“JUDGE not, that ye be not judged.”(Matthew 7:1)
People want to be judged, but then again, they don’t.
In our superficial, “appearances matters” society looks and appearances can mean a lot. It can be the difference between getting and keeping a job, making a friend, finding a spouse or just being treated with some dignity and respect. It shouldn’t, but in many cases, it does. People judge you based on your appearance.
As we discussed scores of times in the LDS church (but not limited to it), your appearance can be the difference in the kind of callings you receive, the opinion other ward members may have of your “righteousness,” and just the all-around social attention you get. And it does not necessarily just extend to appearances. The kind of comments you make in class, the questions you ask, even the way your children behave all add up to the judgments made about you. People who are disaffected from the Church or may not be participating fully are also judged. These are situations where we do not want to be judged.
And there are many cases in society in general where we do not want to be judged.
But, as a society, as people, we really DO want to be judged. We just want people to be selective about it. On our terms.
No more is this evident as in the world of sports and celebrity. I use this as an example, because it is easy and so illustrative.
Sports figures and actors, for example, want to be judged based on their skills, their performances, their amazing good looks and their overall “talent.” They want to be, for the most part, admired, beloved, fawned over, and to have scores of money spent on them. Frankly, this is how they make their living. And, they want us to judge them based on those things. And, in the cases of celebrities, they may spend millions of dollars to preserve and enhance their looks in order to have us keep judging them worthy of our attention. This is because society in general passes judgment on them, not solely based on their talents, but on their appearances.
This is odd because, as we age ourselves, our idea of good looks change somewhat. As we get older, older people become more attractive to us than we would have thought as younger people. At least that is what I have found. Some of the people we grew up with, both as celebrities and as friends and acquaintances seem to be better looking as older people than when they were younger. This is not always the case but I have personally found this to be true in many cases.
And yet, the plastic surgery industry is thriving as famous people and everyday people spend millions on trying to maintain and “improve” on their appearance. While one of the key fundamentals of the Women’s movement should have been to liberate women from the idea that their competence and self-worth is tied to their appearance, more women than ever are having surgical procedures to enhance their appearance. This is not limited to women either. So, while we have made incredible strides in the not judging people’s competence based on gender or race, it seems that the appearance problem might be larger than ever.
Getting back, to celebrities and sports figures. While they want to be judged based on their performances on the stage, screen, field or court, they do not want us to judge them based on how they conduct their so-called private lives. Which in many cases, they choose to live in the public eye. No matter their conduct, we should separate their public persona from their private. They are not to be considered role models. At least that is what some of them say.
So go ahead and spend your money on me for that movie or sports contest, but don’t judge me if I end up in jail because of a DUI or with a child, not married or having cheated on my spouse.
They are good examples because they really mirror our society. We want to be judged in a good way in some areas of our lives, but not in others where we may be lacking somewhat. We’ll spend hours on our appearance, but not want to be judged based on it, unless it is a good judgment.
We want to be judged as imperfect ourselves, because none of us are perfect, but we are willing to pass judgment on someone’s testimony because they ask a question expressing doubt or uncertainty or because they struggle in some way. Or because they might not “look the part.”
How do you deal with this duality? We all suffer from it to some extent. Do you have it under control? If so, how do you do it?
Wheat & Tares 
Good Post.
That scripture, which is in line with your comments, is better understood with the Joseph Smith Translation “Judge not unrighteously, but make righteous judgment.” The term ‘but make’ is a directive asking us to make righteous judgements.
Here is the actual JST passage.
1 Now these are the words which Jesus taught his disciples that they should say unto the people.
2 Judge not unrighteously, that ye be not judged; but judge righteous judgment.
3 For with what judgment ye shall judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
We need to be careful about what we even perceive as “righteous judgment.” Because, we are not the ultimate judge anyway.
Jeff
Agreed; fully and I think his translation coincides with your commentary.
I think what he was saying is that we need to make good decisions, which is inherent in the term ‘But Judge (not make) righteous judgment.” We need to consider all the information before making a decision. A decision is a judgment as it weights one path over another. We need to use righteous principles in making our decisions/judgments. Some people in the church make poor decisions because they don’t use correct principles in their decisions process. For instance, they will not let their kids hang out with non-Mormons, just because they are non-Mormon. Some of the best influences on my daughter are her Non-Mormon friends; and, some of the worst influences have been members. The principle in determining who out children should associate with, should be will this person be a good influence on my son/daughter, not are they a member.
