Don't Judge Me

"Don't Judge Me", together with "I'm not Judging" is a phrase I am hearing more and more often, both in Christian and in secular circles. Now I think I get what people are trying to communicate and I suspect (please correct me if I am wrong in your case) that mostly "don't judge me" means "don't think badly of me". Which is a perfectly legitimate sentiment though it does seem to suggest that the speaker already thinks poorly of his own actions or opinions. What worries me is the fact that the two statements are being used interchangeably and I can't think of many reasons why that should be.

There may be an assumption that all judgement is negative. Which is odd, but no more so than many of the unreflected ideas we carry around most of the time. Of course some judgement can positive; even in popular culture we see judges giving encouraging reviews in all sorts of competition. On this interpretation, the phrase would seem to mean something more like :"don't think badly of me for doing the thing that makes me think badly of myself". And that is an old if largely indefensible sentiment. If I think that I am a very bad person, that does not mean that I want anyone else to think of me as a very bad person but it does mean that I have no good reason to ask anyone to think of me as better than I believe myself to be.

 
Alternately, I suppose someone could use "don't judge me" in a more precise way, they may really and impossibly, asking the world not to come to any conclusions about their actions. Maybe I used "impossibly" in haste, there may be some of you out there who can see a friend or acquaintance doing or saying the sort of thing for which they say "don't judge me" and not come to any conclusions about whether or not their actions are good or bad.

 I can't.

Fair warning to everyone I know: I judge you. I judge you all the time. Granted, I have judged most of you as being pretty cool folks but nonetheless, I am judging you all the time and I'm not likely to stop.
 
And if that weren't enough, I happen to think that my proclivity for judging is a good thing. As a matter of fact I have a lot of trouble even imagining a world in which stuff just happened and people just did things and I didn't have any opinion as to whether it was all good or bad. And I think that I'm in pretty good (and bad) company here.

 
Regardless of it's quality, my company is certainly numerous. Sartre and Nietzsche, even Hume all assumed that we are forever judging things, although they disagree with each other - and certainly with my own view - as to what judgments we ought to reach. Heck Nietzsche, who called for a re-imagining of all values, still seemed to believe (one is never on firm ground trying to insist that Nietzsche definitely believed any particular thing) that the strong should judge (albeit according to their own systems of value); while Sartre lamented that we are doomed to invent standards of judgement for ourselves and then live our lives knowing that they were essentially arbitrary. On the other side of things, C.S. Lewis (you didn't think I could write my first post in months without mentioning him did you) certainly believed that we are naturally prone to judge thoughts actions and speech. He believed that we judge the world by the Tao, the basic way of all existence, that the Natural Law was real and that good and wise people judge their environments as either conforming to or diverging from it.

 
And I think this draws out the important distinction between "don't judge me" and "don't think badly of me". Ignoring the possibility of positive judgement and granting for a second that the judgement in question would be negative, the disastrous assumption people seem to be making is that judging someone's actions or words to be bad means loving them or valuing them less. But that does not follow at all. I am fully convinced that I think, say and do bad things all the time. Go ahead and judge me, it's fine, just don't love me any less, don't value me any less for it. No matter what you think, you probably won't think that I am half as bad a person as I know myself to be, and I still value myself a lot.
 
You see, I think we have forgotten (both Christians and seculars) that there is no contradiction in saying that people have infinite value and terrible moral character. The two are not interdependent. The problem is that when we conflate judgement and love we end up losing either the ability to acknowledge reality (it was very bad for Bob to gossip to me about Henry), or we end up hating and devaluing beings of infinite worth.

 
So when people ask me not to judge them I have a bit of trouble. I guess you could say I'm judging you for asking me not to judge you. I just love you, that's all.

The Third Love...

I was recently asked whether or not I have a “safe person” in my life. I do. In fact I have several – my wife, my siblings and parents, and quite a few of my friends.  As the conversation went on though I caught on to a couple of things: that “safe person” meant something more specific than “someone you feel safe around”, and that friend doesn’t mean much anymore.  As it turns out, “safe person” in this context meant what I mean when I deliberately use the word friend. Those of you who talk to me on a regular basis may have noticed that I prefer to use semi-synonymous titles like “buddy”, “acquaintance” or the rather awkward “a guy/woman I know” when talking about someone I like and have a relationship with but with whom I am not friends.

Let me say at the outset (granted the outset of my second paragraph) that this post will not get into the question of Facebook friending, it’s a fascinating topic but “beyond the scope of this paper”. I will also not be concerning myself with talking about whether men and women can be simply friends (though that may make a worthwhile topic for another post). What I do want to talk about it what friendship is supposed to be and what it isn’t, I probably won’t be able to restrain myself from a few thoughts on how things have gotten this way as well.

The Turkish word for “friend” is “arkadash” which essentially means “someone who has your back” or more literally “supports from behind”. In contrast, our word, according to my online etymology source, comes from a Proto-Germanic word “to love”.  And then the famous four loves of the Greeks included “phileo” which was essentially non-sexual love. If I have been at all correct in my previous posts in claiming that we are essentially social creatures, then friendship has to be something more profound than a long-term playmate.

 
And that begins to get at what I am looking for with friendships. When I think, talk or write about friendship I am looking for something that gets beyond “acquaintance whom I really enjoy being around”; I am looking for something to which words like “honor”, “loyalty”, “commitment” and “love” come naturally and for which words like “like”, “enjoy”, “pal” and “nice” feel too weak.

  Friendship is supposed to be a relationship you can rely on. Bill Cosby tells the story of a friend of his whom he could call at 2 am on a rainy night who would drive 70 miles to pick him up if he had a break down because that man is his friend. In college I had a professor who defined a friend as “that guy who would give you $500.00 just because you told him you need it.” C.S. Lewis suggests in The Four Loves that friendship grows out of a discovery that you share a fundamental passion with someone. Friendship happens when you have a connection with someone that first reminds you that you are not alone in the cosmos and then lets you know that someone else is on your side.  It is not an accident that soldiers form some of the deepest friendships we know of, theirs is an experience which demands and proves interdependence.

To my mind the archetypal friend would be Sam Gamgee, though there are others though out history and literature. David and Jonathan, Achilles and Patroclus, heck Bert and Ernie are all encouraging, moving friendships. There isn't much bad that can be said about Sam, but if there is any one trait he is most famous for it would have to be his loyalty. Sam had Frodo's back. End of story. To quote Shakespeare, Sam's love "carries it out, even to the edge of doom" Mt. Doom in Sam's case.

In fact hardship works this way. One of the great things about hardship (it has many bad aspects as well) is that it brings people together. I have written about interdependence in the past; hardship creates interdependence which, itself, creates one of the best opportunities for friendship. I would be fascinated to find out if there is a correlation between the experience of hardship and the occurrence of real friendship. I expect that there is a strong one and if there is, that would suggest one more reason for the depression and apathy which is so prevalent in our materialist society.  I certainly know that the last several years of financial difficulty have created and strengthened several of my friendships.

 
I want to end by clarifying something: I am not saying that there is anything wrong with being an acquaintance. As a matter of fact I think that at least part of the problem is that we have begun to take it as an insult to hear that someone we like is not a friend. It shouldn’t be. There is nothing wrong with being a buddy or an acquaintance. It is simply a different thing, not a worse thing.

 
So what do y’all think? Do you have friends? If not, have you felt the lack? If so, what is the benefit?