I think we Christians have a really tough time with Jesus and His stance on judgment. When we are on the bad end of judgment, we remind people that they shouldn’t judge us. And yet, we tend to do a lot of judging of others. Jesus never said that we cannot make judgments about others; He Himself did a lot of judging and gave His disciples the right to judge others concerning sin. In fact, in Matthew 18 Jesus gives them a process to remove people from the church if they have sinned and are unrepentant. And the Apostle Paul repeatedly gives the churches he wrote to directions about who was or was not welcome. It would be ridiculous to say that we are not allowed to assess situations that might be dangerous and make a judgment call about what we need to do about them.
What Jesus did say was, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.” (Luke 6) Balanced with His directions about how to live, Jesus seems to be giving us a choice: we are free to make judgments about others, but those judgments will come back to us. It is a call to not be a hypocrite; to consider the entire story before deciding someone’s fate, at least in our opinion. Be careful how we live and treat others, because we will be treated the same way.
I think that Jesus not only understood how we work, He also understood that our judgment of others comes naturally, the same as our ability to overlook our own flaws. I don’t think He ever would have agreed to our not stepping in when someone is being hurt; Jesus always stood on the side of the oppressed. What I think He understood is that no person lives a perfect life, so if we want to pretend that we do, we need to be ready for Him to do a life review of each one of us. Like the old blues song tells us, “Before you ‘cuse me, take a look at yourself.” How would things shake out if, before we judged another as unworthy, we considered our own past? Every lie we told – every commandment we broke – every bad thought we had; how differently would we view others if we considered our own pasts first? He didn’t say that we could judge other if we had learned from our mistakes; in fact, He told us to take the log our of own eyes before we attempted to help others with the speck in theirs. Judgment like that is a gift to help others, not condemn them. Judgment isn’t a punishment; it’s a recognition of our own sinfulness and a call to serve others.
That person in the rainbow shirt – that family without a home – that poor kid with nothing – every person has a back story. We are not defined by our mistakes and our failures; we are still children of God who are worthy of love and respect. Before we agree with rules and regulations that limit the rights of others, consider how much our lives might be different if others had done the same to us. The Golden Rule still applies. If we believe God has forgiven us, we must forgive others; it isn’t a choice. The command to love one another isn’t limited to the people who are like us; it means everyone.
Prayer – Holy God, forgetting where we came from or what we have done doesn’t give us the right to judge others. In fact, it forces us to take a moment and consider other people’s lives and offer our help. Give us the wisdom to do just that. Amen.
Today’s art is “Forgiveness” by Jennifer Noseworthy.