The Not-So-Gentle Truth about Judgmentalism

 “The Not So Gentle Truth About Judgmentalism”

 Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church – Sunday, Oct 27, 2013

Text: I Cor 5:9-12 & Matt 7:1-5 // Series: Identity: Seven Things That Make You Unique

Song: Before the Throne of God Above         //        Prayer

Good morning friends.  My name is Brad and I am part of the teaching and leadership team here at Jericho Ridge.  Before we get started looking at our topic for today I just wanted to say thank you for praying last week.  Jon Mair, one of our elders, and I were up in Edmonton at a bi-annual Study Conference hosted by our church family, the Mennonite Brethren.  It was an amazing three days of discussion and learning and processing questions around the topic of human sexuality and our response as people of faith.  The plenary sessions on online at mennonitebrethren.ca – if you need the link, follow me on Twitter of send me a friend request on Facebook.  Then I headed to southern Alberta for two days of meetings with Martin from Ste. Rose Church in Quebec.  If you were around this summer, you might remember Ste. Rose and Pastor Martin as the church community that Spencer and Ali served at this summer.  Ste. Rose has an existing partnership with another church in Lethbridge called College Drive and so I preached there last weekend and we here at Jericho hope to have a visit from their pastor, Brent Miller soon.  As part of a national family, we here at Jericho are in process of exploring what it means to really BE the church across our great country so keep on praying for that process.

Speaking of our great land, I want to ask you a question as we transition into our topic for today.  In your opinion, “What is the worst thing you could call a Canadian?”  What is most insulting?  What stings most deeply?  [An American] I knew it!  Sorry, Pastor Keith & Ruth Ellen.  The worst insult isn’t being mistaken for or called an American.  What else?  I wonder if we scratch beneath the surface, if you really want to hurt a Canadian or insult them, call them intolerant.  Say that they are judgmental.  It’s very unCanadian.  We even have phrases that we have come to deem as culturally unassailable: “Who are you to judge?” or “Coexist” or “live and let live” are all culturally accepted watchwords. They have come to form part of what it means to be quintessentially Canadian.  The “Canadian Way” is tolerance.  Which has fantastic upsides, but which also has some shadow sides to it.  We are seeing this notion tested in Quebec with the proposed charter banning religious symbols from the public sphere.  I wonder if we don’t need to do some careful thinking about terms like tolerance, judging others, being judgmental and work at figuring out as people of faith, what our response is to each other and to our culture on this very Canadian topic.       

Well, this September and October we have spent 7 weeks exploring the question of Identity.  We looked at seven characteristics or elements that if you are a person who claims to be a follower of Jesus, ought to be present in your life.  We explored a Christian vision of sexuality.  We explored the nature of sincere hospitality.  We explored radical generosity.  Holiness. Serving others and living with Integrity.  All of these things are indicators of transformed living.  They are far from the only ones, they are simply clear ones that we wanted to lift up at this season in the life of Jericho Ridge as a kind of litmus test for us to assess how we are doing as individuals and as a community in conforming to the image of Jesus and in following in obedience to Him.  They are identity markers, like fingerprints. 

But one of the questions we have to ask ourselves as Pastor Keith did last weekend with the topic of sexuality, are there any areas where our identity as followers of Jesus brings us into conflict with our culture?  Does our identity as Christians fully overlap with our identity as good Canadians?  I am going to suggest today as we look into the Bible that this notion of not judging anybody might be one of those areas of conflict.  Because if we are honest with ourselves, we would have to say that everybody judges.  Everyone draws a line somewhere.  So we are not arguing whether to draw the line but where to draw the line and to hold another person to account for their attitudes & actions. Let’s look together at I Corintians 5 and our two driving questions will be what does the Bible tell us about WHO and I am to judge and HOW am I to go about this process. 

In I Corinthians 5, one of the early leaders of the Christian movement named Paul is writing to a community of people who have all kinds of problems, and who, as Pastor Keith mentioned last weekend, live in a overly tolerant society.  So highly tolerant that they have no problem with family incest.  A man who claims to be a Christian and who shows up regularly on a Sunday morning at their church in Corinth is committing sexual immorality by sleeping with his mother-in-law.  And the church not only is tolerant of this abhorrent sexual sin, they are actively looking the other way.  So Paul writes them and says essentially “what is going on?!”  Everybody draws a line somewhere and you guys have drawn it in all the wrong places!  And then he lays out a principle that outlines the “Not So Gentle Truth About Judgmentalism”  [2 Scripture Slides]  

