Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged

Despair vs. Hope, Part 1

“Judge not, lest ye be judged.” How often have we heard that warning? Yet it is such an easy one to forget, especially when another person seems to have committed sins that are so grievously, obviously wrong. Sometimes we can’t help but ask ourselves, “How could anyone do such a thing?”

It’s so easy to think that the sins of others are the result of terrible selfishness, callousness, moral bankruptcy, or a deep flaw in their character. But if the truth were known, under the right circumstances, the right pressures, the right fears, we are all weak and susceptible to sin–even the gravest of sins.

“There but for the grace of God go I.” This is how we must look on those who committed sins which we abhor. We must look on them not with an air of superiority or condemnation, but with an attitude of humble sympathy, empathy, and compassion, being thankful to God that we have been spared their great trials and falls.

In humility we must all remember that without the grace of God, each one of us is capable of any sin. If we have been spared knowing this sin or that, it is the grace of God alone which has protected us, not any virtuous excellence of our own character. We are all flawed. We all make bad judgments. We all make decisions in haste, ignorance, and confusion. We all have made bad decisions based not on moral reflection, but on the basis of emotions such as fear and despair.

Another reason we should not judge others is that we are in no position to judge their culpability, their personal responsibility for a sin. For example, stealing a man’s wallet is a grave sin which always offends God–that is, it is never approved by God. But if a young child, such as Dickens’s Oliver Twist, is told by a trusted adult that taking the wallet of a merchant is a “game,” the child’s culpability is lessened, or even eliminated, by ignorance, or even uncertainty, about what is right or wrong. Or if, instead of being ignorant, Oliver had been threatened with injury to himself or a loved one unless he stole the merchant’s wallet, that, too, would lessen or even eliminate his guilt because then his decision to steal was not truly a free choice.

In either case, the act of stealing is objectively sinful. Let us make no mistake about that. Stealing, under any circumstance, offends God. But because God understands when our choices to sin are the result of coercive pressures, confusion, or ignorance, He may not hold us fully responsible for the consequence of our actions.

In this way, God is like any good father or mother who knows that we must judge the behavior of our children with both firmness and compassion. Parents know that it is important to always disapprove of acts which are objectively wrong, yet, at the same time, they understand that their children may not always be fully responsible for their actions. This knowledge tempers both their judgment and punishment of their children.

Another way of looking at this is to remember that we should always condemn acts which are morally wrong, but we should never condemn the persons who commit these acts because we can never know what was in their minds or hearts that may have lessened their culpability.

To live our lives in defense of the truth, we must be able and willing to judge the morality of acts. But the judgment of individuals must always be left to God. He alone knows the hearts and minds of us all. He alone knows how to judge how culpable we are for any of our actions.

The old saying that we should “hate the sin, but love the sinner” is intended to remind us that we must be compassionate and understanding. Indeed, out of humility and generosity, we should always assume, and pray, that the sins of others are mitigated by some sort of ignorance or lack of freedom which will lessen their culpability in the eyes of God.

This reminder that we should not judge others is especially important with regard to the issue of abortion. It is extremely unfortunate that at least a few pro-lifers have become so preoccupied by the horrible reality of abortion that they immediately assume that those who have abortions are horrible people. It’s simply not true. It is even extremely unfair. The women and men who choose abortion are often acting out of ignorance or fear, or under tremendous pressures.

Indeed, studies show that 70 percent of the women choosing abortion believe it is morally wrong. This fact alone tells us that women are choosing abortion not because they think it is the right thing to do, but because they think, due to whatever pressures they are facing, that it is the only thing they can do. They feel trapped. Consider, for example, this testimony from an eighteen-year-old girl whom we will call Tracy:

My family would not support my decision to keep my baby. My boyfriend said he would give me no emotional or financial help whatsoever. All the people who mattered to me told me to abort. When I said I didn’t want to, they started listing all the reasons why I should. They said it would be detrimental to my career, and my health, and that I would have no social life and no future with men. Could I actually do it alone? I started feeling like maybe I was crazy to want to keep it.

I finally just told everyone that I would have the abortion just to get them off my back. But inside, I still didn’t want to have the abortion. Unfortunately, when the abortion day came, I shut off my inside feelings. I was scared to not do it because of how my family and boyfriend felt. I’m so angry at myself for giving in to the pressure of others. I just felt so alone in my feelings to have my baby.

Was Tracy responsible for her decision to have an abortion? Yes. But was she fully culpable for that decision? No. She was faced with tremendous pressures and confusion. In her story we see that Tracy had no support to help her do what her heart told her was right. Instead, she was being “socially aborted”; she was being cut off from all of the social support she needed and expected from her family, friends, and boyfriend. She was being made to choose between her love for her baby and her love for everyone else in her life. What a terrible choice! What an unfair choice. But it is a choice that thousands of women face every day.

Researchers have found that well over half of the women who choose abortion would have been willing to carry their children to term if they had received support to do so by the important people in their lives. But without this support, or indeed when faced with threats that they will lose their loved ones, it is very hard to resist the temptation to give in to abortion.

One woman who made this decision has commented that she “made the decision to be weak.” She didn’t decide to have an abortion so much as she decided not to resist all the pressures which were pushing her toward the abortion. For years she lived with the pain of a great self-hatred. She hated herself for being weak–too weak to stand up for her beliefs, too weak to stand up for her child.

