Judging Ourselves Stops Us Judging Others – Learning From the Desert Fathers

The more we are aware of our own mistakes, sins, and failings, the more we are assured of our dependence on grace. As such, we learn not to judge others.

The Desert Fathers

For the first monks, those Christians who went to live in the deserts of North Africa during the 3rd to 6th centuries, the first principle of living a holy life was not judging others. Of all the recorded sayings, sermons, messages, and letters from the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the condemnation of judgement occurs most frequently. They knew that if you start to judge other people for their failings, then not only is any chance at building community destroyed, but the attempt to live like Jesus is lost.

The Desert Fathers knew that judging others is a way of avoiding our own judgement. When we focus on other people’s mistakes and bad behaviours, and when we want to punish them for it, all we are doing is covering over or hiding our own failings and mistakes and sins. Judging other people is a way of justifying ourselves and letting ourselves off the hook for our choices.

Those first monks lived by a very simple way of combatting that judgement. Be very hard on your own mistakes, and incredibly gentle and easy on those of others. They knew that the more aware a person is of their own sins, the less space they had for judging others for their sins.

Teaching Through Stories

The Desert Fathers and Mothers did most of their teaching through the use of sayings and stories. This is a story told about Abba Moses and his approach to judgement:

A brother at Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which Abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to say to him, ‘Come, for everyone is waiting for you.’ So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water and carried it with him. The others came out to meet him and said to him, ‘What is this, Father?’ The old man said to them, ‘My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.’ When they heard that they said no more to the brother but forgave him.

No one questioned the fault of the brother. No one denied that he had made a mistake. Even Abba Moses did not try and argue that what the brother did was ok or that it wasn’t really a problem. That is what Bonhoeffer would describe as cheap grace. True freedom from judgement, true forgiveness, does not mean simply pretending that things are ok or that sins aren’t still actually sins.

Instead, Abba Moses responds to the call for him to participate in judgement by making a demonstration of his own sins. Abba Moses was aware that he had sinned so many times in his life that could not keep track of them all. They had run out behind him so far he couldn’t even see where they began. Who was he to judge another?

Jesus makes a similar point. In John 8 Jesus is confronted by a woman caught in adultery. There was no question she had committed a sin. Jesus doesn’t say she was innocent. Instead he turned against the crowd who were judging her. He said let the person there who had never sinned be the person to cast the first stone to kill her. No one could. At least they were honest.

We Have All Fallen Short

If we are honest with ourselves, we will know that we have fallen short of the kind of person that we can be. We have made mistakes. We have sinned. We continue to do so. But, praise God, we are redeemed sinners.

We are dependent on God’s grace. We could not save ourselves, we needed Jesus to forgive us, even though we don’t deserve it. If that is true, we are never in a position to judge another person. The more we know we are a sinner saved by grace, the less we will be able to judge others.

When we judge others, we forget and dismiss the amazing work of grace that Christ has done in our life. Instead, we must never judge another but look beyond their failings to see the grace of Jesus at work in their life.

When we stop judging others, we will see Jesus more clearly. When we judge others, we stop looking at Jesus and look only at ourselves.

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