True judgment is the ability to arrive at correct conclusions. It calls for discernment, wisdom, intelligence, justice; but most of all, it calls for love. Christian Science shows that no right conclusions regarding individuals and circumstances can be reached without the healing balm of love. It is only when the desire to heal is uppermost in our hearts that we can properly evaluate characters or situations and in this way express true judgment, which is helpful and constructive. When love dominates our judgments, our desire is to awaken a trespasser in order that his mistakes may be corrected, rather than to needlessly expose and magnify them.
Prejudiced, bitter, scornful attitudes, being devoid of love, rob one of the ability to distinguish between good and evil. Such attitudes are destructive and do not engender the compassion that heals. It was such false judging that Christ Jesus warned against in his Sermon on the Mount when he said (Matt. 7:1, 2):"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged."
The Master was showing that our judgments judge us. Christian Science makes it clear that we are constantly judging ourselves by the decisions we reach concerning others. Often we exhibit blindness to qualities and actions derived from God, the one source of good. At other times we prove our actual union with God by our discernment of His manifestations of good. By our ability to discern good and the desire to find evidence of it, we are fitted to detect evil and to go about destroying it through Science. But a search for evil evidence to use against someone we consider a trespasser in order to discredit rather than to help him weakens our ability to correct and heal.
