"Don't Judge...Because You're Next."

Shattering the Walls That Keep us From Experiencing Love

"Judged not, for you too will be judged."

It is one of the most commonly quoted verses in all of Christianity and even goes far beyond the faith spectrum. There is no book or verse number with the quote, because it comes up all over the New Testament. But, I can tell you with 150% certainty that Jesus said it. He said it in Matthew 7, and also in Luke 6. The early church had its butt kicked a number of times over it too, because in several Paul's (and a good deal of the other guys said it in theirs too) letters to the churches there is a constant reminder that they should get along with everyone, accept Jew and Gentile, and mainly that they just shouldn't judge.

But as much as that verse is relevantly used, it's also irrelevantly abused.

In my generation, it's used as an excuse to do many bad things. Come on, you know the things I'm talking about. How often have you heard it said that "I'm saved by grace, so I can do whatever I want," or, "Well, your Jesus says not to judge. So don't judge me and live your OWN friggin'/**** life!" The common misconception here is that because Jesus says to work out your own problems before you pick at others, that equates to people who are actually ashamed of what they are doing underneath it all (whether they are in denial over it or not) saying that Christians have no right to tell them that the way they are living their lives is wrong.

So basically, it's often just a ploy used by unbelievers to justify their unbelief. (Even though the whole reason someone would cherish that verse would be because they believed it - leading to it being a complete irony anyway.)

Well, I have some words that might shock you here:

The most judgemental people in life are often the ones who constantly believe they're being judged.

They're often the ones who wall themselves off when others want to help them because they're so hardened by their experiences that they don't think (or want to think) that anyone could help them. They might be stuck in a hard place, so they decide they want to live by their own rules and don't like thinking that anyone else could have something to say about it. They're the ones constantly on the defense; the ones who feel the need to always defend themselves and the choices they've made in utter anger with the world even when they're standing in a quiet room and no one has said anything about them.  They're so used to the idea that the establishment (and the God of that establishment) is at war with their ideals that they automatically assume that they will be judged harshly.

Think about it. Say you are the hurting person in this scenario. You've been hurt by countless people, you've made mistakes, you've been cheated, lied to by people...etc. All of your life you've heard people go on and on about Jesus and morality and sin and death...and by now you've made so many of the decisions that those same people in your life would consider "wrong" that you're downright sick at any mention of it. Maybe you've been taken advantage of by a guy. Maybe you tend to enjoy drugs more than the speaker in your Elementary School D.A.R.E. program would have ever hoped you would. Even though your family has never really gone all Westboro on you with flaming speech and picket signs - the one, caring conversation they've ever tried to have with you about your problem offended you to your core. Why? Because deep down inside, you know that where you are now isn't it. But, you'd still rather justifying it than figure something else out. You'd rather have anything than the life that they have. So, you get defensive and fight back.

Your parents see that there's no use - so they give up their attempts to help you and watch you fade away sadly as they continue to plead on their knees. Or maybe it's the opposite scenario. Maybe your parents were never there. Maybe they let you go out and experiment with things - and maybe you got hurt. Since no one ever cared to stop you - you need someone to blame for your brokenness, so you blame the world and you blame God. All the while, you try to compensate for your pain by diving deeper into the darkness that you had fallen into before. When someone tries to help you, they will only be shunned away. You have heard that God is a father; someone filled with compassion and forgiveness. But, amongst all of your confusion - the feeling that stands out the most in your life right now is anger. Who else is there to blame but God? Besides, this whole "love" thing has never been for you anyway. Your bridges have been burned, and you decide to accept it with bitterness and turn to blame the entire world for what happens to you in life. So, you build a wall around yourself, prepare to be in a constant fight with your inner demons, and believe the whole world is out to get you because of it.

There are also the people who paint on happy faces and say "Jesus" on Sunday mornings - the ones that quote that same scripture whenever they see someone struggling - and yet underneath it all they still judge others with words that burn. They say "God bless you!" And they wish you well when they pull out of the church parking lot, but if someone insults them or something important to them they can respond with everything from a snarling glare to some choice words that go something along the lines of "How dare you insult me you *****! I am a ****ing gift from God! You're an ignorant ******!"