We also know from the testimonies of women who have had abortions, and dozens of former abortionists like Dr. Bernard Nathanson and Carol Everett, that there is a tremendous amount of deceit and manipulation which goes on in abortion clinics. Women are not only denied the truth about their unborn children and about the damage abortion will cause in their lives, they are also carefully maneuvered into believing that abortion is their only choice.

After all, abortion clinics are operated to maximize profit. So-called abortion counselors are really specialists at only one thing: selling abortion. They treat abortion like a cure-all for every unplanned pregnancy. If a young woman admits, “I would really like to have this baby,” the counselor is trained to identify her fears and anxieties and then push all the right buttons to convince her that the idea of having her baby is just a romantic dream. “Where will you get $6,000 to pay the hospital bills?” they ask. “How will you ever pay for food or diapers? You’ve already hurt your parents once, don’t make it worse. Don’t make yourself into a burden on everyone. Besides, you’re not ready to be a parent, and who will be the one to suffer from your mistakes? Your baby.”

Abortion counselors are trained to make women feel guilty about not having an abortion. Every day, young girls are made to feel that they are doing their unborn babies a favor by having an abortion. Some are even told that their desire to keep their baby is “selfish”; they are told that only by submitting to an abortion will they be acting with maturity and taking “responsibility” for their lives.

In today’s society, the pressures to abort are so great that all of us should truly admire the young single women who are strong enough to stand up against those who want them to abort and say “No.” It’s not easy to take such a stand. It’s not easy to face the judgments of others. It’s not easy to be a single mother, and it’s not easy to give a child you love into the hands of adopting parents. We really need to admire the courage of these young women.

And on the other hand, we really need to refrain from judging those whose courage failed them. Haven’t we, too, lost our courage at times, especially at the worst of times?

We must also have the greatest of empathy and compassion for those who have chosen abortion, or been involved in abortions in any more distant way, because the impact of abortion on a person’s life can be truly devastating. These women and men must live with the memory of a child they have never been able to hold. They suffer from feelings of self-doubt, lowered self-esteem, and grief. They may be their own most fierce condemners, often doubting even God’s ability to forgive them. The emotional pain of those who have had abortions can be extremely intense, and it can cause all kinds of disruptions in a person’s life.

In our example of Tracy, her negative reaction began immediately after her abortion. In this, her case is actually unusual, since most women don’t begin to confront their post-abortion feelings for an average of five years or more after their abortion. Most women are able to push down their negative feelings, hide them, or deny them for quite a long time.

But in Tracy’s case, she immediately experienced a tremendous amount of self-loathing. To her, there was never any doubt that what she had aborted was her child, a child she wanted. She simply couldn’t see how she could live with herself after what she had done. So two days after her abortion, Tracy took her father’s gun out of its case and held it to her mouth to commit suicide. Fortunately, she heard her father come home for lunch, and she couldn’t bring herself to pull the trigger while he was in the house. So instead, she went upstairs and had lunch with him, and by the time he left, she was trembling with so much fear she couldn’t do it again. It was then that she came upon the idea of trying to make up for the abortion by tricking her boyfriend into making her pregnant again.

This desire for replacement pregnancies to make up for an abortion is very common. Approximately one in three women who have had an abortion tries to become pregnant again specifically to replace the child they lost in their abortion. About 18 percent of women who abort actually become pregnant within one year of their abortion. But many times, they face the same pressures to abort that they did the first time, and so many end up having another abortion, or even a third or a fourth. For some women, repeat abortions can become a form of self-punishment. Each time they abort, they are hurting themselves and trying to harden themselves to the pain of the first.

For other women, repeat pregnancies and repeat abortions are like a reenactment of what they suffered before. Each time, they hope on some level to break free of the cycle, and sometimes they do, but sometimes they don’t.

So we must understand that, when women have more than one abortion, it does not mean that they were not bothered by their first abortion. It probably means exactly the opposite. It means that their first abortion has left them so psychologically disturbed that they can’t help but get into situations where they face another abortion decision. So even when a woman has had more than one abortion, we must not judge her. We must not make assumptions about her culpability for what she has done. God alone can judge her guilt.

In our dealings with those who have been involved in abortion–whether in one or thousands of abortions, as in the case of an abortion provider–we need to be generous in offering them our sympathy, understanding, and charity. We must do this because all of them, on one level or another, have been deeply bruised and battered by their abortions. By judging them harshly, we are putting up walls between them and the Church; we are driving them away from the God of Judgment instead of toward the God of Forgiveness.

If we truly desire to transform the world, then we must begin by replacing judgmentalism with charity. We must work to relieve these women and men of the shame which makes them afraid to seek reconciliation in Christ. We must be people who can listen to the words “I’ve had an abortion” and react, not with horror, but with compassion.

To do this, we must first transform our own hearts. We must fully understand that the choice to abort is one which is filled with great doubts and pain, and those who make it are driven by fears and confusion which will maintain a hold on them for years, decades, or even a lifetime.

Instead of condemnation, we need always and everywhere to offer hope to all those who have ever been involved in an abortion. We must offer them the hope that we will be understanding, not condemning. And even more importantly, we need to lead and support them in the hope that, by turning themselves over to the loving mercy of God, they can and will be fully healed and even transformed into the champions of life that God wants them to be.

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Originally published in The Jericho Plan: Breaking Down the Walls Which Prevent Post-Abortion Healing,by David C. Reardon (Acorn Books, Springfield, IL.) Copyright 1996, David C. Reardon.

One of three sermons on abortion and healing: Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged || The Devil’s Bargain || Miracles Never End

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