Judgment as a Conduit of Grace

Judgmentalism is a tough nut to crack. I can remind myself daily that, as St. Benedict says, we are to welcome others as Christ; I can affirm that God’s image is present in all people; I can humbly acknowledge that judgment is God’s job, not mine. Then, minutes later, I may find myself criticizing, say, certain government officials for greedy, oppressive, and exploitative acts—thereby engaging in unloving behavior myself even as I condemn it in others. As Karen Casey and Martha Vanceburg observe in The Promise of a New Day, “Criticism is second nature to us, and it does an injustice to both giver and receiver.”

In segment 1 of the first season of the podcast “Another Name for Everything,” Fr. Richard Rohr addresses the human tendency to judge in a unique way. Basically, he suggests that being judgmental is itself a conduit of grace, for “I get to see every day how I am not loving, that I need to plug into the greater source. I myself am not capable of being nonjudgmental, so I must rely on mercy, choose grace, and surrender to love. You don’t do that unless you see nonpresence [of Christ] in yourself.”

Try as we might not to judge others, we will fail. We are human and thus imperfect. Rather than berating ourselves for our failures, we can choose to be vigilant, training ourselves to recognize when we slip into judgment and using it as an occasion to recall God’s mercy for ourselves and others, to seek to respond to the people we would judge with grace, and to surrender to God’s inexplicable love for all humanity despite our imperfections.

As with so much of life, it comes down to the humility of knowing and accepting that God is God and I am not. Scripture often reminds us of this, as when Paul says to the Romans, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are God’s judgments, and how unsearchable God’s ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord?” (Rom 11:32-34). Are we willing to trust God’s ways, even when they don’t make any sense to us, or will we have the hubris to substitute our judgment for that of God? We can make that choice, of course, but in doing so we do an injustice to ourselves, for we thereby cut ourselves off from participating in God’s rich and fecund life of mercy, love, and grace.