Judge Not

(NOTE: The following is a talk I gave in my church on April 27, 2008)



The Savior taught, "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven" (Luke 6:37). In modern revelation the Lord has declared, "I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men" (D&C 64:10).

Why do we judge others? I think one of the reasons is because it’s easier to criticize than to be constructive. As clergyman J.M. Gibson noted, “Only God can form and paint a flower, but any foolish child can pull it to pieces.”



We also judge people to justify our own faults. As President N. Eldon Tanner has noted, “Sometimes as I move among people I am almost convinced that it is human nature to magnify the weaknesses in others in order to minimize our own.” (Improvement Era, June 1967, p. 29.)

The prophet Mormon taught, “Seeing that ye know the light by which ye may judge, which light is the light of Christ, see that ye do not judge wrongfully; for with that same judgment which ye judge ye shall also be judged” (Moroni 7:18).

In the October 1982 General Conference, Elder David B. Haight taught: 

Besides loving God, we are commanded to do what to many is a more difficult commandment--to love all, even enemies, and to go beyond the barriers of race or class or family relationships. . . . Are we not commanded to cultivate genuine fellowship and even a kinship with every human being on earth? Whom would you bar from your circle? We might deny ourselves a nearness to our Savior because of our prejudices of neighborhood or possessions or race--attitudes that Christ would surely condemn. Love has no boundary, no limitation of good will.

One of my favorite authors is C.S. Lewis. I’m going to quote from a couple of his books today. The first comes from his book Mere Christianity: 

Do not waste time bothering whether you "love" your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.

I have the opportunity to DJ quite a few church dances every year. As I am at the dances, I watch the kids to see how they treat each other. As a whole, I am happy to report, the kids treat each other with respect and honor. A few weeks ago I was at a dance in a local stake and I had announced that it was a girl’s choice dance. I saw a Young Woman ask one of the Young Men to dance and he told her no, and then went off and danced with the next girl that asked him. I was in shock that a holder of the Priesthood would treat anyone, especially a Young Woman, like that. Needless to say, the girl that was rejected looked hurt, meanwhile the Young Man was dancing with the other girl, not even realizing the pain he had caused.

Don’t think I don’t see the irony here that I am judging this Young Man for his actions, but I will be honest. I just about jumped off the stage to give that kid a piece of my mind.

On a lighter note, I was DJing a dance in this stake awhile ago. Once again, I stood on the stage observing the youth and I noticed a Young Man, one that you all know, dancing with every girl that asked him. And believe me, there were a lot of girls asking this Young Man to dance. I don’t know if I saw him dance with the same girl twice. I was so thrilled to see one of our Young Men treat each Young Woman with the respect they deserve, no matter if they were “popular”.

President N. Eldon Tanner said, “It seems common practice for people to talk about their friends and neighbors and to criticize their seeming weaknesses. In fact, it is so general that one would think that gossiping about and judging others was the thing to do. How often have we heard of young men who were criticized, judged, and ridiculed because of their peculiarities and yet who eventually became leaders in their different fields of endeavor.”


President Tanner then told of the story of Sister Emma McKay, the wife of President David O. McKay. She had just begun teaching school. As the principal introduced her to the class, he pointed to a certain boy and said he was a troublemaker. She could tell the boy was embarrassed, so she wrote a note and slipped it to him as she walked past his desk. It said, “Earl, I think the principal was mistaken about your being a bad boy. I trust you, and know that you are going to help me make this room the best in the school.” Earl not only became a top student in the class, he also became one of the town’s most important people.


President Tanner continued: “The reason, therefore, that we cannot judge is obvious. We cannot see what is in the heart. We do not know motives, although we impute motives to every action we see. They may be pure while we think they are improper. It is not possible to judge another fairly unless you know his desires, his faith, and his goals. Because of a different environment, unequal opportunity, and many other things, people are not in the same position. One may start at the top and the other at the bottom, and they may meet as they are going in opposite directions. At best, man can judge only what he sees; he cannot judge the heart or the intention, or begin to judge the potential of his neighbor. When we try to judge people, which we should not do, we have a great tendency to look for and take pride in finding weaknesses and faults, such as vanity, dishonesty, immorality, and intrigue. As a result, we see only the worst side of those being judged.”

I know that some of you are sitting there thinking, “Brother Taylor, you’re preaching to the choir. This doesn’t apply to me. I don’t judge anyone because of their popularity or the amount of money they have in the bank or even their religion.”

What about people in our own ward? Do you ever judge them? Do you ever watch them perform their callings and think, “I could do that calling better.”

During a BYU devotional in September 1988, President Henry B. Eyring said the following: 

Whenever stake presidencies and bishops call new leaders…it’s a time of testing for the members. You may have experienced such a test yourself. Some of you are disappointed that you were not called. A few will be glad you were not called. Some of you may be sad that you were overlooked again. And some of you are wondering about a person who was called whose weaknesses you know. Perhaps someone was called - someone you now must follow - whom you do not admire, or perhaps don't even like.

You and I sometimes feel that we are wise and we know a good deal. We have increasing experience. So why should a Sunday School teacher who seems to us weak and simple and less experienced be called by inspiration to teach us? 

One reason is that it requires humility on our part. It requires a humble heart to believe that you can be taught by someone who apparently knows a good deal less than you do, and perhaps seems less likely to get revelation.

It can be difficult to have a leader that we don’t respect on a personal level, but as the Lord says in D&C 1:38, “What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not passaway, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same."

This judging of others in the Church is discussed in The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. This book contains letters written from one devil, Screwtape, to his younger devil nephew, Wormwood. Wormwood has been having a bit of a problem with his patient – the man that he was assigned to tempt – and he asked his uncle to give him a bit of advice at how he could stop the man from going to church. Here is the reply from Screwtape:

One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread through all time and space and rooted in eternity. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes even our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is…just that selection of his neighbors whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbors. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like "the body of Christ" and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. Provided that any of those neighbors sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous.

Going back to President Tanner, he said, “We hear a man say to his family and to others, ‘I don’t see why the bishop does this or that. You would think he would know better.’ Here he is judging the bishop without the facts, which, if known to him, would be full justification for the action taken. The man’s judgment was not only unrighteous, but it had probably prejudiced his children and caused them to lose respect for the bishop and had weakened their faith."

We need to remember, brothers & sisters, that the people who are called to serve us are called by the Lord. I know this because I have been there in Bishopric meeting when we all talked about someone who would be perfect for a specific calling and then, after praying to get reassurance from the Lord, we each received the feeling that another person - of which none of us had even discussed - should be the person called to this calling.

Let me close with this quote from President Howard W. Hunter. This was given at the press conference when it was announced that he would be the Prophet after the death of President Benson. He said, “I would invite all members of the Church to live with ever more attention to the life and example of the Lord Jesus Christ, especially the love and hope and compassion He displayed. I pray that we might treat each other with more kindness, more courtesy, more humility and patience and forgiveness.”