Nothing unspiritual about judgments

One of the silliest ideas operating in the spiritual world is the view that it is categorically unspiritual to make judgments. Aside from the sad fact that the statement that judgments are unspiritual is a judgment, judgments are what we do best. Without judgments life would revert to a state of complete chaos.

Recently a friend told me that she had angered a casual social acquaintance when she asked him how much lying and cheating he had to do to justify his six figure income. When I said that this was a very rude statement to make to a stranger and showed displeasure with it I was accused of being ‘judgmental.’

I didn’t want to get into an argument so I held my tongue but I would have said that although my statement was a judgment it was based on a universal value, not on my personal likes and dislikes. What is that value? Non-injury. My friend’s statement…which occurred in a superficial social context…was obviously insulting because it assumed that the person to whom she was speaking and about whom she had no knowledge was dishonest.

My ‘judgment’ that her question was insulting was one of those judgments that are absolutely necessary to keep the world harmonious because it supports one of the most important universal values. Her statement was a judgment based on the assumption that people with money are dishonest by definition. What purpose did her judgment serve except to make her feel spiritually superior and to anger someone else?

The obsession with making judgments has become so absurd that is it often impossible to make a simple observation without being accused of being ‘judgmental.’ The other day a particularly obese person walked past and one of my friends commented on the person’s girth. Another friend accused the first friend of being ‘judgmental.’ But was it a judgment? Not at all. It was simply a statement of fact.

God endowed human beings with intellect so that they could discriminate and make judgments. When determinations are made in service of dualistic views and offered in an unkind way they are definitely unhelpful. But when the basis of a judgment is a higher value…like non-injury, truthfulness, etc…one is actually doing the world a favor by making a judgment because it calls attention to the non-dual nature of reality. We are all one. I do not lie to you because I do not want to be lied to. I do not injure you because I do not want to be injured.

The biggest problem with the view that judgements are verboten for spiritual people is that failure to call attention to violations of dharma means that it will embolden the unrighteous and consequently add to the many miseries that we are forced to suffer every day.