The Interconnectedness of War and Judgement

What I started to write for today was interrupted by the news that the United States had attacked Iran – taking us more deeply into that conflict alongside Israel. My heart broke when I heard the news.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), who has been an outspoken critic of the current administration, said that following the briefing that the Senate received on the strikes, he concluded that there was “no imminent threat…to the United States” that justified this action and said that the peace talks that were underway a few weeks back (which were scuttled by Israel’s attacks) were our best hope for peace. Many others in Congress are questioning the legitimacy of the administration’s actions.

Whether you agree or disagree with the decision to attack (or maybe are somewhere in between), we know that war and violence only beget more war and violence. Pope Leo XIV posted just recently that “every member of the international community has a moral responsibility to stop the tragedy of war before it becomes an irreparable chasm. There are no ‘distant’ conflicts when human dignity is at stake.” I could not agree more. May we raise our voices, yet again, to say, “No!” to what is happening in our midst and work for a true peace that is built upon justice.

In the gospel today, Jesus has words that seem directly relevant to what we see happening right now. He tells his followers in Matthew 7, “Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you. Why do you notice the splinter in someone else’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?”

At the personal level, this gospel is an invitation to introspection and countering our seemingly incessant fault-finding with people around us. 

I don’t know about you, but I so easily slip into judgement of others.  They sometimes have to do very little to trigger a whole host of inner dialogue about them, their intentions, their inconsiderateness, etc. and they do not even need to be present to win! I can judge people I haven’t seen in years.

Generally, there’s a quick move from this process of judgement to objectification – whereby I call them a name in my head (or a body part, or a derogatory term). And once we have objectified someone, we no longer see them as a person – with thoughts, feelings, families, dreams and hopes – and can easily justify treating them as less than a person. The great john powell calls this process “othering” and sees it as a serious threat to civil society and global peace.

And that’s why Jesus takes such a hard stand on this. He knows the progression and he knows the stakes. He also knows that our harshness with others highly correlates with how harsh we are with ourselves. So when he says that the measure that we use for others is what will be measured out to us, he’s not talking about how God will punish us. He is just using good psychology to say that our inner and outer conversations are intimately linked. A person who is compassionate to themselves is very often compassionate with others. A person who lives with a lot of internal judgements does the same to everyone else.

Of course no one starts as judgemental. We internalize the judgements of others from our families and from the wider society, and this becomes a critical voice in our heads. This part of us then begins to narrate situations and judges our worthiness and the worthiness of others. Furthermore, it often operates in a binary system – good/bad, right/wrong, like/dislike, perfect/imperfect, etc. – that sorts ourselves and others into categories.

As my spiritual mentor, Richard Rohr, OFM, often says, “when you judge, you lose.”

At a collective level, however, we can also succumb to judgement and hypocrisy (I actually like that word because it gets to the heart of what we do when we judge – we pretend/play a part that we are separate or not like the other).

We’re seeing it right now with our action in Iran, for example.

If another nation preemptively bombed a sovereign nation for what they might do, what would we say? I am guessing that we would call those actions out, offer condemnation and maybe even consider sanctions against that aggressor country.

And yet our nation’s highest officials created a narrative that justified our actions. We always do. That’s what the judging mind does. It creates a story that justifies our position. It ignores our faults and culpability. It blames the other. And, ultimately, it is dangerous.

Obviously addressing our own judging mind is easier than changing the collective, but they are intimately linked.

Imagine if everyone in this country decided this week to really try to address their judgements and strive for a more compassionate and curious approach to themselves and each other. What kind of collective impact would this have? 

In the first reading for today from Genesis 12 (which I do not have time to elaborate on, but it’s a great reading…), Abram and Sarah are called by God to leave all that is known and familiar and set out for a foreign land. With nothing but a promise from God, they do so.

What if this week, we, too, leave what is personally known and familiar – our judgements of others, our criticisms, our closed-mindedness, our pettiness – and go to the foreign land of compassion, curiosity, connectedness and courage – trusting that God has something in store for us there.

And what if this week, we, collectively, leave behind our addiction to war, violence, chaos and and harm (all of which is rooted in judgement) and instead move toward patience, presence and perspective – halting the machinery of war and conflict.

What a wonderful world it could be.

Note: While I know that it can “feel” like there is little that we can do related to these global events, do not discount the importance of continuing to speak out, talk to elected representatives, participate in demonstrations/protests, pray and leverage whatever platforms you have to advocate for peace, justice, due process and democracy. We are in a critical time and need to take seriously our “moral obligation” (as Pope Leo said) to do all we can to stop the global tragedy of war unfolding before our eyes – let alone to address all of the other social ills that have emerged in the last 6 months.