Yes. My cat does judge me. We all do it — everyday and day long. We use our judgment to decide the best course of action throughout the day. We weigh the information and facts that we have at our disposal and then act accordingly.
There is a fly in the ointment, so to speak, when it comes to judging people. The only information we have is their behavior and their words. We don’t know what they are really thinking nor their hearts. That’s why we are exhorted to be “slow to judge”.
People can lie with their words. Watch their behavior. People can say one thing but their behavior doesn’t match their words or their words don’t coincide with facts. We need to judge such situations so as to know how to proceed with such people.
What is important to know is we can judge a person’s behavior. It is blatantly obvious. What we can’t judge is a person’s eternal destination. Stealing from an elderly widow is bad behavior and earthly consequences are warranted. However, the time between the bad behavior and at the moment of final demise — there is time. We don’t have access to a person’s heart. This thief’s final destination? We don’t know.
This is the context of those famous words, “Judge not and you will not be judged.”
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