Church and Society: To Judge or Not to Judge

It is a common approach for Christians today in their interactions with people, Christians and non-Christians alike, to focus on and emphasize sin. To bring people to Jesus in the first place, we inform a person of their sin, telling them they have done wrong and therefore need Jesus in their lives. Once a person is a Christian, more veteran Christians seem to monitor the new Christian's lifestyle and whenever a sin is uncovered, it is pointed out and the newer Christian is asked repent in order to remain in the church. If a Christian confesses a sin, or something they are told is a sin, they don't receive loving hugs, and offers of support, but scoldings and admonitions to confess to God and stop sinning.

One of the major areas we see this today is with the issue of homosexuality. If a person is gay, apparently the Church thinks them unworthy of Jesus' grace and love. I read a recent article entitled Bishops Push Back On Allowing Gay Couples In Housing which discusses how Catholic bishops do not want HUD to prevent the discrimination of homosexuals to receive aid for housing. In other words, HUD wants to prevent the discrimination of the LGBT community to receive federal housing assistance, while the Church wants the LGBT to be discriminated against because of their "sinfulness." To many this may seem extreme and not representative of most mainline churches or of orthodox Christianity. Unfortunately, as I have perused the internet, watched the news, and listened to those within the Church body, I have discovered that condemnation against homosexuals, as well as against others outside and inside the Church, runs rampant in Christianity. No wonder Christianity has such a bad reputation, it does the exact opposite of what Jesus' message called us to do.

I can point to many passages that will illustrate my point, but there are a particular few that will do just fine. First I want to point to Matthew 7:1 which says, "Do not judge so that you will not be judged." Many Christians quote this passage, but few ever practice it. When Jesus says not to judge, he means we are not to condemn people based on their actions. A person's actions are not necessarily an indicator of their heart, and therefore cannot be used to assess a person's spiritual status. Since we cannot know a person's heart, and only God can, it is outside of our scope of practice to say who will and will not enter heaven based on their actions. It was this practice that Jesus condemned the religious leaders of his for doing. Matthew 23:13 says, "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in." The religious leaders were seeing the behavior of people and condemning them to eternal punishment, even though they had a relationship with God. That is what we are doing when we condemn a Christian for being gay (even though homosexuality may not even be a sin), we are locking them out of the kingdom of heaven, even though Jesus has made them right with God.

Another passage that we need to remember is Matthew 7:3, "Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" We are constantly trying to point out the fault in others, but are blinded because of our own sin. It seems that focusing on someone else's sin is a sin in its own right. Christians unfortunately think that when they reach a particular spiritual status, overcoming certain sins, that places them in a position to point out other people's sins. But the point of this passage is the log is never out of our eye. If we are focusing on other people's sins, we are blinded to our own. Jesus never intended for us to change other people and point our their sins, he intended for us to change ourselves and only focus on our own sins. Only the Holy Spirit has the authority to do this work, we do not.

Finally, I want to point to Matthew 25:31-46. In this passage Jesus tells of his return when he will separate the sheep on his right and the goats on his left, and where he tells the sheep on the right that when they helped out the unfortunate and the unaccepted in society, they had actually done the same for him. Jesus explained, "The King will answer and say to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.'" (25:40). When we help out people, especially when they have sinned (or we perceive they have sinned), we are helping out Jesus. The contrast to this, and explained in this passage, is that when we do not help out these people, we fail to help out Jesus. Therefore, when we judge people, we are judging Jesus; something I am sure we all understand is wrong.

When Jesus was here, he showed a radical love for people that were constantly rejected by the religious leaders. This does not mean they were necessarily sinners, some were and some were not. The point is that regardless of their sin, Jesus ate with tax collectors, prostitutes, and adulterers. He ate with those that were condemned by the religious authorities of his day, showing them acceptance and love. In his blog Radical Love: Why Christianity Is A Queer Religion Reverend Dr. Patrick S. Cheng illustrates this point beautifully: Christianity is compatible with homosexuality. Being that the LGBT community is the biggest group unaccepted and condemned by the religious authorities (i.e. Christians) today, it should be the most loved and accepted group by genuine Christ-followers today.
Blessings,
-Brandon

Related Links:
Charlie Sheen, the Grace of God, and Compassion of Jesus

Homosexuality, Robert Schuller, The Crystal Cathedral, and What Jesus Did

How Christians have Strayed

Jesus and the Religious Leaders in the Bible

Unbelievers in the Bible

I am back today and would like to discuss outsiders. Now, before I get any backlash about that term, it is not meant as derogatory whatsoever. It is simply a term denoting the position of a group or groups of people. When I talk about outsiders, I am simply talking about those people who were not followers of Jesus. Everyone of Jesus' followers was an outsider before becoming an insider (a follower of Jesus). So who were the outsiders in the bible. They fall into three separate groups.

First, there were Gentile outsiders. These were people who were not of the Jewish faith. Jesus did not encounter many Gentiles during his ministry, mainly because there were not nearly as many Gentiles in Palestine during Jesus' lifetime as there were Jews. Jesus came into contact with the Gentiles in one of two ways. They either came to him while he was in Jew territory, such as when the Centurion came to Jesus to ask him to heal his servant (Matt. 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10), or he went to a pocket of Gentile territory and encountered them there; such as when he went with some of his disciples to Gerasa/Gadara and ran into the man with a legion of demons (Matt 8:28-34; Mark 5:1-20; Luke 8:26-40).

Secondly, Jesus ran into Samaritan outsiders. We see this in John 4:5-38 where Jesus encounters the Samaritan woman at the well. What is so remarkable about Jesus' encounters with the Samaritans is that the Jews and the Samaritans were essentially at war with each other. There was no military fighting going on, but each claimed to be the right religious heirs to the kingdom of God. The Samaritans claimed to be the lost northern kingdom that had been captured by the Assyrians in the 7th century B.C. and had never been seen again. The Jews claimed that was a lie. So the two groups hated each other. Jesus only runs into this group when going through the land of Samaria which is between Jerusalem and Galilee.

The third kind of outsider would be the obvious Jewish outsider. Being in the land of the Jews, Jesus encountered many Jews who were not yet (some did not become) followers of his. If the person Jesus encounters is not specifically called a Samaritan, or somehow identified (by region or occupation) as a Gentile, then it is safe to assume that they are a Jew.

Jesus' encounters with all of these outsiders is remarkable, and as I will discuss in the next series of blogs, the traditional Christian way of communicating to and with outsiders completely counters the way Jesus communicated with them in Scripture. We will see that where Jesus welcomes and accepts, we often exclude and reject. In the next post I will be discussing Luke 7:1-10; 7:11-17; and 17:11-19 if you want to read ahead.