I’ve been listening now to the new U2 album for about a week. It’s really great. I have kind of been fasting music for a while, and so it is nice to break fast with something like this.

So I’m thinking about being judgmental—why do we judge, what is it, and can we live with out it?

I’ve recently had a rather bitter argument with some very close friends and this whole issue of judging has come up as key. It seems to me that we have radically blurred what it means to judge and to be judged. So what is judging? I’d like to suggest that when Jesus says ‘do not judge’ he means that it is not our place to decide who is in and who is out—who is loved and who is hated. However, that being said, it seems obvious that it is our place to judge right from wrong—to judge good from bad based on the standard, the interpretive lens, we see revealed in scripture. In fact it seems impossible to not judge.

If someone does something good what do we say? Do we applaud, encourage, exhort? Yes! This is judgment. This is saying a ‘Yes’ to what we see. Likewise, when we see something that is bad or injurious do we not discourage, dissuade, and content for what is better? This too is judgment—for we are judging something to be bad and/or harmful.

Now my friends have found smoking weed to be something that helps them in life. In the wake of the Vineyard movement they have felt a dryness spiritually and smoking pot has helped to fill in this gap. How? Well, in smoking pot they feel that hey are having ‘God thoughts’ again. They feel that life makes sense and that they can communicate better with others. They don’t want to be narrow-minded and closed to the possibility that this is another useful thing like music or meditation in creating an atmosphere of community and spirituality.

So what happened, how did we fight? Well, it was near Thanksgiving and our families got together for a meal. After the meal as the kids played and the girls talked amongst themselves the guys went outside to smoke. I stayed inside. I have known that they have been smoking pot and I haven’t said anything definitive to them about—again, this is a judgment, even if a suspended one. But then, as the guys were outside smoking pot, the kids wanted to go out to play—and that is when everything went sideways. In the end, without a grounding to talk through this issue, we ended up leaving, to the consternation of others.

Since then I have tried to wrestle with my friends about pot. I have tried to argue that I’m not judging them as individuals but that I do judge what they are doing to be harmful. How is it harmful? Well, my primary concern is that it further splits reality. Those of us who have seen and experienced the highs and lows of spiritual revivals have seen face-to-face the split between subjective and objective reality—even if you didn’t know it. What do I mean? Well, for instance, when my friend says that he is having ‘God thoughts’ what does he mean? If I ask him what these thoughts are why is that he can’t tell me? He just feels he is having good thoughts. But is feeling enough? No one should argue that feelings are bad, but if there is no object for what you are feeling outside of yourself then what is it worth?

I have argued that there is a difference between feeling close to God and not feeling distant—for I think pot can give the illusion of closeness and community. But is it real?

In my opinion we have become dangerously lazy in judging this life rightly. We confuse judging who people are for what they do—we can’t seem to separate the two in our heads. We confuse freedom and openness with grace and goodness, and we confuse setting limits as closed and narrow—as legalistic and judgmental. But real freedom is always bound by real limits. A good judge knows where and what these limits are. Being open isn’t necessarily good. Being free is meaningless unless you are a slave to something—we are to be a slave to Christ, to his ways.