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Are Christians Too Judgemental? | Your Big Questions Answered · Regina UNSCRIPTED

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Are Christians too judgmental?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, what does it mean to judge?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: The dictionary tells us that to judge is to weigh the information before coming to a conclusion.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Some examples of judging, therefore, are looking both ways before crossing a road, choosing what to eat, who to marry, which car to drive, where to go on holiday, how to sit at a dinner table.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: We all judge all of the time.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: People who believe in God, people who don't, people who experience same-sex attraction and people who don't, people who support the Republican Party, Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives, and everything in between.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Environmentalists, eco-warriors, big game hunters, rich people, poor people, black people, white people, men, and women.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: We all judge every day, all of the time.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone who says, I'm not judgmental, is lying.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a judgment.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and so are you.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because we naturally seek the approval of others.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: You desire peace and you take it as a criticism because it's often said pejoratively.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: But the peace you seek when you avoid judgment is a false peace.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's already a judgment, and so you failed, and you always will fail.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: So you may as well accept that you make judgments daily and move on, rather than protest that you're not judgmental.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes well-meaning Christians seeking peace are very careful not to appear judgmental.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: They've taken each to their own view, deciding instead to quietly pray for someone.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Whilst it's certainly necessary to pray for others, it is not an either-or thing, but rather a both and thing.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: We should pray, fast, and strive for holiness ourselves, and call out evil as evil.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: This may mean taking a stand against perverted teachings in schools, unnatural laws which seek to redefine marriage, or efforts to normalise assisted suicide in the name of compassion.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Pope Benedict XVI consistently taught that true peace cannot coexist with a false peace born of moral compromise, relativism, or the suppression of truth.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout his writings and papacy, he warned that achieving a superficial harmony by sacrificing core values or true faith is an illusion that ultimately leads to division and to human degradation.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: In his 2011 World Day of Peace message, Pope Benedict XVI noted, and I quote, the illusion that moral relativism provides the key for peaceful coexistence is actually the origin of divisions and the denial of the dignity of human beings.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: He strongly rejected the modern premise that for people to live together peacefully, they must set aside absolute truths or suppress their identity and religious faith.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: True peace requires an active, unyielding struggle against evil rather than a passive agreement to look the other way.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because people want judgment to stop at the point at which it is understood to interfere with what they want to do.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Any judgment that fails to affirm a person's personal sin causes them discomfort, and people tend to seek comfort and affirmation.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: We all want to be liked, but if you choose Bob to be your husband, when David likes you also, you've made David unhappy with your choice, and he may not like you.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you marry David instead, Bob's going to be unhappy.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: This, I'm afraid, is called reality and it is forever nipping at your heels.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as judgment is involved, there is always a losing side, and nobody wants to be on the losing side.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: One easy way to avoid this is to flip the losing and winning sides.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: It is far easier to do this than to do the humiliating work of acknowledging that you are a loser and need to change.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: But we are warned against the temptation to do just this.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: In Isaiah chapter 5, woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Christians are called to become Christ-like.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's not possible to become both Christ-like and devil-like.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Every moment of every day involves small judgments.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: It is good if you're Christian to grow closer to Christ.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: It is not good to become distant.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is the same in any relationship.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: In a marriage, we can drift further from our spouse by avoiding being near them, failing to communicate, prioritising other people over them.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: But we can draw closer to them by making time to be together, communicating with them and prioritizing them.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: No person has to be forcing you to choose one or the other approach, but rather the intended outcome is what dictates the choices we make.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: If we want a cold and distant marriage, we will choose the former, but if we don't, if we want a warm and close marriage, we will choose the latter.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's simply called consequence.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: We live in a rather peculiar age of individualism.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: We imagine that the choices that we make for ourselves have no impact whatsoever on other people.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well that's wrong.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: If I choose to drive fast, drink and drive, spend all my money on hookers, watch porn all day, consume nothing but sugar, cigarettes, alcohol and sex, each one of those choices will have an impact on others.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps I will help to fuel the porn industry and human trafficking.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps I will burden the health system.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps I will infect someone with an STI.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps I will abort a child.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps I will kill a pedestrian.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps I will cause an increase in insurance premiums for others.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps I'll neglect my children.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps I'll operate at work in a suboptimal way.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps I have created a situation in which I can't work and thus have to live off the state, which means the earnings of others.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's no getting around this.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: From the very moment we are conceived until the moment we die, we are connected to others.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Our very existence depends on that connection.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Even if we reduce it to the most basic connection between sperm and egg, life itself requires unity with another.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: So when people say, don't be so judgmental, they often mean stop interfering in my life, because how I live is no one else's business, as if the choices that they make in life have zero consequences for anyone but themselves.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: They are wrong.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: If judgment is weighing the evidence before reaching a conclusion, then it makes sense that we can't judge what we don't know, and we don't know what is not shared.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Some intentions, though, are shared, some reasons are given, some actions are clear.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: If someone says I support abortion, I'm gonna smash that window because I hate glass manufacturers.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or if we see someone raping an infant, it is right to make a judgment.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Our judgment may be the only thing that prevents the rape, because judging that it's wrong, we intervene.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Our argument against abortion may be the thing that saves a life because we have judged that the action is wrong and countered the claim of someone who believes it's right.