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As a pastor, I am often asked what the Bible teaches about some controversial moral issue. Occasionally, if I give an answer my questioners don’t like, they follow up with another question: Who are you to judge? It’s a good question, and I think I’ve got a pretty good answer. 

The who-are-you-to-judge question is usually rhetorical. My questioners aren’t inquiring into my spiritual, moral, or intellectual credentials to state an opinion on the matter. Instead, they’re hurling an accusation. “Who are you to judge?” really means “You are in no position to judge!” 

Regardless of my questioners’ rhetorical intent, I answer the question straight. Who am I to judge? A reasonably intelligent human being who knows the difference between principles and preferences. 

When it comes to moral principles, all of us should exercise proper judgment, discerning between right and wrong and choosing to do right. Morally principled people don’t dishonor their parents, don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t offer perjured testimony, and don’t covet other people’s stuff, as we learn in the second half of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20.12-17). 

When it comes to personal preferences, however, all of us should exercise restraint, recognizing that on any number of issues, people can make different but equally valid choices. Romans 12.2-4 offers an example of the Christian’s freedom in matters of personal preference. 

One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. 

For Paul, and for the Bible generally, it is a moral principle that we not judge people who disagree with us on personal preferences. Such judgmentalism is out of place. People are accountable to God for their personal preferences, not you or me. If you’re a vegetarian, don’t hassle me because I eat meat. (Jonah Goldberg once quipped, “If God didn’t want us to eat cows, he wouldn’t have made them out of steak.”) And by the same token, I won’t think you’re weird because you eat tofu. As Paul points out, whether we eat meat or veggies is between God and us, not you and me. So don’t judge! 

Unfortunately, our culture tends to conflate moral principles and personal preferences, especially when it comes to sex. When Woody Allen left his longtime girlfriend Mia Farrow in order to take up with her adopted daughter Soon-yi Previn, he justified his quasi-incestuous choice by saying, “The heart wants what it wants.” If he had murdered Mia Farrow, do you think anyone would’ve taken that as a reasonable explanation? 

When it comes to moral principles, use good judgment. But when it comes to personal preferences, the best judgment is not to judge at all.