Judging with love

Anyone who’s done woodworking or climbed a rough fence knows how painful and irritating a splinter can be. You want to get it out as soon as possible, especially if the speck is in your eye! Just like those flies that like to take a break in your eye during a bike ride, it needs to come out! Helping someone remove a speck or fly is kind. Judging something or someone may be good and required.

Jesus however challenges us to reflect: how do I judge? “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:4). Am I quick to spot those specks and flies in someone else’s eyes; do I easily see their shortcomings and sins, but miss my own? How we judge others says far more about us than how others judge us!

Today, these words haven’t become less important, because with internet and social media our communication is so much faster and more public. And, with screens in between, less personal. We need God’s grace to judge with patience and love, with discernment and careful reflection – and not just comment on everything you disagree with, or share every bit of hearsay.

Let’s pray for each other and ourselves with Paul’s words in Philippians 1:9-11. “This is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.”

“For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged” (Matthew 7:2).  

Klaas-Jan Gunnink