When Jesus preached, He would often use words that were very familiar to the Jewish people. Many times, the Rabbis would warn against judging other people.
They laid down that there were six works which brought a person credit. Study, visiting the sick, hospitality, devotion in prayer, the education of children in the law, and thinking the best of other people.
There are three reasons why one should not be quick to judge another.
- We rarely know the whole facts about the other person. A famous Rabbi once said, “do not judge a man until you yourself have come into his situation.”
- It is almost impossible for a person to be strictly impartial in his judgement. We can be prejudiced by instinctive and unreasoning reaction to people. It is told that sometimes when the Greeks held an important trial, they held it in the dark so that the judge and jury could not see the man on trial, and therefore would not be influenced by anything but the facts in the case.
- In the end Jesus tells us why we should not be quick to judge another. That is the example He gives in today’s Gospel.
No man is good enough to judge any other man. Only the faultless have a right to look at the faults of others.
We have enough to do to rectify the faults in our own lives without being so quick to rectify the faults in others’ lives.
Jesus is challenging us to concentrate on the faults in our own lives and leave the faults of others to God.