Questions of Justice and Judgment

In late January, I traveled to the University of Arizona with a Christian pro-life organization called Justice For All. Our goal was to make abortion unthinkable by engaging students in dialogue about the issue of abortion. I spoke with multiple students throughout the week, each conversation holding its own challenges and discoveries. The following is a retelling of one of my favorite conversations.

On the second day of the Exhibit at University of Arizona, I stood at the Free Speech Board reading people’s comments. Alongside me stood a tall young woman (Who, for the sake of this post, I'll call Amanda) with shoulder length brown hair. She appeared a bit frustrated. I turned to her with the question, “what do you think about this exhibit?”
In a tone of frustration, she replied, “Well, abortion should be a woman’s choice.” “What exactly do you mean by that?” I asked.
Our discussion launched from there. We proceeded to dialogue about the humanity of the unborn and the moral implications of taking an innocent human life. She grew less and less frustrated as we talked, even conceding that I made some good points.

Eventually Amanda stated that she herself would not get an abortion, but that there was no way we could tell other people what to do about the issue. “Why not?” I wondered. “Because everyone has to decide for themselves,” she explained, “and it’s judgmental to say someone else is wrong.”
“Really? Explain more of what you mean by that,”
“I just mean that, we can’t really know what’s right and wrong, so each person has to make that decision for himself.”

From there we proceeded to talk about what it means for people to choose what they believe, what is truth, and how do our beliefs about it affects our lives. We agreed that people are free to choose what they believe. After discussing for awhile, we concluded that this choice itself does not validate the truth of the belief, but that we have tools for discerning true beliefs: reason, experience, even revelation. “It’s like these things are measuring sticks,” I said, “and we can hold our ideas up to them to see if they measure up. If an idea falls short, we’re free to discard it.” In light of this, we discussed what it meant to be judgmental. I posed the example: “If my brother believes it’s reality that cocaine is good for him, that would a bad idea, right?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s probably going to make bad choices based on this bad idea?”
“Of course.”
“And these choices would have bad consequences in his life, wouldn’t they?”
“Yes.”
“So, what I’m getting at is this: in that situation, if I were to talk to my brother and give him some reasons why his idea was wrong and he should change his mind, would that be caring, or would it be judgmental?”
“It would be caring…”

At this point in the conversation, Amanda brought up the concern underling her opinions about judgment. “I guess I’m mostly upset about the way that the church judges,” she said, “my mom went to Catholic school, and the nuns were awful.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I responded, “I agree that the church is often guilty of judging. I’m an evangelical Christian, so this is an issue very close to my heart.”

I was becoming aware of the Holy Spirit’s guidance in our conversation, and observed that
Amanda's countenance and demeanor began to change. Our conversation about the church flowed into a conversation about the gospel and the love of God. We discussed how judging another person means holding them to a standard without showing them love. Amanda listened attentively as I shared that God’s standard is high, but he has given us the ultimate love by sending Jesus to die for our salvation. Jesus’ death and resurrection make a way for us to meet God’s standard. Seemingly surprised by the message I was communicating, Amanda listened attentively as one who was hearing something for the first time. Surely she’d heard of Christianity before, but perhaps she’d never heard of God’s love. Before we parted ways, she thanked me more than once for talking with her. I could tell that she was thinking about our conversation, and the smile on her face as she turned to leave expressed a sort of joy that caught me off guard. I had an inkling that the Holy Spirit was at work in her heart...