“For with whatever standard you judge, you will be judged, and with whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you.” – Matt 7:2
Matthew 7:2 has always fascinated me. It seems to sit at the juncture of some sticky Christian problems: Can you call out sin without judging? If we forego all judgment, do we become too squishy, no longer knowing what we believe? What does “judgment” mean in Matt. 7:2, exactly? Does it mean, “you’re going to Hell,” or “you’re estranged from God,” or simply “you’re wrong?” Wasn’t Jesus overstating it when he seemed to advocate NEVER judging at all?
I used to understand this verse in a couple of main ways, neither of which felt quite satisfactory.
First, I understood it as a call-out of hypocrisy. This is an obvious interpretation, bringing the biblical Pharisees to mind. It goes something like this: when we get to heaven, God will show us how we’ve judged others’ actions, and then he’ll reveal how we did those same things. Sometimes our hypocrisy will be straightforward (e.g., hoarding our own money while telling others to share theirs). But other times, it won’t be so obvious. Take the question of “honoring God,” for example. Maybe, after judging others for “honoring God” the wrong way, we’ll find that their way was actually right. Why didn’t we see that in the first place? Because we were too proud, maybe, or we wanted to fit God into our own kind of box.
Then, there seemed to be a second meaning to this verse, beyond hypocrisy. On a more practical, earthy level, this verse seemed to caution against PAYBACK. Judgment of others, it warned, would provoke judgment from them in return. (In other words, “what goes around comes around.”) It’s usually wisest, then, to give folks the benefit of the doubt.
Now, however, I see this verse in a third, more subtle way that cuts more deeply than the other two. I believe this verse describes how the very act of judgment can spray, strike, and burrow like poisonous shrapnel, wounding its originator much more than anyone on the “outside.”
To explain how, I’ll start with an example.
Judgment Blasts Inward
Some time ago, I found myself experiencing extreme self-doubt as a parent. I kept second-guessing my choices, feeling that I was being either too pushy toward my child, on the one hand, or too disengaged on the other. I couldn’t seem to find a happy medium. Voices in my head seemed to accuse me, constantly, of being “overbearing,” or a “tiger mother,” or a “helicopter parent.” Yet when I pulled back, the same voices seemed to accuse me of negligence! And remarkably, none of this stemmed from my child’s unhappiness. My child wasn’t struggling or downcast – truly, she seemed fine!
Nevertheless, I simply could not shake the self-doubt and self-scrutiny, and it began to wear on me. I began to feel unmoored, losing my joy and confidence as a mother. What’s more, this self-doubt began to creep into other areas of my life, like my teaching job and service to my church.
Then, in a moment of prayer, the answer hit me.
I was feeling these things because I was entertaining a spirit of judgment toward someone else – a parent at my child’s school. The judgment I had “measured out” toward this other person was being redirected toward me!
For months, I now realized, I had been allowing resentment toward this person – whom I felt was obviously overbearing, helicoptering, etc. – to poison my thoughts! My irritation – indeed, my judgmentalism – had shifted the “Overton window” of my inner life toward permissible feelings of contempt, condemnation, resentment, and bitterness.
And worse, now that these feelings were a settled part of my inner vocabulary, they were being redeployed to injure me. Whereas before they had been focused outward, now they were turning inward, spreading like a poison through my whole system.
The key to escape from my self-doubt was not, then, to change my own parenting behavior. Instead, it was to forgive my “enemy” – who had indeed hurt and insulted me – and then renounce the judgmental spirit to which I’d been listening.
Once I did this, a cloud lifted, and everything seemed clearer and more wholesome. Everything was actually fine!
To summarize, then: In a moment of pain, I had listened to an inner, accusatory voice against a social “rival.” But that voice was not a complex and many-sided voice of reason that was genuinely describing my situation. Instead, it was an over-generalizing voice that repeated a simplistic, harsh logic.
Once admitted to my psyche, this voice just kept being itself, and its harsh, simplistic logic was eventually – inevitably! – used to accuse me, too. This voice was never my friend. It only wanted to spread judgment wherever it could.
I think this voice was from our spiritual enemy.
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In the years since, I have noticed this same dynamic time and time again. Now, any time I am feeling confused, uncertain, unmoored, or self-critical, I will ask myself (and ask the Lord), “who am I judging?” And there is very often a clear answer.
If I’m inwardly chastising myself for being faithless and fearful, my self-judgment is probably linked to a similar accusation I feel toward someone else. If I’m beating myself up for a failure of common sense, I’m probably resenting a peer for the same reason.
Furthermore, I have discovered life-long weaknesses rooted in the same dynamic. For years, they went undetected – almost as if they were part of my daily “background music.” Decades-old judgments against childhood bullies, for example, had been ricocheting back into my soul and judging me in turn. Judgments against hypocritical authorities (who said one thing but rewarded another) had also scattered their shrapnel through my soul. By the grace of God, therefore, painful episodes of self-criticism like the ones I described above became catalysts for rooting out deep, life-long wounds (that is, entrenched enemy voices) that I would never have otherwise found.
The Peril of the Professor
All these years later, I still haven’t gotten to the bottom of my judgments. While I’ve learned the technique of going to the Lord when I’m self-critical and asking Him where my secret judgments lie, and while I’ve learned to find where I have admitted accusatory voices that blast both outward and inward, I still don’t feel that I’ve discovered everything. A priest I know once told me that we’re layered like onions, and I think that’s right.
But I’m grateful that the Lord always, always, surprises me when I invite him to root out my poisons. He is ever faithful. And I’m grateful that He particularly addresses poisons to which college professors are especially susceptible.
We professors, after all, bear the responsibility and pride of “experts.” We’re known to pontificate and get up on soapboxes, thinking our perspective is best. We’re trained to amass credentials that rank us and give us platforms. We evaluate students and peers every day – sometimes in high-stakes situations. We, probably more than most, suffer from chronic cases of wounded dignity rooted in prestigious credentials joined with low pay and administrative neglect. And what’s more, many of us experience regular, epistemic clashes with loved ones who, thanks to vastly different life experiences, don’t seem to “see” us, trust us, or honor our reasoning power. This is all so much fodder for the buildup of subtle judgments, entitlements, and resentments.
Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that the Lord is constantly warning me of creeping judgments. Too often, I realize, the “standard” with which I judge is not a real “standard” at all, but a voice of accusation that first locates a gratifying (and damning) flaw in someone else, and then later reveals that flaw me. This, truly, is the voice of an “accuser” (literally, “Satan”) trying to drive me into a dark corner of anger and distrust. The answer, in these cases, is always to repent of my own judgment while inwardly forgiving the person who provoked me. Almost always, the “damning flaws” will then disappear, and a more complex understanding will come to light.
It’s certainly counter-intuitive, when we feel discouragement and ego-pain, to ask the Lord not, “Who has hurt me?” but rather, “Who have I judged?”
For me, however, that question has made all the difference.
Father help me, Jesus guide me, Spirit lead me in both my pride and pain.
