Jesus On Judging Others and God-Pushing
Part 11 in series Hearing Jesus Again
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
July 26, 2008
When was the last time you felt blamed or condemned or looked down on by somebody? Your boss. A friend. A co-worker. An employee at a store where you were shopping. Your spouse. Some of you are stuck in jobs or marriages or friendships where this happens to you dozens of times a week. The Apostle Paul had a great phrase for this cycle of blame and condemnation and judging.
Galatians 5:14-15 (NIV)
14 The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself."
15 If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
Biting and devouring. Think of bites as those little snips of judgment and blame and condemnation that fall on you. As more and more of those snips come out of you, you begin to feel like you are being devoured – eaten alive. It drains the life out of you. It steals your joy. And it leaves you feeling like you want to do one thing, and that’s protect yourself. You just want to get away from the condemnation. It is at this point that work relationships and marriages and friendships often end. I have never once seen a couple where one of them said, “He criticized me yesterday for the first time and we’re here to make sure it doesn’t become a pattern.” By the time I see a couple, one or both of them are saying, “He/she is devouring me. I feel like I am being destroyed piece by piece and I can’t take it any more.”
Now let’s not go into this as victims! Each of us, in addition to being bitten and devoured, has also done our fair share of biting and devouring others! C’mon, we’ve all done it. We’ve all cast blame and passed judgment. None of us gets off the hook. Guys, we sometimes do it through the little jokes we tell about our wives. We make our little jokes, and laugh, and hope the old ball and chain doesn’t know how serious we are. Ladies, the eye-rolling and lip-pursing that goes on among some of you screams out, “You’re too stupid to live.” Whether we’re verbal or use body language to communicate judgment and condemnation, we’re all masters of it. In fact, just like with the other topics Jesus has handled – lust and anger and faithlessness and verbal manipulation, it’s hard to imagine being able to live in the world without it. Giving up judging and condemnation will not make sense unless we have been faithful and obedient in the other areas Jesus speaks about in his Sermon on the Mount.
From Dallas Willard:
If we are still dominated by anger, contempt, lusting…and so forth – the tender areas into which Jesus now moves will simply be incomprehensible to us. We must start at the point Jesus himself chose – the nature of true well-being or blessedness – and follow his order through the setting aside of anger, contempt, absorbing lust, manipulation, and payback, and on to the forsaking of dependence on reputation and material wealth. Then we will be ready for what comes next. For as the Master of knowledge, he here deals with personal and moral reality as it really is, and it really does have an order. We omit that order at our peril.
[But] could we successfully negotiate personal relations without letting people know that we disapprove of them and find them to be in the wrong?...
At least we need the choice of giving others a good dose of blame and condemnation when it seems appropriate, don’t we? We have great confidence in the power of condemnation to “straighten others out.” And if that fails, should we not at least make it clear that we are on the side of the right?
Let’s look at what Jesus said. Only five verses, but they pack a lot of power.
Matthew 7:1-5 (NIV)
1 "Do not judge, or you too will be judged.
2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
3 "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?
4 How can you say to your brother, ’Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?
5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Continuing with Dallas Willard:
… what is it, exactly, that we do when we condemn someone? When we condemn another we really communicate that he or she is, in some deep and possibly irredeemable way, bad – bad as a whole, and to be rejected. He or she is not acceptable. We sentence that person to exclusion. Surely we can learn to live well and happily without doing that.
I love that last line. Surely we can learn to live well and happily without doing that. Amen?! Sign me up, man.
In the passage we just looked at, in five succinct verses, Jesus shows us the all-too-human way that we usually deal with other people. We usually try to control people by blaming and condemning them for what they are doing. When we do this, we step outside God’s Kingdom at work among us – where God is in control – where God rules and is in charge and calls the shots – and we attempt to manage things on our own. If Jesus himself never tried to control others and manipulate them for his good and great purposes, why would we think it’s okay for us to do this, when our purposes are much less noble, and never as fully in the best interests of others as we might claim?
