Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters. Whoever speaks evil against another or judges another, speaks evil against the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. So who, then, are you to judge your neighbour?
What can we say about judgement that hasn’t already been said a million times? Don’t do it!
Aside from the hypocrisy of our judgement, it’s also a very convenient defense mechanism from self-reflection. How bad am I, really, if that person over there is doing that? Aren’t I a good person for pointing out that dreadful sin? Perhaps we hope to direct God’s wrath in another direction, but we end up directing our own attention exclusively to others’ sins as well. Our own sin becomes an afterthought. As we discussed earlier in the week, even devoting too much negative emotion towards the devil has consequences if it distracts us from true repentance and submission to God. To repeat the same metaphor from earlier, if I tell my wife every day what a bad husband person X is, it might make me seem a bit better in comparison, but it won’t excuse my own shortcomings. My wife would much prefer that I do the work of being a kind and thoughtful husband instead of me subtly trying to lower the bar for all husbands.
