Of course I judge you.

You do it right back. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

The problem isn’t judging — we all do that instinctively, as an involuntary reaction to stimulus. You like this smell, you don’t like that one. You like the taste of this but not that. You despise practical jokes, or you find them hilarious. Some of that is hard-wired into your DNA, some of it is learned from experience, and some is mysterious — we’re all some bundle of these.

None of that matters. The question isn’t “do you judge”, because of course you do. And hardly anyone is more judgmental than those people who are constantly saying “don’t judge!” (which statement is, yes, a judgment. See what I mean?).

I realize that I will judge. What I don’t want to do is render a verdict.

The most famous injunction about judging comes from Jesus Christ, in the Sermon on the Mount, where he says, quoting from the King James Version:

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

Christ notably goes on to use the analogy of the mote and the beam — why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye — but the phrase everyone remembers is the first one: judge not. It has become a pretty standard phrase in English, and a cudgel with which to beat others about the head and shoulders — or, you know…