“Barnabas wanted to take John Mark with them; but Paul judged that

the man who had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not gone

 on to share in their work was not the man to take with them now”

(Acts 15:37-38)

Saint Paul was rough on young John Mark. He sized him up as a quitter and scratched his name from the missionary team, even though this broke permanently the beautiful partnership of Paul and Barnabas. Some have seen this harsh character judgment of John Mark by Saint Paul as a fatal flaw in Paul’s personality. They say Paul should have remembered Christ’s admoni­tion, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”

This raises the question for all of us of the ethical nature of our character judgments. Sometimes we hear it said as a compliment of someone we know, “You’ll never hear him say an unkind or critical thing about anyone.” Is this ability to refrain from critical judgement a hallmark of a Christian? Is the person most to be admired among us the one who lives by the adage, See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil?

Yet practicality demands that choices be made between competing personnel. Programs languish when inefficient people are not removed from places of responsibility. Wasn’t this what Paul was doing with reference to John Mark? On the first missionary journey the young man quit after the first stage of operations and went home. Why? The record does not say. There have been many guesses as to his reasons or excuses: that he was young, inexperienced, and grew tired early; that he had conscientious scruples against taking the gospel to the gentiles; that he_. got sick, was perhaps bitten by a mosquito in the lowlands of Cyprus and developed malarial chills and fever when the missionary party reached the higher altitudes of the Asia Minor mainland. Why he quit, we don’t know. That he did quit, we are sure. And we do know that from this point on, in the missionary expansion of the Church, Paul became the dominant leader, not only in shaping the plan for the geographical spread, but also in shaping the organizational structure and the theological framework of the early Church, and that Paul made the character judgment that branded Mark a quitter and removed him from the Christian mission.

Whatever Jesus may have meant by his admonition, “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” the gospel record presents the Master in the act of making repeated judgments on character. He called the Pharisees “hypocrites,” “blind guides,” insincere paraders and posturers of a virtue they did not really possess.

Jesus told a parable in which he represented God as judging a rich man, calling him a “fool” for living his life to collect wealth and not being rich in spiritual values. And the moral Jesus drew from the parable was that men should make the same character judgments on themselves and others lest they gain the whole world and lose their own souls.

Character judgments must be made all the time by every person — for we are moral creatures. We have our standards — low or high, good or bad — for all things, for buying a suit, for shopping for groceries, for casting our ballots, for advising and admonishing our children.

The question is not, should I, as a Christian, make character judgments? For the answer is apparent that I, as a moral creature, can never refrain from making character judgments. The crucial question is, on what basis should I, as a Christian, make character judgments? What must be my frame of reference, my yardstick, by which I make character judgments?

Gilbert Stuart, the early American portrait painter, on seeing for the first time the face and features of the crafty European statesman Talleyrand, is reputed to have remarked, “If that man is not a scoundrel, God Almighty does not write a legible hand.” Stuart, judging by his understanding of what God expects in man and reading the features of Talleyrand’s face as only a portrait painter can read the emotions and principles of character in that one’s soul, made his character judgment of the man.

In a radio broadcast to the British people during the darkest days of the Battle of Britain, William Temple, the archbishop of Canterbury, reviewed the evils perpetrated by their Nazi enemies: the firebombing of their English cities, the enforced slave labor of the German concentration camps, the mass murders of Jewish men, women, and children. Then Temple cut to the heart of that monumental wickedness by saying, “The most horrible thing about our Nazi enemies is, not just that they do these atrocious things, but that they believe it is right that they should do these things.”

Friday’s Commercial Appeal story on the Memphis State confrontation between black students and the university administration quoted one student as expressing this sentiment: “Stop thinking about what is right or wrong or what is appropriate — but just do it, whatever it is, to achieve our demands.”

This is the point at which all hell breaks loose on a campus, in a nation, in a family, in a human personality — when the basis of character judgment is not firmly fixed in what God has revealed he wants of men.

The sacred writings of Holy Scripture make crystal clear that the hallmark for Christian character judgment has two features. First, the frame of reference is Jesus Christ. His character, his personality qualities remain the standard by which we are to judge ourselves and others.

If some may think Saint Paul was hard on John Mark and others in passing judgment, let it be noted that he was even sterner with himself. Often he referred to himself as the chief of sinners. He wrote the Philippians that he did not count himself to have attained what he ought to be, but “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” And to the Romans Paul wrote that God’s intention for all men is that they each one become like Christ. Listen: “For God knew his own before ever they were, and also ordained that they should be shaped to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the eldest among a large family of brothers” (Romans 8:29).

1. S. Lewis in hisScrewtape Letters,that famous imaginary correspon­dence between a senior and a junior devil on the subject of temptation and the opposing war aims of these spiritual forces of darkness and light, has Screwtape pen these significant lines:

[The Enemy] really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself — creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We [demons] want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to him but still distinct.

The first hallmark of Christian character judgment is that the standard is Christ: “The world, life, and death, the present and the future, all of them belong to you — yet you belong to Christ, and Christ to God” (I Cor. 3:23).

The second hallmark of Christian character judgment is that it is always made with a view, not to condemnation and destruction, but to redemption and salvation. The tone of the voice, the look in the eye when a character judgment is made make all the difference in the world in the result of a given judgment. Then the revelation is made of our motives in passing judgment — whether we are judging to cut someone down to a smaller size, or to prove how excellent or right we think we are, or to justify our actions in the sight of others when our consciences can’t justify us, or, as Jesus always made character judgments, with a view to reformation of character and salvation of souls.

When the woman taken in adultery was brought to Jesus for judgment, he did not condemn her, not because there was nothing to condemn, for there was plenty to condemn, but because there was no more need for condemning since the woman herself had already given the most damning condemnation of such behavior in the highest court of human appeals — her own conscience. Jesus’ word to her was, “Go, and sin no more.”

Need we be reminded that character judgments are not just negative, critical judgments — especially Christian character judgments? Jesus was always looking for something praiseworthy in human nature, even though it be a wee, faint glimmer of good, and reacting positively to that. About a Roman centurion Jesus said, “I haven’t found such faith in all the Holy Land among all God’s chosen people as this so-called pagan has.”

Once Robert Louis Stevenson was asked by a friend about his literary labors and successes, “Is fame all that it is cracked up to be?” “Yes,” replied Stevenson, “it is when I see my mother’s eyes.”

There is character judgment that is positive as well as negative, en­couraging as well as discouraging, and we are all called to exercise and express it. For failure at this point has far-reaching influence, not only on the developing character of our family and friends, but even on world history.

Arnold Toynbee, after a lifelong study of the history of the world, wrote: “My own view of history is that human beings do have genuine freedom to make their own choices. Our destiny is not pre-determined for us; we determine it for ourselves. If we crash, it will be because we have chosen death and evil when we were free to choose life and good. The three wars and the rising tide of mutual hatred make me wonder whether we are not going to wreck ourselves, as our predecessors wrecked themselves a number of times — as I see the pattern of the past.”

The more confused and disturbed the times, the greater the demand for men and women of integrity. In an age of permissiveness, how precious those characters whose consciences cannot be seduced by any siren song. God’s standard for the characters of the men and women he needs today remains the same — Jesus Christ. We must be concise and consistent, courageous and compassionate, in our character judgments of ourselves and others, for from the human point of view, in the performance of this solemn, Christian duty lies the hope of mankind.