A Judgmental Thought

Mother Angelica has said, and I emphatically agree, that the reigning sin of our time is misguided compassion. I’ve mentioned this before, explaining how I think this “reigning sin” is also a strict moral system. It occurred to me today how we might strive against this system head-on: by attacking its first principles. If the first commandment of the modern moral code is “Thou shalt not judge,” then it could help to understand the meaning of the word “judge.” According to The New Oxford American Dictionary, the first meaning of the verb “judge” is: “form an opinion or conclusion about.” The dictionary offers the following examples of the usage of the word in this meaning:

1: “scientists were judged according to competence.” Did we judge scientists according to their competence when many of them pronounced that the fetus has no soul or personhood? Science is by definition a matter of matter, and is competent to judge only things which are subject to controlled experimentation. The soul is not matter and cannot be subjected to controlled experimentation. Therefore if “scientists were judged according to competence,” then they would be recognized as utterly incompetent to make pronouncements about the soul.

2: “it is hard to judge whether such opposition is justified.” If it were understood that judgment is indeed “hard” at times, then a soft culture would understand that it is in much need of new mental musculature. In a matter as important as whether an opposition to life itself is justified, we simply must learn to judge. And this learning will be very hard for us: if you’re grossly obese and utterly inactive, you’ll have to seek medical treatment and physical therapy rather than simply take up jogging on the first day of repentance.

3: “judging from his letters home, Monty was in good spirits.” Even this simple judgment can be disallowed by the moral system of misguided compassion. If Monty’s letters home informed his family that he had taken to drinking three six-packs of beer a day and was having the time of his life, admittedly most people would say “judging from his letters home, Monty is not doing well at all, despite his claiming to be happy.” But if Monty’s letters home informed his family that he had taken to being sodomized by strangers at parties on a regular basis, and that he had learned to enjoy it, many families would indeed fail to judge. According to the moral system of misguided compassion, it would wrong to “marginalize” poor Monty by judging his life-choice. Don’t worry about the fact that Monty is extremely likely to contract AIDS; what’s more problematic would be calling what he does “sodomy” rather than “gay love.” Lots of people would indeed say “judging from his letters home, Monty was in good spirits.”

Finally, the word “judge” can be used to mean “decide the results of (a competition).” Today’s competition is one between the people who strive for solid judgment and meaning on the one side, and the misguided compassion that reigns over morality in this society on the other. The good news is that those who judge will have two distinct advantages if:

They seek the truth and therefore are less susceptible to being taken in by falsehoods, and if they take as their leader The Judge who has said “Anyone who seeks the truth listens to my voice.” In competing with “today’s reigning sin,” it is comforting to know that “at the end of days” this Judge will “decide the results” of this “competition.” In the end, only the sincere thinker can hope to be able to say with St. Paul: “I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith.”