more serious about the need for aliases and to guard the identities of those who use them.