Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Yes I am Judging You, No I am Not Apologizing
There is, perhaps, no verse in the Bible more abused than Matthew 7:1, "Do not judge, or you too will be judged." When Jesus spoke those words in the Sermon on the Mount, He was saying that we are not to set our personal preferences and convictions up as the barometer for good and evil. As finite men, we will be judged by the infinite and absolute authority of God. We are not to pass on to our fellow man pronouncements of justice based on what we do and do not like.
Somewhere along the line, the meaning of this verse became misconstrued. In our postmodern American society, we have the idea that we can create our own standard of morality and no one else has the right to impose upon it. And what better way to keep people from telling us we are wrong than spitting a Bible verse at them.
So many times, people who are not in anyway being judgmental, are written off as such because they are telling the truth. The truth is often offensive. It is more than offensive though, it is loving. If someone sees a person running towards the edge of a cliff, they will probably try and stop the person. It not because they do not like the person's shoes, or because they think running makes them look stupid. They are going to tell the person not to run towards the edge of the cliff because they will probably fall off and die. They are not imposing some arbitrary standard they have, they are trying to make the person see the of the reality of the situation: what they are doing will kill them.
If someone is doing something wrong, it is going to hurt them. If I tell them what they are doing is wrong, I am not trying to spoil their fun, I am trying to keep them from hurting themselves. There is a certain amount of judgment that does into telling someone that what they are doing is wrong. That judgment does come from knowing right and wrong. But that judgement also comes from being loving. And if being loving means being perceived as judgmental, then I am not going to apologize for judging someone any more than I would apologize for loving them.
Labels:
a loving God,
jottings,
living,
me
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