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.

A Late Night Lesson from a Screaming Baby

My daughters are only sixteen months and two and a half years old, yet I think they’ve already taught me more than I ever will be able to teach them. It’s not that I’m not trying. I know that teaching them about life, faith, and love is my biggest duty. It’s just that some of their lessons to me have been so powerful that I can’t help but doubt my ability to match them. This is one of those lessons.

The majority of my life has been spent making plans and working to complete them. From elementary school on through West Point and law school; my teachers taught me that you had to define your goals or you would never achieve them. My coaches said that those goals should be taped up on my mirror so I would see them each morning as I brushed my teeth and each night before I went to bed.

I dutifully taped up the goals and eventually achieved some of them. But time and time again my best-laid plans shattered upon the anvil of reality. The complex world swirled by and around my fixed goals. A military career ended by injury at the moment that my country needed me. A business career stymied by technical problems in the product we were bringing to market. A writing career stunted by the brutal realities of the evolving publishing industry. A law career crippled by the fact that I didn’t care enough about the end state of corporate legal battles to ever master the field.

Then tragedy struck, I was in the right position with the right skill set to make a bigger difference than I ever could have imagined. If I had succeeded at any of those other fields, then I would not have been ready when I was truly needed. If I hadn’t had tried and failed at so many random occupations, I would’t have had the diverse skill set necessary to weave my way though the military bureaucracy and legal pitfalls that needed to be overcome along the way.

I had to face the stark reality that I was put in all of those positions by a higher power. My plans were destined to fail before they’d even been concocted. It’s a humbling and terrifying feeling to understand that you’re a pawn in a larger game and that it is a game beyond your comprehension. As one of Dostoevsky’s characters said in The Brothers Karamazov, “since I can’t understand even (Euclidian Geometry)…, I can’t expect to understand about God.”

So much of the world doesn’t seem to make sense. How can we not help but question the greater plan. In a world where a father is killed by an IED on the other side of the world from his children… Where illness or abuse can inflict a child before they’ve even said their first word… Where a man can spend his whole life trying to build up a company only to have it dashed by a world economic collapse… Where people will blow themselves up in a marketplace crowded with their neighbors in an effort to please God…

How do you try to navigate through a world that complex and disastrous?

I received the answer from my two little girls.

I was not prepared for parenthood in general. I was even less prepared for the long nights spent trying to get an overtired baby to quit screaming and go to sleep. I read the books and followed their tricks: everything from setting a sleep schedule, to swaddling, to rocking them in the same room as a running clothes dryer.

Some of these tricks worked to a degree. But they didn’t change the fact that I spent a lot of time with screaming infants in my arms. The longer they stayed up, the madder they became. I felt their frustration at their inability to make themselves feel better. They would struggle to move this way, then that way, then this way again. None of their attempts to improve their plight helped.

I knew that they were just tired. That the only way for them to feel better was for them to go to sleep. I wished that there was someway for me to impart that to them, but their young minds couldn’t comprehend what was really going on.

Each night, they would struggle in my arms until they finally went to sleep. Then I would walk them over to the bassinet and lay them down at total peace. The exact peace that they had wanted all along. They just didn’t know what they had to do to get it.

One of those late nights, I realized that we are all in the same position with God. We don’t understand what role we are supposed to play in this world or what good things can come out of our failures and miseries. We struggle, fight, and rant to try and accomplish the objectives that we think are critical.

We rail against the situation and lose ourselves in doubts, but eventually we have to give ourselves over to the knowledge that there is a higher power and that higher power will eventually drag us kicking and screaming to where we are supposed to be.

Our job is to do our best not to be a complete disaster along the way. I still have a lot to learn before I figure that trick out.

A Fool's Fool: Stop Thinking and Swim

Early Spring 2001

I sat down in the dark surf and put on my freediving fins. My spear rolled with the wave against my waist. A full moon cast its shimmering light through the inky water.

“You ready?” Jimmy Davis asked.

We were on the beach just behind his backyard on Oahu’s north shore. I’d fallen in love with freediving over the course of the past two months. I’d SCUBA dived before, but it didn’t compare to the feeling of strapping on massive fins and going as deep and far as you lungs could take you. This was my first night dive.

I flipped on the dive light, said yes, and followed him into the Pacific. The first hundred yards of water was shallow. At points, we had to scramble over the sharp volcanic rocks that lined the bottom. Then the ocean opened up.

I wasn’t ready for how dark it was. Surrounded by salt water with nothing to guide my way but a four-inch diameter dive light. Black water pushed against the little stream of white. I couldn’t help but think of the tiger sharks that frequented the area.

I couldn’t see Jimmy’s light. I panicked and surfaced. Remembering the mantra of “never separate from your dive buddy.” He was twenty yards away. I swam in his direction.

Eventually, I got more comfortable in the water. Swimming along the bottom. Fish of all sizes darted back and forth through the lava rock and coral. A massive sea turtle lay in a sandy patch. I floated over the serene relic from the age of the dinosaurs. Feeling at one with the living planet as never before.

Jimmy and I separated three more times before finally separating for good. It wasn’t on purpose, but it wasn’t possible to explore the dark waters and keep track of each other at the same time.

I breathed the tropical air through the snorkel and then launched myself down through rocks below. Silver fish shimmered past my light. Octopus tentacles danced away from me. I could feel the water rush by my skin as the long fins propelled me through the depths.

My lungs began to ache, crying for more air. I arched my back and swam upward. The top of my head slammed into a lava rock. A mix of pain and terror sparked through my body. I raised the dive light. It illuminated a rocky ceiling above me. My lungs screamed for relief.

My mind scrambled to assess the situation. It was clear that I’d swum into an enclosed rock formation. I didn’t know if it was a tunnel that would open up or a cave that would dead end. I didn’t know deep I was in the formation and therefore if turning around and trying to swim out would mean certain death.

I quieted my mind and swam forward. Fighting the fear that would devour through the remaining oxygen in my system. My fins moved left, right, left pushing me through the rock formation.

Eventually the rock above me opened up and I launched myself toward the air. I broke the surface and gasped the air into my screaming lungs. After twenty or so breaths, I realized that I was alive and started laughing with joy.

After calming down, I went back down. I was careful to stay above the rock formations. I dove for another half hour, then began to swim back towards the twinkling lights of shore. I swam and I swam, but the lights only seemed to get further away.

I caught my breath and tried to figure out what was going on. It was only after I’d stopped completely that I felt the tug of the current, pulling me away from shore. I dropped down again and began to swim with all had, trying to free myself from the current.

I surfaced. The lights were even further than before. I was trapped. The way forward had nothing to offer. I had to swim parallel to the shore with the flow of the current, hoping to swim out of the current.

I swam for ten more minutes and then tried again for shore. Still stick, being pushed out further. It was time for a decision, Keep pushing ahead towards shore or drop my weight and begin to float with the current. From what I heard anyone stuck in the current had bought themselves a one way seventy or so mile trip to Maui. If you didn’t have the strength to swim into the Maui shore, then you were headed to the open ocean.

I filled my lungs with air and dropped down in the water. I kicked and prayed, kicked and prayed. I surfaced and then went down again. Over and over. Eventually, I felt the fins gaining traction in the water. I pulled the air in through the snorkel and kicked.

I don’t know how long I was in the current, but I broke free and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more beautiful sight than the flicking lights from shore growing closer and closer.

I learned two lessons that night. The first is that there is a thousand ways for a fool to die on dry land and ten thousand in the water. The second is that sometimes you have to just keep going, beyond fear and beyond reason. There’s always a way back to shore as long as you don’t lose yourself in the situation and give up.