Jesus, Joking and “Judging”

In today’s Gospel reading from Matthew 7, Jesus says this:

“Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.

Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?

How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’while the wooden beam is in your eye?

You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”

First of all, I want to point out that our Lord is actually being quite funny here. Hebrew humor is often humor by exaggeration, so you can imagine he probably drew a few laughs by saying something to the effect of, “Before pulling that splinter out of somebody else’s eye, you might want to pull the telephone pole out of your own eye, so you can see what you’re doing!”

All joking aside, Jesus’ main point against wrongfully judging others has been grossly misinterpreted by many, who wish to use Jesus’ words to justify sinful lifestyles. The argument goes something like this: “Jesus says not to judge others, so you can’t possibly judge my behavior to be wrong.”

Actually, I can – and I should! And so should you. We must make judgments on particular behaviors. Objectively, certain behaviors are wrong (that’s why we have laws against things like theft, murder, etc.). What we can’t judge are people’s motives (why they do what they do), or the state of their soul before God. We just don’t know the answers to those questions – the Church doesn’t even venture a guess as to who may be in hell. And the only way we know some are in heaven (saints) is because they’ve given us evidence that they are there (miracles).