Who are You to Judge Another Man's Servant?

As a kid, I played a board game called Clue, which I suspect many of you have also played. One thing I learned from Clue is that pretty much any tool can also make a decent weapon: a wrench, a candlestick, a length of rope. If you missed out on playing Clue, you probably watched enough “Law and Order” to get the same lesson. Just about anything in a toolbox can be used to kill.

One of the great spiritual tools of Orthodox Christianity is fasting. It is a tool that we are encouraged to use to adjust our sense of perspective, to increase our powers of concentration, to amplify our prayer life, to ratchet up our self-discipline. It is a great tool, and one of the most precious legacies of the Orthodox tradition.

But like any tool, fasting can be used as a weapon. This happens when the one who fasts stops worrying about his own plate and starts thinking about what is on someone else’s. When this happens, all the benefit of fasting disappears. Fasting mixed with judgmentalism is like the wrong tool for the job: like a screwdriver that strips every screw-head, like a hammer that drives every nail in crooked, like a wrench that breaks every bolt. Fasting with judgmentalism does more harm than good.

For this reason, the Church assigns the words of Saint Paul in the Epistle reading of Forgiveness Sunday from Romans 14: “Who are you to judge another man’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls.” We hear these words just hours before we begin the Great and Holy Forty Days of Lent. The meaning is crystal clear: the only person whose diet you need to concern yourself with is your own. If you criticize someone else’s fasting—or lack of fasting, as it appears to your eyes—then it is time to reach for the dental floss. Because you have some meat stuck in your front teeth: the flesh of your brother or sister in Christ. Saint Paul says in Galatians 5, “If you bite and devour one another”—through judgmental words, that is—“take heed so that you do not consume one another.” Criticism is cannibalism. And whatever your fasting rule is for Lent, it does not allow you to consume your fellow man.

If a person fasts with any degree of strictness, he can often experience discomfort: weakness, tiredness, maybe dizziness, stomach pain, and achiness. Some people experience these things all the time—not from fasting, but from digestive problems, heart conditions, hormonal issues, and so on. How do you know that the person whose lack of fasting you find scandalous might not be suffering from some condition like that? And do you wish for him, that on top of his constant and unremitting health problems, that he add even greater weakness or pain to his life? The Church, in her mercy, does not. Who are you to have a say in the matter?

In the spiritual toolbox of Orthodox Christianity, fasting is indeed one of the most useful practices we find. But it can also be one of the deadliest weapons. With it, we kill our brother or sister through contempt, as the Lord says in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:21-22). With the weapon of judgmentalism, we destroy our own spiritual lives with the poison of pride.

This Lent, let your fasting be a tool and not a weapon. Let it teach you not to judge others—not only about their dietary choices—but all those other choices, for which you don’t know the reasons or the backstory.

If you are inclined to judge another one of God’s servants, then get a clue from Saint Paul … Who are you to judge another man’s servant?