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: What we can't do is judge a person's soul.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: We can't see into a person's soul, that's God's business.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: We can say abortion is wrong, but we can never say you are going to hell because you had an abortion.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Be wary of any Christian who claims certainty over who is going to hell.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: No human is omniscient.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: It is right that we judge prudently against objective standards of right and wrong.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: It is right to do so in charity, but we are not God, so we cannot pass ultimate judgment.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: The reason judgment has any meaning at all is because reality exists.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that thing nipping at your heels and nagging at your conscience?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can't judge if there is no order to creation.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: If gravity, for example, sometimes means that things fall to earth, sometimes means that they float, and sometimes means that they disappear altogether.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Then you can't know how to cross a road, go to bed or eat a banana.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is all science is really, the unveiling of truths that exist anyway.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as those truths are harnessed, it is no longer science, it is technology.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And technology, how we utilize what we know, is in the realm of value judgments, not scientific discovery.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, because we know what is true, we can make judgments.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: That truth has to exist outside of myself.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: I could believe all I want that I will float when I jump unaided off a skyscraper.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: But my belief that I will won't make it real.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is what we mean by objective truth.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Standards that exist outside of me and are not dependent on my opinion.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's harder to recognise objective truth as we harness our scientific understanding into artificial technology which masks the consequences.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: For example, if I wear a sky flying suit, it would be fair to disagree with the claim.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you jump off a skyscraper, you will fall to the ground and die.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I can only disagree if I add that I'm wearing a sky flying suit.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Likewise, the claim having sex leads to pregnancy is a reality that is interrupted if we factor in artificial contraception.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Having sex still does lead to pregnancy.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry if that's a surprise to anyone.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is simply a true claim.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: But artificial contraception can mask these consequences, such that people kind of forget that it does.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Eating a lot of sugar and doing no exercise really does make you flabby, but an injection can mask these consequences.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: These efforts to mask the consequences of our actions leads to a kind of blindness and ignorance.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: If we wanted to indulge our infant who really wanted to touch fire by always putting special gloves on him every time he wanted to play with it, we would be teaching him the lie that you can play with fire and it will not burn you.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: The danger is that as technology advances, we become unable to distinguish between what is real, given by our Creator, and what is artificial, given by some other person's judgment of what you need.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Good judgment, not less judgment, is needed now more than ever.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the kind of judgment that Jesus commands.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we've got no business judging a person's soul, but we must, we must, judge with right judgment.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Christians are called to remember for a reason.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: If we allow the drip-drip effect of progress to mask what we know to be true, then we are in danger of losing sight of God altogether.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Given that we depend on God for life itself, this becomes suicidal.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, which is why we shouldn't do it.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: But we can and must judge actions against a standard outside of ourselves.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Given that we all sin, it's silly to judge an action against my own personal standard.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Why would my standard be any better than yours?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: We're both sinners.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: That is why objective truth matters so much.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: If I say two plus two is five, and you say that two plus two is four, then you're right, and I'm wrong.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: But not because you decided that it was four, but because you recognise the truth of the statement and I don't.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: A loving thing to do would be to help me see what is true, just as you do.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Do you not love me enough to do that?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: When I was at school, there was a Polish girl who couldn't pronounce the word crisps.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: She always said something like Krips, Krips, put the P before the S, and everyone laughed at her.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: She asked if she was saying it wrong, and everyone said, No, no, that's exactly how you say it, and carried on laughing.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: So when a Christian judges that to encourage abortion is wrong, to euthanise the elderly is wrong, to be unfaithful to a spouse is wrong, to rape a child is wrong, that judgment is not a judgment made against what they personally decide is right or wrong, but rather against what they know to be true.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Christians both judge what is right and wrong according to God and fail to follow it.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: That they fail themselves and still point out what is wrong is annoying and hypocritical, but it doesn't make it false.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: I could chain smoke and tell you that smoking is bad for you.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that I smoke doesn't take away from the truth of the statement.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: It makes it less likely that you'll take me seriously.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is why Christians should try their best to lead good lives and ask for God's help when they fail.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody likes a hypocrite.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: If instead we say that what is good or bad is merely subjective, that is, not good or bad in itself, outside of me, but good or bad in my opinion only, then nothing can actually be wrong in itself.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: This has to include genocide, child trafficking, rape, torture, murder.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's not logically coherent to say that there is no objective standard of good and bad, right or wrong, but that there are some things which are always wrong all the time, whether you agree or not.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: See, in order to make a judgment, reality must exist.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Since we often deny reality or have been shielded from it artificially, we think that the worst thing a person can do is be judgmental.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if we really stop to think about it, we can see that it makes no sense to say that there are no objective values.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: You shouldn't judge is a judgment.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Morality is subjective makes an objective claim.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Morality is relative to what?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: There are no absolute values is an absolute value.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is why we often see that it's those shouting the loudest about judgmental Christians who are actually the most judgmental themselves.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Those who scream that you shouldn't force your beliefs on others actually force theirs, and those who say, I just want to live in a free society where I can just do what I want want at least one rule enforced, and it's that one.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's no getting away from the fact that we all judge all of the time.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: The only question is against what?