NOT LONG AGO, while I was speaking at a small youth group, a teen girl stood up and asked me, “Who are you to judge?” She clearly thought I was hateful for judging certain behavior as wrong.
As best as I can remember, I said, “I have thought about this for a long time, weighed all sides of the issue, and think my position is the most moral, although I am open to correction if you could show I am wrong. Why wouldn’t I be qualified?” She wasn’t quite sure how to respond.
My goal wasn’t to embarrass her but to point out that, as human beings, we are supposed to make informed moral judgments. We do it all the time. In fact, she was morally judging me! By asking what right I had to make a moral judgment, she was implying that I ought not make such a judgment. But isn’t that a judgment? Of course!
Without realizing it, people regularly say contradictory things like this. Ever heard someone make one of the following claims?
Making moral judgments is a natural part of being human. It separates us from animals. But this is not an excuse to be judgmental in our attitudes or inconsistent in our judgments, as we will see in this chapter.
Here’s the challenge for today. On the one hand, our culture preaches nonjudgmentalism: “To each their own.” “Live and let live.” “Be true to yourself.” Yet, on the other hand, our culture incites strong moral judgments: “Not recycling is wrong,” “You’re hateful for believing children need a mom and a dad,” and ”You’re transphobic if you don’t use someone’s preferred gender pronouns.”
Unfortunately, the truisms about being nonjudgmental don’t fit very well with making all sorts of judgments about others. Like betta fish, if you put them together, only one will come out alive.
“Don’t Judge, You Bigot!”
Though many people may say moral claims are matters of preference, no one actually believes that is true. Consider Romans 2:14: “For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves.” According to Paul, God has made all human beings with a moral conscience to recognize right and wrong. Thus, even people who do not believe in God are still made in his image and therefore do know right and wrong. Atheists know right from wrong because God’s law is written on their hearts.
Furthermore, people don’t live like relativists. Years ago, when I was teaching high school full-time, a freethinking club of atheists and agnostics began at the public school across town. My students came up with the idea of challenging the leaders of this club to a public debate on the historical Jesus, intelligent design, and morality. They accepted the challenge and agreed that I would be the moderator. Our church was packed!
When it came time for the speeches on morality, one of my students said, “There is a real right and wrong across cultures. Stealing is wrong, for example, and we all know it. The reality of the moral law is best explained by the existence of a moral lawgiver, namely God.”
In response, one of their students said, “There is no moral law. Moral claims are like ice cream—they’re matters of preference. We have our own beliefs and live accordingly. But there is no moral law by which we can judge others. Thus, there is no reason to believe in God.”
During the closing speeches, rather than summing up why he thought his side won the debate, the same skeptical student chose to berate Christians for being hateful, homophobic bigots. He repeated himself for three minutes and then sat down.
Do you notice anything ironic? In one speech, he said morality is subjective, like choosing an ice cream flavor. And then moments later, in his next speech, he condemned Christians for their blatant immorality. Do you see the contradiction? If morality is a matter of preference, which he argued in his opening speech, then his moral criticism of Christian behavior is vacuous and is no different than saying, “Chocolate ice cream tastes better than vanilla.” On the other hand, if there is a moral law by which we should make judgments, then there is good reason to believe God exists.
Objective morality is not at home in this student’s atheistic worldview. But because he is made in God’s image and lives in God’s world, he can’t escape making moral judgments.
Two Kinds of Moral Truth
Many choices in life are not moral. Should I go bowling tonight or watch a movie? Do I prefer chocolate peanut butter ice cream or cookies and cream? Should I wear my green shirt or my black one? These are personal choices relative to the individual. These are subjective choices. The phrase “Chocolate peanut butter ice cream is the best” may be true for me, since it’s my favorite, but it may not be true for you. Subjective claims depend on the feelings or preferences of the individual. In fact, saying that chocolate peanut butter ice cream is the best is really a claim about my experience of the ice cream (the subject) rather than the ice cream itself (the object).
