Judge not, or you will be judged, said Jesus.  What does that mean?  Did the Master want to tell us there is some divine ‘filter’ system, an algorithm perhaps, that sorts out God’s children, and those with no record of having judged in their lifetime–no judgement ‘clicks’– are given a free pass in the afterlife?  Or was he perhaps suggesting something else?

The words ‘to judge’ and ‘to be judged’ evoke the daunting image of being brought in chains to a court of law, and then either to be set free or (more likely) condemned, with consequent punishment.  This is different from what we might call ‘discrimination,’ the evaluation of qualities without assigning moral value.  The experienced eye of a painter can discern innumerable shades of colour, but in choosing one over another for the palette, the artist is not saying that other shades are bad or deficient; it is only that they do not serve the present purpose.

Judgement, one the other hand, is similar to an immune system response; it is a vigorous rejection of something perceived as not belonging to ‘me’ or ‘my structure.’ Naturally our body has to defend itself, but in some circumstances our immune system can paradoxically make us less healthy.  The system may respond so vigorously to some substances that the body shuts down entirely and the person dies–not from the effect of the substance itself, which may be trivial, but from the body’s own reaction.  The anaphylactic shock some people experience from exposure to peanuts is an example. Another example of an unhealthy response is when the immune system reacts not to outside influences but to parts of itself, in what are called ‘auto-immune diseases’.

These conditions also show us what can happen spiritually when our judgement faculty is over-active.  Certainly we all know judgmental people (whether we include ourselves in that category is a matter of conscience) whose reaction to whatever is ‘alien’ to them is out of proportion to the harm they might experience from it.  Still worse though, and perhaps this is what Jesus was warning against, is that, when we fall into judgement, we are obliged to live in the world of limitations, and we lose sight of perfection.

One way to see the human being is as a collection of forms and expressions surrounding a seed of Divine consciousness.  The forms and expressions are necessarily limited, and In our limited aspect, no one is perfect; everyone has faults. But infinity does not need to make judgements; it assimilates all. If we wish to follow another wise counsel given by Jesus, to be perfect as our Father in heaven, we have to give up judging, and find space for all within our hearts.

Doing this lifts a tremendous burden off the heart: we let go of the need to run the world, and we allow the possibility that we ourselves will be forgiven for all our uncountable shortcomings.