We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. I am the oppressor of the person I condemn, not his friend and fellow-sufferer. — C. G. Jung
Both C. G. Jung and Jesus of Nazareth advocated non-judgment as a pathway to empathy. For Jesus, it was a willingness to consider the log in one’s own eye, rather than the speck of dust in another’s. For Jung, it was a willingness to see the “lowly side” of one’s own nature. Judgment, for Jung, is a projection of one’s own “shadow.”
If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures. (CW 7, par. 439)
For Jung, judgment and condemnation are oppressive and interfere with feeling empathy. “Unprejudiced objectivity” enables a respect for facts and the individual who suffers from them.
Feeling comes only through unprejudiced objectivity. This sounds almost like a scientific precept, and it could be confused with a purely intellectual, abstract attitude of mind. But what I mean is something quite different. It is a human quality — a kind of deep respect for the facts, for the man who suffers from them, and for the riddle of such a man’s life. (CW 11; par. 519)
Unprejudiced objectivity is made possible by the individual who has accepted himself — both the successful attributes of the ego/persona identity and those less acceptable dispositions lurking behind the curtain of full consciousness.
Jesus said simply, “Judge not,” for we are often unfavorably influenced by our own unacknowledged fralties.
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the log in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a log in your own eye? First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7.3–5)
Jung knew that this attitude of unprejudiced objectivity also arises from the more spiritualized transcendent view that supersedes the more self-righteous ego/persona attitude. It is an expansive attitude that sees the larger context of events, and acknowledges that “called or not called, God is present.”
The truly religious person has this attitude. He knows that God has brought all sorts of strange and inconceivable things to pass and seeks in the more curious ways to enter a man’s heart. He therefore senses in everything the unseen presence of the divine will. This is what I mean by “unprejudiced objectivity.” (CW 11; 519)
Condemnation oppresses, both the individual condemning and the one condemned. To condemn others oppresses them, but it also oppresses oneself — for the condemnation has fortified the resistance to acknowledging one’s own shadow attributes. The less savory attributes unaccepted within oneself often get projected onto others as judgment and condemnation. We are bound to condemn and judge others as long as we fail to accept ourselves — to acknowledge the log in our own eyes.
Jesus was advising unprejudiced objectivity when he answered Peter’s question, “How often shall I forgive? Seven times?” Jesus responded: “Not seven, but seventy times seven,” or in other words, unceasingly.
Condemnation is a barrier to the self-reflective acknowledgement that our own inner lives have included many “strange and inconceivable things” and that the the “unseen presence of the divine will” is forever active in the sometimes puzzling pursuit of fortifying our enduring souls.
J. G. Johnston is author of Jung’s Indispensable Compass — Navigating the Dynamics of Psychological Types, and The Way — The Religion of Jesus Before Christianity. He is co-founder of Life Atlas — a website that assists people in living lives they wer born to live.