On the other hand, objective claims depend not on feelings or beliefs but on the external world. They are true or false independently of how we think or feel. For example, the statements “1 + 2 = 3,” “George Washington was the first president of the United States,” and “Water = H20” are all objective truths.
Where would you place the moral claim “Abortion is wrong”? Your gut reaction might be to consider it a subjective claim, like ice cream. After all, don’t people disagree about the answer? But think about it for a moment: If all moral claims were like ice cream, could we ever condemn any action as wrong? No! We couldn’t condemn racism, sexism, war crimes, or any other action as actually being immoral. If morality were subjective, then there would be no real difference between a father who nurtures and cares for his children and a father who molests his children. Each father made a personal choice, and that choice was “true” for him.
In the case of abortion, either the unborn is human or it is not. And either humans have the right to life or they don’t. These are questions of fact, not opinion. Upon reflection, we all know there is moral truth, just as there is mathematical truth.
Disagreement Is Overrated
You probably agree with me that moral questions are not entirely matters of preference (subjective). But what about disagreement? After all, there are all sorts of moral issues people disagree over. Here is a very important point to remember: disagreement about truth does not erase the existence of truth. People differ over historical facts, but we still know historical truth exists. People differ over scientific theories, but there is still scientific truth. And the same is true for morality: people’s disagreements over morality don’t say anything about whether or not it exists.
Take the issue of abortion as an example. Some people are pro-life and others pro-choice, but there is still an objective truth about the morality of abortion. Either the unborn is a valuable human being worth protecting or it is not. If it is, then abortion is unjustly ending the life of a human being. If the unborn is not human, then abortion is morally justified. Even though people have strong disagreements about the morality of abortion, there is an objective truth about the nature of the unborn and the moral status of abortion.
In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis famously argued that there is far greater moral similarity across cultures than differences. For example, every society has some version of the Golden Rule. All societies have laws protecting human life, all condemn stealing, and all honor courage. It’s as if many different orchestras are performing the same musical piece but adapting the harmonics to fit their own instruments.
There are two important takeaways in this section. First, people disagree on moral issues, but as we have seen, disagreements don’t erase truth. Second, people disagree on moral practice, but as Lewis pointed out, there is universal agreement on certain moral principles.
“Who Are You to Judge?”
At this point, some of you may be thinking, Wait a minute, McDowell, didn’t Jesus himself tell us to not judge? Now, you’d be right that Jesus talks about judging others. In Matthew 7:1, Jesus says, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” The verse is part of the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus talks to his followers about living for the Kingdom of God. But he wasn’t implying that we are never to make moral judgments. Just a few verses later, Jesus calls certain people “pigs” and “dogs” and wolves “in sheep’s clothing” (verses 6, 15).
What Jesus rebukes is hypocritical judgment, where we judge others by a standard we inconsistently apply to ourselves. At the end of his rebuke of hypocritical judgment, Jesus tells his listeners to remove the log from their own eye—“then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:5). He wants us to take the specks out of others’ eyes (which involves making judgments to recognize the specks); he just doesn’t want us to do it without examining ourselves first. While it is right to judge certain actions and beliefs as wrong, according to God’s standard, we have no right to consider ourselves better than others.
Jesus knows that we often see others’ sins all too well and are blind to our own. His remedy is not to be blind to the sins of others and only look at our own but to make sure that we see all things clearly so we avoid hypocrisy (removing the log) and are ready to help others (removing the speck).
Conclusion
To be judgmental should not mean “to disagree with someone” or “to consider someone morally wrong.” People regularly make these kinds of judgments today. Being judgmental involves thinking you are better than someone because of their moral failures. This kind of judgment is out of line for Christians because it is inconsistent with the command to love one another (see 1 John 4:7) and the reality that God is the one who ultimately judges the heart (see 1 Samuel 16:7).
In part 1 of this book, we have looked at the importance of rebelling against our noisy cancel culture and choosing truth, justice, and love so that we can be the kind of person God wants us to be. Now, we are going to start applying these truths to some of the thorniest issues of our day. Let’s go!