Non-Judgmental: Overrated; Judging: Underrated

I have been told appreciatively that I am non-judgmental. This is, of course, a high complement in today's world. I cherish the remark as it sometimes comes with a recognition of my strong moral judgements, as expressed in this blog. My ideal is to love people and hate the false, the evil, the ugly (as I judge them). I sometimes decline the complement, as given, and respond: "Actually, I am extremely judgmental; especially of you. My judgement of you is fierce, clear, definite: you are true, good, beautiful, intelligent, inspiring, charming, fun."

We are all of us judging all the time: what is good and bad, what is hopeful, what is advisable, what is dangerous. All judgments! All are fraught with feelings of various sorts but are intellectual decisions. As human beings it is our dignity, created in God's image, to judge and decide, to use our intellect and will, to pursue the good and renounce the evil. We absolutely must be judgmental, all the time."To know you is to love you" the old song goes. To love and to know or judge are not opposites, as like/dislike, but infuse each other: I value, cherish, care for, revere, and even desire you, not just in feeling, but because I see and know and judge your goodness.

Frank Furedi, in "The Diseasing of Judgment" (First Things, January 2021) chronicles how modernity has elevated "nonjudgmental" to be the highest value, strikingly so in education, psychology and child-rearing, and poisoned standard concepts (judgment, authority, an objective moral order) as sources of pathological authoritarianism. It is the triumph of the sentimental as feelings, cut off from the real, the moral, the interior form. It is the idolazation of the Imperial Isolated Self in his sacrosanct "self-esteem." It is moral emotivism; epistemological agnosticism; spiritual nihilism.

Our life project: to deepen, clarify, intensify our judgments. Perhaps the most striking blessing of aging is this gradual, steady growth in judgment of the real, the true, the good, the beautiful.

Among the greatest judgments I have accepted is what I received from the 12-step-program of AA in midlife: it is good for me to work my own inventory, not that of others; to sweep my own sidewalk, not the one across the street. This is itself, obviously, a judgement. It is not that I do not judge others, but I do so in a specific spirit: aware of my own failings and God's mercy; eager to be gracious to them; purposefully focusing on their strengths and goodness; taking delight in all that is admirable, lovely, inspiring; and exercising mercy to what is weak, needy and miserable. This is, clearly, not really nonjudgmental, but solidly, deeply judgmental, in tune with God's truthful, merciful judgments of me.