Remember that in God’s Kingdom, God calls the shots. All of us who are part of God’s kingdom have placed ourselves freely under God’s rule and are allowing him to be the Master of everything. We have determined that we are not good managers of our own lives and have seen in our experience how our lives go wrong again and again with our best efforts to engineer them. Because of this it only makes sense that we must abandon the practice of condemning and judging others. It has no place in a heart that assumes that God is in charge and has submitted fully to him. Having released our own lives into God’s hands, we are not to take up the lives of others, and assume that we are responsible for making them into good people, responsible for finding fault with them, responsible for finding out and then telling them what’s wrong with them, or even responsible for their salvation or spiritual progress. Do you see how doing this violates the kingdom heart Jesus is saying we need to be cultivating? How can we release our own lives into God’s hands and trust God to secure us and our future, but then not trust God to do the same with those around us? Either God can or cannot be trusted with human life and well-being. Either God will or will not be just and fair. Either God should or should not have the authority to direct a person’s affairs. If God can be trusted with human well-being, we don’t need to stand in judgment of others. God will take proper care of them. If God will be just and fair, then others are far better off in his hands than in ours. If God should have the authority to direct a person’s affairs, then we who have surrendered our own affairs to God because we did not deal properly with them should never presume to be managers of the affairs of others.
Back to the Willard line, Surely we can learn to live well and happily without doing that. Can you imagine this? Can you get a vision for what the world would be like if a portion of people in the world – maybe just Americans – no, even smaller, maybe just Christian Americans –no, let’s get right down to business here. Can you imagine what your life and the world would be like if all the Christians at Wildwind Community Church stopped all blaming and all condemning – TODAY. That means you would never again criticize, blame, or condemn a person – never again look down on someone or place yourself above him or her morally, spiritually, financially, physically, or in any other sense. For example, do Christians have any business using the term “white trash?” Think about it. What business do we have using this judgmental, critical, condemnatory, term? Seriously, can we be okay referring to other human beings as trash? Christians, surely we can learn to live well and happily without doing that. Let’s continue imagining. In a world without judging – that is, blaming and condemning – most of the deepest wounds you have suffered would not exist. Think about it – most of your most bitter wounds come from someone who judged you, criticized you, cast you out, wrote you off, condemned you, isolated you, and rejected you. In a world free of blame and condemnation, this could not happen. Indeed some of us have been so (de)formed by condemnation and blame in our past that we do not even know who we would be today without it. It has come to shape and define us.
Jesus envisions a better world, and can you dig the world he envisions? Jesus envisions a world where no one is ever again cast aside because of someone else’s judgmental, snotty attitude, where no one carries around a wound that was dealt to them with harsh words and attitudes – and where you are completely free from the bitter condemnation of others. Judging and condemning? Surely we can learn to live well and happily without doing that. I’ll say.
To be fair, we rarely intend the complete and total rejection Willard writes about when we disapprove of someone or correct them, but it requires great spiritual and personal maturity to correct a person without making them feel this massive rejection. Jesus talks about not removing a speck in someone else’s eye until we remove the log in our own. Who are the log removers? Who are those who can correct others? Paul writes:
Galatians 6:1 (AMP)
1 BRETHREN, IF any person is overtaken in misconduct or sin of any sort, you who are spiritual [who are responsive to and controlled by the Spirit] should set him right and restore and reinstate him, without any sense of superiority and with all gentleness, keeping an attentive eye on yourself, lest you should be tempted also.
So first, the occasion for correction must be sin. We do not correct others because we disagree with their political views or don’t like their parenting style or hate the music they prefer. If there is any lack of clarity about whether sin occurred, we should refrain from correcting.
Second, Paul writes that correction is to be done by those who are responsive to and controlled by the Holy Spirit. These people walk in a power that is wise and loving beyond what most of us will ever be. Correction must be left to them. Only a certain kind of life puts us into a position to “correct” others.
Third, the correcting to be done is not a matter of “straightening them out.” This is why great maturity and wisdom are required. The goal is not to set someone straight or fix them or give them a piece of our mind, or threatening what will happen if they don’t get it together. The goal must be restoration – bringing them back to where their growth in Christ can continue. That must be the only goal.
This disqualifies most people who would attempt to correct others. I always say that anyone who actually wishes to correct someone else has already shown they are not qualified. Correcting, done in a proper spirit, is humbling, painful, awkward, and done without the slightest desire to harm, embarrass, or in any way shame or demean the one corrected.
Finally, those who correct others go in an attitude of “there but by the grace of God go I.” They realize their humanness and vulnerability and that they are but a hair’s breadth and an opportunity away from doing the same thing or perhaps something even worse. They carry with them always a familiarity with their own weaknesses.
Now this thing Jesus says about removing the log in your own eye is very curious. What is the log, exactly? If you think about a person who has all the characteristics we just talked about – someone who waits to correct until clear sin has been committed; someone who is under the constant control and guidance of the Holy Spirit; who seeks always and only to restore; and who walks in the humility that comes from knowing their own tendency to sin – think about this person and you will see that the log Jesus talks about IS condemnation. The person who can correct and restore others is a person who has become the kind of person who does not condemn. When we condemn others, we cannot “see” them properly. We “see” them through the lens of our own disapproval, our own judgment, our own sense of who and how they ‘should’ be, our own anger, our own contempt. How can we help someone skillfully if we cannot “see” them clearly? We cannot.
