To be human is to make judgments. But sadly, our judgments do damage to our witness to Jesus.

In 2015, Barna reported that a significant number of young adults have deeper complaints about church. More than one-third say their negative perceptions area result of moral failures in church leadership (35%). And substantial majorities of Millennials who don’t go to church say they see Christians as judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), anti- homosexual (91%) and insensitive to others (70%).

Jesus warns against both existential judgment, and eschatological judgment.  We don’t know someone’s heart and we don’t know someone’s final destination.  Our offering in judgment is to help others grow.  And we do this after we have done our own self-reflection and self-critique.

Jesus invites his followers to remove the plank from their own eye so they are able to help remove the speck from their neighbors.  We far too often fall into the trap of making our neighbor’s speck a plank so our plank can feel like a speck.  Jesus tells us to flip this on it’s head.  That our judgment should come out of deep self-reflection, and should only be done for the benefit of the person we are caring for.  We don’t judge the heart, we offer space for others to reflect.  We help clean their eyes after we have cleaned our own.