Judge Not: Jesus, Homosexuality, and the Bible

I'm not sure at what point Christians decided to take upon themselves the task of cleansing other people from their sins. But at some point it happened: Christianity saw itself become the moral police who would call out people for their sins and institute practices such as excommunication. It became the task of each individual Christian to make people aware of their sins and bar them from participation in certain church activities such as being involved in leadership. Now, obviously if someone is involved in sinful activities that could actually do harm to someone else, those people should be barred from participation. However, we as Christians haved missed a crucial teaching of Jesus' that often goes unheeded. That injunction was to not judge sinners, and that we should remove the log from our eye before focussing on the splinter in someone else's eye.

 

Jesus was clear that when he spoke against sin, we were to take the information he provided us as a way of being self corrective instead of being critical of others for their sins. That of course does not mean we need to be guilt laden, since Jesus' death and resurrection atone for our sins. But we are to take the commands of the Bible as ways of instilling obedience in our own lives, not other people's.

 

When Jesus criticizes us for "looking at the speck in our brother's eye instead of focusing on the plank in our own eye" in Matthew 7:3, he is criticizing those who condemn others for what they perceive to be sin while ignoring the very real sins in their own lives. It is important to remember that God will judge us the way we judge others, which means that if we judge people for sinning, God will remove his grace from us and judge us for our sins. The converse of this is that the more we show compassion and acceptance to others, the more compassion and acceptance God will show to us.

 

I just read an article which discusses an ad that the mayor of London rightly removed which praised the curing of homosexuality. The ad was placed by conservative Christians who call homosexuality a sin and work to cure homosexuals of what they call the "disease" of homosexuality. This is a direct violation of Jesus' words in Matthew 7 asking us not to judge others. This is a more prominent form of what happens in the Church everyday. There is a profound problem in the Church today involving the criticism of other people's sins and the desire among Christians to "fix" sinners. Many of us make it our role to be the moral police of our community. It is important that we realize that regardless of what we perceive to be a sin in another person's life, that which is in our eye is always bigger than that which is another person's. Therefore, we should do our best to focus on improving our own lives instead of obsessing over the sins of others.

Blessings,

-Brandon