When Judgment Hurts

Last month, I attended a conference at Calvin University focused on how to counter reductionism in teaching and education. Certainly, our culture has been in thrall to reductionist tendencies for some time, as the angry, dismissive tone of internet culture and political discourse shows us. Sadly, this tone often makes its way into the classroom, where it can derail discussion and inhibit collaboration and curiosity.

I am an art historian, so in my presentation at Calvin, I focused on visual art, identifying two kinds of reductionism common in visual imagery: a “passive” kind that conveniently leaves out details, and an “active” kind that pronounces what a thing is, in cosmic terms, in a brutally simplistic way. Indeed, we’re all familiar with reductionist imagery that either demonizes or objectifies, appealing to our basest fears and desires.

But reductionism isn’t just an intellectual phenomenon – it’s a spiritual one. At its core, it’s another form of the very judgmentalism Jesus warns about (“Judge not, lest you be judged”). Across all modes of communication (visual and otherwise), reductionism positively invites us to be judgmental – and to feel good about it. Any time we see a carefully-curated photograph that presents another human being as “obviously” evil, subhuman, or even just eroticized (i.e., existing for our pleasure), we are invited to make two moves: first, to form a simplistic judgment, and second, to equate that judgment with the capital-T “Truth.”

Imagery like this whispers to us seductively. It says: “Your intuitions are right. There’s no need to question yourself. It’s as plain as day. What you see right now is what you get.” These types of images, along with a million other invitations to reductivism large and small, pull us into a spirit of quick, harsh declaration and fault-finding. And this spirit eventually becomes second nature – almost a part of our very selves. We become animated by a judgmentalism that envelops us and masquerades as “common sense.”

And that’s when things start to go south – in surprising ways.

Because the thing about judgmentalism is this: it’s no respecter or persons. As a bent and disordered energy of the human spirit, it chooses its victims indiscriminately, even ravaging its own host. If you are in its thrall, you probably judge other people and therefore experience alienation from them. But (and maybe worse) you probably also judge yourself.

Do you have trouble sleeping at night sometimes, waking with a jerk because you know you’ve forgotten something, or made some secret mistake? Do you beat yourself up too much for small errors, or walk around with the vague fear that you’re in violation of rules of which you’re only dimly aware? Do you look in the mirror and hate your body, feeling bitterly that it doesn’t conform to some better, imagined ideal? Do you quietly resent certain others who proceed with naive confidence, lurching forward with sloppy abandon, seemingly oblivious to their own failures?

These things are hard to experience. And we may assume the pain they bring comes from difficult childhood experiences, others’ unkind actions, or even the harsh reality of our own, incontrovertible faults. But I think the pain they bring often comes from a spirit of judgment that blasts its rays inward as well as outward, parasitically destroying the very place where it lives. That’s because spirits of judgment don’t care what “side” you’re on, and they certainly don’t care about mercy, compassion, or even the facts of natural, incremental human development. They don’t even know what real goodness is. Their only “trick” is to find disqualifying faults.

Moreover, I think many of us can labor under a spirit of judgment without knowing it. In some places, it’s “in the air” so thickly that it’s hard to escape. It seeps in like a clammy fog, under the clothes (under the flesh) and there’s little we can do to resist it. It seems to be oxygen itself – necessary for breath. We can’t see past it – it’s just the way things are. And then we wonder why we’re so full of misery.

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And yet, Jesus smiles with mercy. He says to the so-called “worst” of us: “rise and sin no more!” And then He forgets. Because every one of us, even the “worst” of us, reminds Him lavishly, incontrovertibly, of His Father – an imago dei! – and He delights to raise up that image, adoring it, hoping endlessly for its restoration and believing in its ultimate goodness.

As long as we are alive, we are works-in-progress, being shaped by time and space to resemble very God in all splendor. As long as we are alive, we are beings of hope and promise, upheld by God in His quest to make us like Himself.

The answer, therefore, is not to keep training the “rifle” of judgmentalism in different directions, hoping to find the “right” one. (The spirit of judgmentalism was never confined to a specific direction, anyway.) Instead, we must let go of it completely. Only then can we slowly learn to sit with a big, difficult, anti-reductionist truth: that is, every one of us is an in-process image of God, with beautiful, mysterious properties waiting to unfurl and spiritual complexities beyond imagining.

Can we learn to pause in wonder, waiting to see what God will do?