Judgment

photo by Izabela Habur

Who are the most unmercifully judgmental people on earth? Christians.
And with whom are they the harshest? Christians.

I’ve written about big sins like abortion and divorce but the one that gets me most is the sin of judgment. I’ve heard Christians say but one day we will judge the angels in Heaven! with such conviction you’d think them happy to have such a ghastly responsibility, but they’re wrong taking that to mean we should judge people here, now.

I got an email this morning from someone who has a friend who had an abortion. She told me how great friends they are now and how much she’s watched this friend grow over the years.

I’ve told you about my friend Lisa, who was my only friend during my abortion struggle now 15 years ago. She told me how she felt personally about the life of a baby (not a political or religious rant, but her heart), only once and then supported me the rest of the way, even as I went against everything she believed. Today, Lisa is one of two people I count as having their hand in my coming to Christ. It was her love, in spite of her conviction, that so impressed me.

And now I have a friend in a divorce

This friend committed a horrible sin. She had an affair. Immediately, I said to myself, how dare she! but quickly remembered I had been there with her as she confessed her feelings for this other man and watched her will to fight being trampled by a berating husband. She inspired my post entitled She wasn’t after the fruit in which I discussed feelings I had once had for another man myself. So in reality, I wasn’t much different from her.

But I wanted to judge her. As a Christian I knew what she had done, was doing, was so wrong, and I needed to know there was punishment for it–and yet… I have no right. We have no right to judge one another.

Now, as I listen to her tell me one heartbreaking story after another, about how former friends call her a slut and tell her she may as well have had an abortion her sin is that bad, how she’s lost custody of her four children and gone from stay at home mom to paying child support for the right to visit on weekends, I’m broken for her.

As people badgered her into staying in a broken marriage, crying “for the kids” and “for your husband with his bad childhood” she cried back, “what about me” and I wanted to smack her. What ABOUT you? I thought. But I knew I was just like everyone else for thinking that.

No one wanted to hear it. No one cared about her heart; only our misguided brand of repentance would suffice. Beg forgiveness and vow never to do it again. And shut up about your own feelings. You don’t matter anymore.

What right have we to judge?

Our actions mean more to fellow believers than our hearts. And yet, our hearts mean more to God than our actions.

Of course God hates divorce, and as much so adultery, but he loves us more than he hates anything. I disagree with her friends who tell her God will never love her again and I’m intensely angry with them for saying such a thing to anyone, to kick a horse while she’s so far down, as though she more than anyone doesn’t fully understand just how much damage she has caused. SHE DOES. It’s one thing to think such things, and quite wholly another to say them.

And I think that’s my point here. We can’t all stop judging people in our minds. It’s natural. We’re jealous that someone else gets to do wrong and when we don’t see punishment for it, punishment we think is just, we decide to inflict justice ourselves by cutting off contact and talking about them behind their backs.

But where thinking about it is natural, acting upon it is playing directly into Satan’s hand. What better way for him to show unbelievers that there’s nothing to this Jesus thing, that He really has no power to change our hearts after all? The best thing to do is to stop saying how dare he/she and start saying how can i, — how can i condemn him/her — and how can i help this person get through their guilt and shame and come out on the other side a more devoted Christian than ever? It’s what Lisa did, and it’s what Jesus did.

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Copyright © 2010 Natalie Jost