So “getting the log out” of our eyes is not a matter of correcting something that is wrong in our life so we’ll be able to condemn people more effectively. Getting the log out is a matter of becoming the kind of person who has given up condemnation and judgment as ways of controlling other people.
Judging and condemnation are, like violence, part of toxic cycles. If you condemn someone who actually responds and changes in the way you want them to, chances are good the person you condemned was a spiritual giant already! Most of the time the person you judge and condemn will simply be deeply hurt, become angry, and respond to you in kind by condemning and hurting you. The cycle perpetuates itself. We stop violence not by running or retaliating, but by absorbing it into ourselves. We stop exploitation not by protesting and fighting, but by freely doing over and above in those areas where we are being exploited. In that way we do not perpetuate the already sick cycle. The same is true with condemnation. If we condemn someone, they condemn us back, then we condemn them in return and the race is on to see who can emotionally mangle the other first. That’s evil – it is UNGod – it is anti-Christ, if you will.
Do you see the tie-ins with other things we have already talked about in this series? For example, in order to judge someone, you almost have to have some degree of contempt for them or be at least a little angry with them. If you have obeyed Jesus and rooted anger and contempt out of your life (as Jesus talks about very early in the sermon), you will be well on your way to not being a judgmental person. Remember we covered the topic of oath-making where we saw how we have a tendency to use words to manipulate other people? If we have given up oath-making and working overtime to control what other people think of us, we will at the same time find ourselves spending much less time making judgments about other people.
Remember a few weeks ago we talked about how reputation and wealth are barriers that keep us from developing Kingdom hearts? If we are obedient to Jesus and are careful to put practices into our lives that keep concern about wealth and reputation from affecting us, we will automatically be less judgmental people. After all, when we judge or condemn someone, isn’t it very often on the basis of how they spend money or what they do or do not spend it on, or on some character issue that pertains to their reputation? As money and reputation become less important in your own life, it will occur to you less and less to use either of them as a basis for judging some else. How about lust? Do we not often make judgments about people based on their physical appearance? In a world dominated by concern over the physical body, why would we not do this? The two go together. But if you have ordered your heart carefully to rule out lust and fantasized desire (and the worship of the body they elicit), you will not be the kind of person who would criticize or condemn someone based on their appearance. As Willard said, if we have not paid close attention to what Jesus has already said, it will be impossible to imagine life without condemnation and judgment of others. But if we have listened carefully and ordered our lives as Jesus told us, condemnation and judgment (along with last week’s issue – worry) will simply not occur in a heart like that.
Nothing stings worse that being on the receiving end of the judgment and condemnation of others. Nothing betrays God’s gracious kindness and patience more than when those who say they are his followers engage in that kind of behavior. And yet the most recent studies indicate that the number one perception of Christians among the up and coming generations in our society is that we are what? Judgmental.
My friends, there is never any reason for judgment. We don’t need this in our lives. You don’t need to point out the wrongness of what someone has done in order to make sure you’ve clearly placed yourself on the side of right. You don’t need to look down on someone because of something offensive, or bad, or wrong, or even evil, that they have done. That is a heart in which God wants to work and move and hearts CLOSE when we are judgmental – they never open.
The heart of our gracious God is love and mercy and compassion. He sees us through kind and patient eyes. He bears with our many faults and flaws and forgives us the sins we commit against him. He kindly waits for us to take the next step. Even though his agenda for us is perfect and without flaw and absolutely guaranteed to give us the best lives we could ever live, still all we saw in Jesus was patience and grace. I close simply by reminding you of how many of you are here today because when you came to Wildwind, you did not encounter judgment but instead you encountered love and warmth. If we are to follow Jesus, we must treat others the way he did. Today, let us reject judgment and condemnation forever and commit every person we meet to the tender care of God. If we do this we will find ourselves relieved of a very, very heavy burden – one we were never meant to bear. Let’s pray.
God you are great and good and your nature is mercy and love. Thank you for sending your Son Jesus so we can see you in action, loving people. May we commit ourselves and everyone we meet to your care and step down from the bench where too long we have acted as judge. Please forgive us for trying to do a job that is yours alone. Remind us of the errors we have committed in judging others in the past, and set our hearts against being people who judge and condemn. May you work powerfully in our lives as we give up judgment and embrace the mercy and love for others that you have shown us. Amen.
