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Good morning. One of the remarkable features of the law in our own country and some others is the jury system. 12 ordinary citizens, chosen at random, have to decide whether someone is guilty. What an awesome responsibility. The French artist Georges Rouault often painted criminals and prostitutes, and did so with an acute sense of pity. But he also painted judges, and brought the same sense of pathos to bear on them. As he once said “All the riches of the world could not make me take on the position of judge.” I suspect that he very much had in mind the saying of Jesus “Judge not”. (Matthew 7,1)It was this text which today’s guest producer particularly wanted to reflect on. Tolstoy took that saying “Judge not” so seriously that he thought the whole criminal system should be abolished. But Tolstoy, I think, was wrong. We cannot avoid making judgements, for example, about whether someone can be trusted to do a particular job, whether they are fit to drive, or whether on the evidence before us, they are guilty of the charge laid against them. But that is very different from saying about someone that they are evil or good. We do not know how limited a person’s choices might have been, or the heroic struggle they might have made against succumbing to temptation. We cannot weigh up how they compare with us, who might have greater freedom of choice and much weaker resolve. So Jesus said, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. For as you judge others, so will yourselves be judged.” Or, more vividly still “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye, with never a thought for the great plank in your own?” One of the thinkers I most admire, the American Reinhold Niebuhr, was quite clear about two things. In the world as it is we have to make difficult choices about the evils that are to be resisted. We cannot opt out. So he was active in getting the United States to join Britain in the fight against the Nazis. But he was equally clear, that we make such decisions from a limited, partial and flawed perspective, and we had to be aware of our own failings. This twofold emphasis is reflected in the kind of prayers he wrote at the time, for example “We pray for wicked and cruel men, whose arrogance reveals to us what the sin of our own hearts is like when it has conceived and brought forth its final fruit.” Or again, “We pray for ourselves who live in peace and quietness, that we may not regard our good fortune as proof of our virtue.” Not an easy balance to keep. To make discriminate judgements about what is right and wrong, and to actively oppose all that is hurtful to other people, whilst at the same time being aware that these are judgements made by a flawed human being, namely myself, and any hint of self-righteousness is totally out of place.