Judgement
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; because the judgments you give are the judgments you will get, and the measure you give will be the measure you receive.” (Matthew 7:1–2) In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus immediately adds: “Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.” (Luke 6:37) What does Jesus really mean?
Prudence is the art of making good decisions. It involves three steps:
Deliberate — Gather the facts and weigh your options.
Judge and Choose — Discern what is right and resolve to do it.
Act — Carry out the decision with firmness and follow-through.
God created our intellect to judge reality rightly. We must judge ideas or moral positions, statements, and teachings of morality, what is true or false, right or wrong, good or evil. We must judge actions, which behaviors are right and which are wrong. These judgments are necessary to live according to truth and to make good decisions. But we cannot judge the interior state of persons, we are not to declare someone as evil or condemn their soul. Only God knows the heart and sees the full truth of every person’s freedom, intention, and culpability.
Jesus is not forbidding us from using reason to distinguish right from wrong. What He forbids is condemning persons, assigning guilt as if we were God Himself. In short: Judge truthfully. Condemn no one. Leave the final judgment to God.
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