Judging

I now drive 1 hour to and then from work. On those drives home at midnight I listen to sermons on the iPod my kids gave me for Christmas so I'd have music with me. It helps me stay awake and provides another person with me, sort of.

One of the sermons I listened to this past week was about the speck and the log. The pastor's interpretation was very interesting because I hadn't heard it explained in quite the way he was explaining it, though it made more sense then most. While I may mangle what he said, I'm going to try to write out what he said, in brief. (It was a 45+ minute sermon. Hard to do quickly!)

First off, he pointed out that whomever is doing the judging is coming from a position of having a HUGE log in their own eye. It reminded me of the story of the woman who was taken in adultery and Jesus saying "whoever is without sin, cast the first stone." No matter how bad we think the other person's sin is, what we've got in our own life is 1000's of times greater than what we see in their life. Looking at our own life and our own sin is much more difficult than looking into other people's lives and pointing out the sins we see there.

Second. The pastor said that the only people who have a right to point out sin in another's life are ones who are in a committed relationship with that person. Not marriage necessarily but in small accountability groups that have been together for a long time, know each other very well, and *have agreed to being open to being corrected by other group members.* If you're judging someone who has not agreed to let you judge them, then you're out of line. The churches of the early church were very small groups where they knew each other intimately so they could easily do this within their groups. That is not so true today in our large churches. And on an on-line group we don't really know the "real" person well enough to make judgement calls because we don't know the whole person, just what pixels we see on our computer screen. That may not be the real person at all.

Third. Any judgements must be made out of pure love. No retaliation. No fear. No self-righteousness. Just humble love for the other person. I know very few Christians who aren't filled with self-righteousness masquerading as humble caring. Actually most people are so full of greed to know the dirt on other people to make themselves feel better about their own sins that they eagerly listen to all kinds of gossip in the form of "sharing about a brother/sister. "

From me: While I've put my own impressions in the 3 points, this is purely from me. I don't like being judged but I used to be very judgemental. When I realized what I thought was Godly love was really my fear coming out self-righteously, I made a conscious effort to quit judging. There is only one person on this earth that I feel I know well enough to judge, my best friend of 20+ years, and I almost never judge her. I've learned to trust the Holy Spirit to deal with any of her issues that bother me. And you know? God is good to deal with her issues as long as I keep my mouth toward her off of them.

If I'm seeing sin in another's life, I've learned to look at myself. Generally I'm judging that other person because I feel crappy about sin in my life that I want to ignore. When I learned that my judging others was a way to cover up my need to do my own self-examination I pretty quickly quit finding fault in another. Frankly, I'm usually too busy doing my own self-examination to do any nit-picking in others now.

Jesus said not to throw stones if you have sin in your own life. He also said to deal with your log before dealing with their specks. To me this message is one of the clearest in the Bible. Take care of your own sin before dealing with anyone else's because anyone who says they are without sin is a liar.
I spend my time judging myself and my own life. I allow God to be God and deal with other people. It's amazing how much brighter and positive the world is now that I'm not acting like I am God's assistant Holy Spirit.