Please, Judge Me

By Jane Tawel

It may have started with people who call themselves Christians, those who bandy about the cut and pasted versions of Biblical truth without any regard for context or purpose; but it has become a national, perhaps worldwide epidemic. I’m talking about the illness we have passed on to each other, a weak, sickly world view in which we shut up and shut down other people by one inaccurate, ignorant, and ultimately immoral phrase. The phrase I am referring to is the simple exclamatory command: “Don’t judge me.” Christians who live in entitled first-world versions of the Man from Galilee’s ideas on God’s Kingdom on Earth, have made a fine art out of cutting and pasting bits of the Bible to suit their remodeled religion. In terms of castigating people that make them feel “judged”, they pull something out of context that Jesus said in Luke 6. They bandy about a verse to strengthen their position and to shame their brothers and sisters into letting them say, do, or vote any way they like. Simply bring up the fact that the person who supposedly put them beyond judgement (Jesus), according to that same Bible they are mincing into self-empowerment social media blurbs, will one day judge them on whether they behaved as He did, well, they would rather “unfriend” a fellow believer than contemplate the idea they might be wrong, in error, or, God forbid, sinning against God and humanity.

Although, not simply a Christian problem by any means, it is particularly sobering to see the current rage of people who call themselves “evangelicals” freely…