All human knowledge is embodied knowledge. Discrete monads of “knowledge” do not sit in our brains like so many marbles in a can. We are creatures fashioned from the dust of the ground, and this means that God has created us to know with our bodies.
This prevents us from taking refuge in that old gnostic trick where we dismiss things we have said, done, put on, watched, smoked, etc. as so many superficial irrelevancies, while deep within resides the “real me.” The “real me” likes to hide out in the inner recesses in much the way outlaws used to head for Jackson Hole to get away from an unreasonable sheriff.
We recoil from the idea that the “real me” is right there on the surface — where everybody can see it. So we quote what Jesus said, “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment” (John 7:24). And didn’t God say to Samuel that man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart? You betcher.
But these are cautions against snap judgments, clumsy judgments, boneheaded judgments, judgments made according to a false and carnal standard. We are creatures, which means that the only judgments we can make are judgments on the basis of surface appearances. Of course it would not be prudent or wise to meet someone and immediately make a decision about their honesty based on the number and distribution of their freckles. But the problem with this kind of judgment is not that you are making a surface judgment but rather that you were not taking enough of the surface into account. If you were to open a book, look at the first three verbs, and slam the book shut indignantly, the problem with this judgment is not the “reading.” It is that you have not been reading enough.
This is why the Bible urges us to imitate, evaluate, discern, and judge on the basis of our lives, not on the basis of our interior mysteries that no one else has access to. That is God’s department, and He will do it. But even this does not take us away from the importance of surface judgments. For God, everything is laid bare — it is all on the surface.
So we are not to make judgments based on irrational or insane collections of surface data. “He was born in Baltimore and his mother is Irish. I hate him.” Rather, we are to consider the course of someone’s life, take the broader context into account, and determine accordingly. This would include manners, grooming, how they drive, how they eat pizza, the books they read, the movies they watch, how many quarrels they get into with their customers, their favorite band, what and how they drink, how they talk with their wife and kids, how they keep their yard up, their diligence in attending worship, their faithfulness in paying bills, and so on. This does not mean that everyone in the Christian community is required to do all these things identically in some kind of lockstep way — that would be a unitarian surface, and we are trintarians. But all these things should be done differently, to the extent they are done differently, in deep harmony.
One of the assumptions of modernity (and which the postmodern spirit has carried on uncritically) is that the “real me” resides deep down inside, the marble in the can. In these postmodern times, we decorate the can differently than we used to, but inside the can the polished marbles of personal identity are still safe and secure, hidden away from the censorious.
Now I know that some will think that I am grossly misrepresenting the postmodern spirit here, which claims, as I have above, that knowledge is always embodied. Where do I get off, saying that the postmodern spirit (street version) is just hyper-modernism. Try this thought experiment (it would be bad manners in the extreme to try it out loud). Judge someone later today, and when you do, take their tattoo and purple hair into account. Mention this along with other unsavory characteristics. The response from them will be immediate and outraged. “You don’t know the real me! You bigot!” To which you may reply, “Of course, I do. The real you is tattooed and has purple hair.”