Put yourself in their shoes. Here you are, sitting in the pew on Sunday dressed in a pretty pastel pantsuit. Your grandmother sits next to you fanning herself with her church bulletin while wearing a large-brimmed hat. The thing is so big you could stuff a bowl of fruit in it. Everyone around you is dressed pretentiously, operating under the motto that "The Lord wants us to look our best." Somehow that motto makes sense to you even though Jesus was actually a homeless guy who didn't have much more than the cloak on his back. The pastor is getting into it, but you're not really sure what he's saying. You can only pick out a few words, namely "Jesus," "Sin" and "Hallelujah." Beyond that all you really notice is that he is bald and covered in sweat.

The organ suddenly strikes a tune and you're dismissed. Another family comes up to you and invites yours to an elegant lunch at a classy restaurant. Their daughter is very nice, though shallow. She often takes you shopping with her to buy prada handbags. At lunch you thank God for the $200 meal and express your thanks in tremendous, wordy blessings. Five minutes later you are sitting across from your friend discussing the ugliest looking guys at school and this new girl who seems incredibly trashy. As you gossip, something weird happens. I just got out of church, you think, isn't that kind of a place where people go not to be judged? Oh well, you're not a pastor. For crying out loud, church is just something everyone does around here. It's to be cool and classy and seen by your friends while you uphold tradition, right? No. But, this person doesn't accept the truth. They would rather believe those things and continue living the way that they do; making it a cultural fad that you do once a week over something that would actually involve giving up all of your selfish desires and handing them to the "big guy in the sky. "

Neither of these kinds of people have accepted God into their hearts - and both of them share something in that as different as they may seem; they are both in clear denial of the fact that Christ died for them.

How is that so? The person who is closed off is living as a runaway. They attempt to reject that Christ could love them, because in their hearts - although they may not ever express it - they don't feel that they are worthy of being loved. They think that they have a pitiful life here, but that it's all they can depend on because they don't feel worthy of anything else. The second person is someone who is also in denial. They paint on a smile and offer up a big heaping plate of southern hospitality when it involves others looking at their lives - but when it comes time to let God examine their lives, they run as well. Christianity is just a name to this person. Jesus is just a nice Easter/Christmas/Mother's Day story.

As you read this, you must think it's a flaming judgement to put these people into groups. But, it's not. Why? Because although I can see that there are clear wrongs within these types of attitudes, it doesn't change the fact that I'm about to tell you this: you and I are no different from these people. Not by a hair, smidgen, inch, kilo, or cup. In fact, you are that person. You are both of those people. We are born the same. Mankind is born with a tendency to do bad things. We stain ourselves with the things we do. I stain myself with the things I do. But we know that there is hope in Christ that we can be made new and experience what it is actually like to be loved.

Isaiah 1:18 says:

"'Come now, let us reason together,' says the LORD. 'Though your sins are like scarlet, they will be made as white as snow. Though they are scarlet, they will become like wool.'"

Let me be clear: Jesus will not judge you in the way you think people will. And any TRUE Christian will know from HIS example that we are not to judge anyone by their past, where they were born or who they were born to, by the way they look or talk or the mistakes they've made.

The people God redeems are not angels. The saints were sinners. All of them. The most prominent figures in the bible were not perfect. Noah got drunk and cursed his family, yet God still called him "the best man living among the people of his time." (Not to mention saved his whole family from complete obliteration.) Abraham tried taking God's promise into his own hands and screwed up a good deal of his family life in the process. Rebekah was willing to favor one son over the other. Jacob was a deceiver. Moses had anger issues (leading him to smash the Ten Commandments and have to go all the way back up the mountain and ask God for copies.) Rahab was a prostitute. Ruth was an impovershied, childless widow who came from a land looked down upon by the Israelites. Esther was an orphan. David was an adulterer who made sure that the "other guy" died in battle so that he'd never find out about it. Solomon had an obvious problem with women and extravagance - not to mention, Solomon also evidently concluded through much of his writings that he thought life was pointless, useless, and meaningless (though there is a greater point to it than just that.)

Continuing:

Matthew was a tax-collector (basically an ancient IRS agent.) Peter had loyalty issues. Mary Magdalene was possessed, and had likely "gotten around" quite a lot before her walk with Jesus. John and James thought they were macho-men, had some ego issues and probably a whole lot of ADHD. Their mom somehow had the bright idea that Jesus should put her sons in charge of well, everything in existence. Zaccheus was short, and he was also an ancient IRS agent. Martha was a worrier. Lazurus was dead. Paul murdered hundreds of Christians. The list goes on and on and on. But, no matter who they were - God loved and used them all. Even those among the most hated of their day (like Matthew, Mary, and Zaccheus) were valued like jewels to God. And so are the beaten, used, and abused people of our own time.

