It’s an amazing sight to see the hundreds of tons of timber strewn across Worthing beach from the stricken cargo ship Ice Prince. In seeing the planks, I immediately thought of Jesus’ command not to judge hypocritically or self-righteously. The carpenter Jesus says you can’t possibly remove the sawdust in your brother’s eye before you remove the plank sticking out of yours!It is easy to judge, not knowing the whole facts, to criticise without offering a finger to help, and impossible to be strictly impartial. Every football terrace is full of loud-mouthed critics who could do far better than those on the pitch!

Jesus said: Don’t judge. Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticise their faults – unless of course you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging.

However, Scripture repeatedly exhorts believers to evaluate carefully and choose between good and bad people and things. We are to judge in the sense of working out those who masquerade as angels of light and those who are false prophets.

We are to evaluate a person’s character, and choose who we listen to, are

influenced by and spend time with. We are instructed to weigh up prophetic words and not just accept them at face value. In that sense, we are called to judge.

David Thatcher

Filed under: Thought of the Week