Editorial November 17, 1934 Issue

Christian Judgment

W. Stuart Booth

Because of the tendency of men to judge and criticize one another, the teachings and example of Christ Jesus on this subject find wide application and merit universal acceptance. In the eighth chapter of John's Gospel we find a striking and appealing pen picture portraying the wise and Christian manner in which Jesus dealt with certain scribes and Pharisees and a woman who, they claimed, had committed a grievous sin. After the Master's few words to her accusers, who departed, self-convicted of sin on their own part, Jesus told the woman that he did not condemn her and that she should go and sin no more, thereby verifying this encouraging and illuminating statement: "God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved."

Later, Christ Jesus, speaking to the Pharisees, made what must have seemed to them a paradoxical and puzzling remark when he said: "Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man. And yet if I judge, my judgment is true." Indeed, to understand this and other statements of the Master it is necessary to regard them from his point of view, that is, the spiritual. Because these scribes and Pharisees were concerned merely with the letter of the law and with rites and ritual, their eyes were shut and their ears were stopped to the true, the spiritual meaning of the Master's message and mission. Even the disciples did not grasp the correct and full import of what they saw and heard until after the day of Pentecost, because prior to that time they considered conditions largely from a purely personal standpoint. Not so did he who said with Christian compassion, "I judge no man."

Mary Baker Eddy has blessed mankind immeasurably by giving in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and in her other writings the spiritual explanation of Christ Jesus' precepts and promises, whereby all may both understand and prove them. The basis of her teachings is the correct concept of God as infinite Mind, Truth, and Love, the divine Principle, the creator and governor of man and the universe. Christian Science declares that man is the unfallen, pure, and perfect reflection or image of Mind, Truth, Love; that individual man is an individual consciousness, embodying or expressing the qualities of the Father-Mother, such as intelligence and power, grace and goodness, activity and order, happiness and health, justice and love. Man, therefore, is not a physical organism; he is not a combination of matter and mind, of good and evil.

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