As Christians, we have no right to judge someone who God is using. Jesus hung out with a band of misfits. He touched the untouchable, talked with those who were not allowed to speak for themselves. He took the people who sought him and made their lives new. Many of those people who were renewed became his disciples; but there's more to it than that. Even after they were made new by Jesus (in all of his perfection) they still struggled with judging others. For some reason, Nazarene Jesus had really bad customer service. Every time he went somewhere and did something miraculous; it seems that half of the time the disciples shooed everyone away beforehand. You'd think they would learn to just let Jesus be Jesus and heal who he wanted - but one after the other, when people came to them asking for serious healing they would just say "Go away."

Then Jesus would rebuke his customer service team, heal the person they had tried to trun away in love, then give his staff a good stern talking to (that they never really seemed to learn from.)

Though they were also sinners, they had their egos get in the way a lot. And we are a lot like that. Often times, we forget the simple truth that we're all born as sinners and that life has its own unique struggles for each person to face. It is said that once you dehumanize someone, it's easy to hurt them without feeling apprehension. Well, once you forget that you are human too and are on the same level as they are; it's easy to judge the other person.

But then what is judgement? Is judgement steering someone off of the wrong path? Is it telling someone in a mad rush to turn around because they're about to walk off of a cliff? NO! That's not judgement. That is wisdom. If someone is about to walk off of a cliff and you think that telling them "turn back! You're about to fall to your death! I'm SERIOUS!" is judgemental and that you shouldn't do it; I would ask you to seriously reevaluate what you call logic. Judgement is looking down on someone because of some defining quality that causes you to feel uneasy. Since we're all born looking each other straight in the face as equals (as hard as it might be to accept it) judgement can be defined as something that occurs when you decide to stop seeing a human being on your same level.

Now, there's a difference between seeing someone as a cherished, worthwhile human and accepting the bad things that they do as alright. In fact, loving someone because you see them the way that God sees them - as people who are valued - should make you want to reach out to them and tell them that there is a better way. Not that they are terrible or horrible or hell bound - but that you love them, and you know that they are made for better lives than the ones they are living; and that they can find that in the love of Christ.

Ironically enough, it is those people who have been judged and gone wayward that judge the most. And we've all been judged, and we have also passed judgement ourselves. The thought that someone is trashy and ugly is a judgement just as much as the idea that someone will hate you just because they "don't understand you." If you don't have Christ, you don't have forgiveness. You've been both of the people in the above examples. You've taken things for granted and been a fake. You've also been closed off from the love of others in a desperate attempt to justify the self-reliance that you blame on the "judgement" of other people. You have been that person, and I have been that person too.

If you can connect with any of those analogies at all, know that there is grace in Jesus. If you've been saved but are struggling, pray that God will give you the same eyes to see people that he has. Read about the life of Christ and take from his example how you are to treat others - because Jesus didn't hang out with people who were cool or liked. But he didn't care about those factors - he loved them. If you have been hurt by someone and are putting up a personal wall; know that the people who have hurt you are not the kind of people that true Christ followers are to be. There are Christians who are good, caring people who look with the same Christ-eyes that I mentioned earlier. In fact, all of us Christians are called to do that. Those who don't could either be struggling with their own insecurities or are just big fakes. If you have intense pain in your life that has caused you to build walls; seek God. What he will ask you to do may not be easy - he wants you to open your heart - but if you want your struggles to be overcome, ask him in. He will shatter them.

We're all human, and we've all got a lot to learn. But no matter who you are or what you've done or are going through; Christ cherishes you and made you unique and wonderful. Life isn't about going to church so that you can be "religious." It's about walking with Jesus Christ and letting him have you as his child! Open yourself to his love and give it a try. He wants your heart so that he can heal it - not harm it. But, it's not an easy road. You have to be willing to let him change you.  You can't keep on living in the meaningless, empty ways that you do. It can be hard to give up our idols, but when you trade something meaningless for true joy; it's like trading plastic party beads for a real pearl necklace. Sometimes what he want might seem scary - but in the end it is worth it. All you have to do is ask.