I recently read a comment on a social site that echos a common thinking in our culture today:
Why is it that our government still, after the last 17 years of “don’t ask, don’t tell”, can’t make a decision to lift the ban on gays in the military? I am pretty sure, if I’m reading my Bible correctly, I’m not suppose to judge.
Here was my response:
This is NOT a comment about “don’t ask, don’t tell”; it’s a comment about “the Bible says don’t judge”… something that is repeated ad nauseum today…
What the Bible say and means is “don’t judge… in a manner that will bring judgment on you.” (‘lest you be judged – Matt 7:1-3) Everyone leaves out the second part. It means don’t judge in a way that is 1) hypocritical and 2) that uses your human standards instead of God’s divine standard that are above the pettiness, selfishness and agenda of man.
It is impossible NOT to judge and people don’t stop to think about how illogical that statement is. We judge things constantly, all day, every day: that rapist is evil, the thief is wrong, that liar is doing bad, that jerk who just cut me off and gave me the finger is, well, a jerk. We judge the person who ignores the poor to be callous; the politician who makes false promises is a liar. We make judgments constantly: that was a mean comment, that was an ugly thing to do, you aren’t being kind, that was rude, you’re not very kind, those people are intolerant… I’m right, you are wrong (a judgment).
And the most ironic and obvious judgmental statement of all: You’re being judgmental! Why is that no one realizes they are being judgmental when they call someone judgmental?
The commenter has judged that not lifting the ban on gays in the military is being judgmental because we’re not suppose to judge as Christians. It’s an innocently hypocritical statement. You judge the ban as wrong based on the fact that we shouldn’t judge. The REAL cultural pressure behind this idea is this: we shouldn’t judge CERTAIN THINGS that meet current politically correct or social off limit criteria which of course homosexual politics is one. They seek to judge EVERYONE who does not rubber stamp their agenda while self-righteously crying “don’t judge” in the face of any opposition, disagreement or anything less than total acceptance and promotion. That, my friends, is exactly the type of hypocritical judging the Bible definitively condemns.
So the real question is this: how do we PROPERLY judge the issue of “don’t ask, don’t tell” without being hypocritical and according to God’s eternal, transcendent standard rather than our own vacillating and unpredictable human standards?