Fearing Judgment

December 28, 2010

Disclaimer: I write this post because I struggle with the teaching, not because I’ve conquered it.

This afternoon a friend told me about how the Christian members of his family ostracized one of their cousins from the family and family events because he is gay. This family led my friend to faith. He’d often used them as role models to help guide his path towards becoming the kind of person he wanted to be, but my friend was appalled and confused by their professed application of Christ’s teachings.

I hope that there’s more to the story. If there isn’t, then the issue is between them and God to sort it out. I bring it up as a glaring example of the easy way that evil can slip into the thoughts and actions of people that are working to follow the path that a higher power has laid out before them.

A less cringe-worthy example recently played out in churches across the world as the regular churchgoers looked down their noses at the “Christmas Christians” that filled the pews to overflowing. It’s the same act, just a matter of scale. I’m ashamed to say that I’ve been on both sides of that judgment.

Christ could not have been any clearer about His stance on humans judging humans. In Matthew 7:1, Jesus said, “Stop judging, that you may not be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.”

Again in Luke 6:37: “Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven.”

This simple, point-blank teaching is hard to follow on this side of Eden. The world can be a horrible place. The men and women in it do horrible things. We have the right and even the duty to stop oppressors from taking advantage of and injuring the weak. There are people who are so scarred by life and wrapped up in evil that they can never safely be released from prison.

Beyond the extremes, what is a sin in the eyes of one person can be an act of love in the eyes of another. How can a person of faith weigh that balance? Or what about in the case of a brain injury or serious mental illness when the person’s injured brain makes decisions that they never would have made when they were healthy.

The short answer is that it’s hard and we are going to get it wrong sometimes. The fuller answer is that we must be truly afraid of our urge to judge in the same manner that we fear our urges to kill, steal, or maim. The fact that it is easier to go through life without killing someone, than it is to going through life without judging others doesn’t change the burden that we bear to avoid judgment.

“[T]he measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.” The warning could not be any clearer.

We have to struggle to come to grip with the basic tenet that it is not our role to determine who is good or evil any more than it is our role to make the sun come up or the tides dance back and forth across a beach. Measuring the good deeds and sins of others is too difficult of a task. Thank God it is not a task that we’ve been given.