A “righteous” judgment is one that is on the basis of things pertaining to “righteousness”.
It would mean that we abstain from judgments based on:
the outward appearance,
the works of men,
etc.
Being judged as “righteous” is never an issue with the Lord. There is no one worthy. Only those with hard-hearts are obsessed with who’s “worthy” or “righteous”.
One can do all the church service and works of man [that many consider to be “righteous”] until he or she has wasted all their strength — and they’ll still be unrighteous and unworthy to receive anything from God.
The reason why only the broken-hearted are sanctified by the Spirit [and thus counted as righteous] and are the only ones to receive gifts from the Lord is that they are the only ones among us who actually judge themselves as unrighteous.
Everyone else judges themselves as having worth. It is this view of your worth as a person that presents an obstacle to being counted as righteous by the Lord.
And this is also one of the reasons why the Gentile church of God is becoming more hard-hearted. Our leaders teach us that we have worth, thereby inflating our pride [instead of pulling it down], hardening our hearts, and focusing us on the “righteousness” judgments that Christ taught us not to make.
Instead — righteous judgments are based on:
being sanctified by the Spirit,
manifesting the signs that follow them that believe,
as well as the other attendant powers and gifts of the Spirit that are associated with someone sanctified by the Spirit,
etc.
Also, Jeff is the “…Your judge me NOT!” in the title a typo?
jeff, you asked how we deal with this duality? terrible. we all judge unrighteously. some of us are less bad than others, but I think we are all hypocritical judges.
“Also, Jeff is the “…Your judge me NOT!” in the title a typo?’
Fixed, thanks for not judging my typing skillz…. 🙂
Justin:
What does it look like to judge oneself as “unrighteous”? What is the effect, the practicality? Is it a matter of telling yourself every hour of every day, “I’m unrighteous. I’m not worthy of anything. Forgive me, a sinner.” Sincerely looking to know.
I’m not sure what to say here. Something is rubbing me the wrong way in this post, but I’m not sure what it is exactly. I think Justin went some distance in clarifying it, but it’s still not quite there for me.
Perhaps it has something to do with the example you cite. Your post is about the duality of wanting to be judged by our merits, but not our faults. You cite a scripture about not judging, and proceed to give an example in which you assume motive to an entire group of people, not based on statistical analysis, but on your own observations (valid as they may be). Why not give an example of your own struggle with this duality, citing your own faults, etc.? That would underscore your point better. Instead, I think I come away from the post feeling like you haven’t practiced what you preached in the very sermon you preach the idea.
To your point, I have often wondered why we’re so afraid of admitting our faults. Perhaps I am in the opposite extreme and too often air my dirty laundry, to too many people (as I’m doing right now). My hope in doing that is that people would see me as I really am, not as whatever face I put on. Overall, in my life, I think it has been positive for me to be open, genuine, and honest. But I would be lying if I said it hadn’t backfired on more than one occasion. And when it has backfired, it has been with great magnitude and affected my life in very horrible ways. Specifically, some people appear to latch onto the bad things I’ve done/do, and overlook any redeeming qualities I may (or may not) have. To me, this says more about the people judging than about myself.
On the whole I think most people are good and try to do what they think is right, balanced against what they want. When in doubt I try to give people the benefit of the doubt and try to see their redeeming qualities. It’s unfortunate that celebrities have a magnifying glass over them 24/7, and even more unfortunate that we care enough to incentivize that magnifying glass.
Re Shorty
I’ll take a stab at this, even though you directed your question toward Justin. For me the practicality is manifested in taking people’s comments personally (sometimes too personally). I analyze what people say to me and try to apply it to myself. The problem is, it’s a double edged sword. I’m my worst critic, and as a result, come across too serious, and maybe get offended too easily at times. Judging oneself as unrighteous may easily lead to depression and a poor self-esteem. The upshot is that I’m usually keenly aware of the ways in which I suck, and I sincerely try to work on those points.
But I firmly believe it all has to be balanced out. If we judge ourselves too harshly we can easily lead a life filled with despair and depression. For me, this is one of the key roles of religion – to help me properly balance my awareness of my own unrighteousness while filling me with hope that there is redemption.
