I posted this on Facebook:
All Christians should take a shot at reading the Gospels. They're really quite enlightening. Some may be surprised to read that the Jesus guy they are always referring to never once condoned hate, judgment of others or violence in any form. In fact, rumor has it He was kind of against all of those things...
This was received favorably by most of my friends, both religious and non-religious. I had posted it as a reaction to some moron in the news pulling some kind of Westboro Baptist Church nonsense.
Then, I posted, on Monday, about Game of Thrones -- about how I was tired of the show and books and that it had started to wear thin with me because (among numerous other things) I stopped caring about a character who was, to me, heinous and unlikable.
I shared the link on Facebook and some agreed and some did not agree with my assessment of the show, which is to be expected (and encouraged). But one of my friends pointed out that, in her opinion, what I said about the character in the show (about his being heinous and, therefore, unworthy of my continuing attention) contradicted my previous Facebook post against being judgmental.
Did it, I wonder? Maybe. Maybe not, depending on the unraveling of semantics. (By the way, to a guy with a linguistics minor, "semantics" are not, as they seem to be to some others, trivialities -- they are important, fine shades of meaning.)
To me, there are two semantic issues here: 1) I think that being "judgmental" and being "critical" are two different things; 2) At a certain point, calling a person heinous for his actions ceases to be "judgmental" and turns into pointing out the way things are. Some things, after all, are inexcusable and should (to me) cause some kind of lifelong damage to a person's reputation.
Point the first:
