While I’ve chosen not to practice counseling for the time
being I still have all that training and even some real-world practice under my
belt. So people know that and, frankly, they will occasionally get a little weird around me.
I think that's because people are scared of being found out and judged.
The same sort of thing happened when I was a pastor. You
sometimes got the feeling that people were not altogether comfortable being
around a religious professional (whatever that means).
My point is that we’re all, religious or not, kind of scared of being found out
and/or judged. But that's fairly rare on the counselor side. It wasn’t rare at all as a pastor. In fact, judgment seemed
to be the primary expectation of religious people from others.
I did my best to disabuse people of that idea (which didn’t always
sit well with the more starchy pants-wearing church members). But it’s a surprising thing to
watch what happens when you treat people who are used to being judged and
dismissed as if they matter just as much as Charlie Churchmember (sounds Dutch)
who shows up every Sunday.
Because, you know, they are
just as important.
Original Sin
Bonhoeffer talked about the idea that our sin boiled down to
judgment. That the thing that screwed us up was literally the Knowledge of Good
and Evil. Before, Adam, and his lovely wife, Eve, didn’t have those categories
to consider. They had God’s guidance, and his guidance was perfect. As soon as
they gained that knowledge they started labeling things and doubting God. For
instance, they judged being naked as evil.
Also, they began to believe they needed to fend for
themselves--judging God as untrustworthy to provide. Their total reliance on God to take care of their needs fell away
like, well, underwear made of fig leaves. In their judgment of nudity, their
first reaction is to make their own
covering. Their second impulse is to hide from God (judging God as unloving).
This God who had lovingly and perfectly provided for and
guided them their entire lives, in person.
Shame, pride and fear were the immediate products of not
completely trusting God by people who had lived in intimate contact with Love
himself all their lives. Although it's maturity to learn to discern good and evil in our own lives, we go beyond that proper, Spirit-guided, use. We just aren’t equipped to always handle having this knowledge of
good and evil. It causes the same shame, pride and fear in us that it did in
our predecessors. It causes us to judge good and evil in God, in ourselves, and
in the hearts of others.
Not-So-Original Sin
We live in confusion on so many issues because we believe it’s
up to us to parse good and evil. We now have God with us in the form of the
Holy Spirit, who will guide us into all truth. But we decide to judge for
ourselves.
As I said above, judgment seems to define us as Christians
for so many. Yes, others are just as fallen and just as judgmental. But, as
momma used to say, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” God’s Spirit dwells in us,
a Spirit of loving change.
Still, I choose to evaluate others based on their actions or
reputations. It doesn’t matter that God says I shouldn’t judge outside the Body
of Christ, and only within the Body in certain areas. It doesn’t matter that
God’s example and explicit command is love unabashedly in the face of
unrepentant sin (“While we were still sinners, Jesus died for us.”) My problem
is that I think I’ve got this good and
evil thing figured out and can separate mankind into those worth God’s love
and those worth God’s wrath (which is delivered via me, apparently.)
Living the Illogical
Life of Love
While you and I may not be actively chunking bibles at the
heads of people who sin differently than us, we need to be reminded (well, I
do, maybe you too) that we don’t have to convince the rest of the Church that everyone is
worth loving before we can go out and love. Neither do we have to convince the unsaved of what we believe before loving them.
A much stronger witness, and it just so happens to be
the one that Jesus said would have the most power, is going out and loving
those others would label as unlovely. Love isn't giving up your principles, it's just not making their acceptance of those principles a prerequisite for giving that love away.
Sometimes I think we fear that if we're not constantly reminding nonbelievers of their sin we aren't being true to our faith. Truth is very important, (and sometimes people need to hear the Law before they can hear the Gospel) but Jesus didn't say they'd know we belonged to him by our morals. He said it would be by our Love for one another.
Now, I know love may sound good, but it's harder than judgment. Love may not look like
what you’d expect.
You may find yourself fighting for the basic human rights of
people groups that you profoundly disagree with. Because sin no longer defines
for you who deserves rights or love.
And they'll know you belong to Him...
Love may include being shunned by those you want to win the
approval of. Because not everyone will understand. But it won't be in vain.
And they'll know you belong to Him...
Love will mean
answering hard questions and facing awkward circumstances, delicately walking
moral lines that only the Spirit of God can guide you on. In other words, it
will take full reliance on God to create a culture where the first reaction you
get when you tell the broken-hearted and the disenfranchised that you belong to
Jesus won’t be worry about being judged, but thankfulness that you’ve come. And that thankfulness from the broken-hearted will only come because they've figured out that belonging to Him doesn't just mean unwavering truth, it means unwavering love as well.
Photo by P. Mamnaimie
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