JMB:
That’s what I’m wondering – there must be some balance between recognizing our unworthiness before the throne of God or Christ and our unworthiness to merit anything, and becoming self-loathing, depressed and a vegetable.
I’m not sure how that balance is achieved, ultimately. When I picture King Benjamin, I highly doubt he was a depressed man, prone to self-loathing because of how “unrighteous” he was and how “unprofitable” he was. I picture a man who probably did what he could on a day-to-day basis to live a “good” life, a guy who was probably seen as “happy”, but somehow still recognized that in the grand scheme of things, we still fail. We still can’t earn salvation or exaltation. Those are gifts that are granted. We simply can’t be perfect in our actions, but our intent can get close (i.e. intentions matter, no matter how they are perceived by another party).
Just thinking out loud…
Shorty: “That’s what I’m wondering – there must be some balance between recognizing our unworthiness before the throne of God or Christ and our unworthiness to merit anything, and becoming self-loathing, depressed and a vegetable.”
I agree with the former and hope that my comment didn’t insinuate that I believe in the latter.
In re: to your initial question of “What does it look like to judge oneself as “unrighteous”? What is the effect, the practicality?” I would direct you to the most recent post at LDSA — How to receive what you ask for. I think it does well to explain the questions you raised.
Re: unworthiness, this comes to mind:
The discussion took a turn I hadn’t expected, but was quite interesting to read.
I suppose it can go without saying that we are unworthy of the gifts that God gives us and that is the beauty of His grace. I didn’t expect it would totally circumvent my original idea of the irony or duality of wanting to be judged, but yet not wanting to at the same time.
JMB, I wasn’t in fact trying to call anyone out in my post or, in reality pass specific judgment on anyone in particular. that is why i used the generalities. these generalities, while true, are not true in each and every case, but can be applied simply because they are true in some case. this was merely a point of illustration.
I think we all suffer from the duality I pointed out. I certainly do. while I do not pass eternal judgment on folks, i do, like most, pass some level of judgment on them based on the factors I pointed out. And I know it gets done to me.
As a student, you are judged by your professors and as a teacher, you judge your students.
I wonder how we all balance this need to be judged as worthy by other people, also knowing that in some cases, we are being judged as unworthy at the same time.
I basically want to be judged by others as perfect at all times and on every occasion and make the necessary adjustments on the way I judge myself. Forget you guys.
I think if a person of immense talent chooses to share that talent, period, their private life is their own. But if they choose to hire a publicist and market themselves all over the place, especially if they open their private life in the interest of marketing, they’re fair game.
I would like to take issue with the second last paragraph of the post and with the last few comments.
If you look up perfect in your bible dictionary you will find a number of people referred to as perfect. There being to possibility of negative perfection, where you don’t do much wrong and repent of it immediately or daily, you can then progress onto refining your perfection to a higher level.
Was Christ perfect when he began his ministry? Has his perfection progressed? Why can’t yours?
If you wake up in the morning perfect (as I do) it is relatively easy to remain perfect and then work on increasing that perfection.
Yes it would be good to know how we are percieved – but only if the perception is approving.
It will be interesting to see how my perfection is perceived.
Interesting thread.
Often we want others to judge us by our intentions and not our actions, while we tend to judge others by their actions and not their intentions. If this were reversed I think the sense of hypocrisy and duality we experience with judgement would be reduced somewhat.
“It will be interesting to see how my perfection is perceived.”
Not much, I suspect. :0
“Often we want others to judge us by our intentions and not our actions, while we tend to judge others by their actions and not their intentions. If this were reversed I think the sense of hypocrisy and duality we experience with judgement would be reduced somewhat.’
Good observation. I think you are right here. One of the points I was trying to make.
Jeff,
Why couldn’t you be perfect. If you repent are you not then perfect?
We are just not taught that we are perfect at this point, but if you are and perceive that you are it is easier to remain perfect than getting there from the position of unworthiness described by others.
I do have an advantage- all my children have left home so I have a more peacefull life.
“If you repent are you not then perfect?’
Yes, if you fully and completely repent, then I guess you would be perfect.
Anyone you know ever done that? I don’t know anyone like that.