Paul’s concern here is not that we don’t judge people.  Quite the opposite!  He is giving a clear and very defined or whoned mandate to the church to practice discernment and judgement.  But he begins the discussion by laying down some sharp ground rules.  The first point that he makes is not about who to judge but who NOT to judge [“Who am I NOT to judge?”].  And the answer here is people who are unbelievers.  People who do not claim to be Christians.  It is NOT your job or my job to judge people outside the church.  That is to say, it is not your job or mine to enforce a biblical vision of morality or sexuality or generosity or hospitality or any of this on a person or persons who do not fundamentally share our identity as people who claim to live under the lordship of Jesus Christ.  To put it another way, if they say they are not a Christian, you cannot reasonably another person to live like a Christian!  And you certainly can’t hold them accountable or judge them when they don’t live like a Christian.    

This is something that believers have struggled with throughout history.  There is an incredible temptation in the human heart toward self-righteousness and moral superiority and to them enforce this on others around us.  Sometimes, when Christians have been in the majority in a culture, such as happened in Canada from the late 1850’s to the 1950’s, Christians have used this to legislate that others adopt a Christian vision of behavior.  But now that Christians are in the minority in Canadian culture and we don’t have those tools or mechanisms anymore, sometimes the only tool that Christians feel they have at their disposal is smug self-righteousness – sitting back and throwing stones at others who do not behave as we think that they should.  Paul would say here that that is NOT your responsibility.  The role of a Christian in the public sphere is not to run and hide out, look at verse 10 – you would have to leave the world to avoid people who are sinning.  As a person who has an identity as a Christian, it is possible to express your opinions without being judgmental or sliding into judgmentalism.  It’s not that we can’t hold perspectives on a given issue but we must be thoughtful around how we go about expressing them.  I love the way John Stackhouse put this at our conference last week.  He said “Holding views firmly and contending for them is not self-righteousness…refusing to listen and refusing to submit to reality (God, the Bible, good arguments, other’s wellness, the greater good) is self-righteousness.” We’ll see more in another text what Jesus says about HOW to judge people without being self-righteous but for now, let’s be clear.  It is NOT our job as Jericho Ridge to run about and be the morality police in Langley and Surrey.  It is not our job to legislate behavioural transformation for those who do not claim to want or need it.  It IS our job, as Danny contended two weeks ago, to love people deeply and to contend for their welfare and so this may drive us at points to speak up.

This is the other part, and perhaps the main part of what Paul is driving at in this text.  The notion of WHO am I to judge?.  The answer is those who you are in aligned community with.  Part of being in Christian community is willingly submitting to mutual accountability. 

When you say “yes” to Jesus, you are saying yes not to a set of principles, but to a way of living.  And you are saying yes not just to an individualized vertical relationship with God.  You are also saying ‘yes’ to living in a community of faith with others who are committed to the shared ethic of Jesus.  This is where the responsibility to judge comes into play.  Paul says super clearly in verse 12 it is not my responsibility to judge outsiders.  BUT it certain is your responsibility to judge those inside the church who are sinning.  Why?  What on earth would motivate Paul to give the Corinthians and us this seemingly harsh instruction to go after people around us a judge them? 

What motivates him and us to do this is a deep and sincere sense of love and compassion.  Because Love means not letting someone that I care for continue to harm themselves or others.  For those of you who are parents, think ought to have an inherent sensibility to it.  Our kids ask us to do all kinds of stuff, some of which you know can and will harm them.  I can remember asking my dad when I was 12 to borrow the car because my uncle had let me drive his truck on the farm and I thought I was ready for the roads of Dawson Creek.  Obviously he said “no’, not because he didn’t love me, but just the opposite.  He loved me enough to know that I could do great harm to myself and others if he allowed me to proceed.  Sometimes the most loving thing you can say is “NO!”  Because love means drawing a line. 

The challenge is that we have confused our terms.  As good tolerant Canadians, we have associated being judgmental with being unloving.  But sometimes, as in this case in I Corinthians 5, a fully-orbed view of what it means to love your neighbour includes a rebuke when they are engaged in things that are harmful to themes and others.  In this sense, loving is a much harder job that tolerating.  When someone that you care for is making horrible choices, it is not loving to sit back and allow them to continue down a path that will bring irreparable damage to their soul.  When they are persisting in a blatant behavour that is placing their eternal destiny at great risk, we are not to welcome or tolerate that!  We are to do the hard thing and to speak up and to work hard to reclaim that person for the kingdom of heaven in love. 

Now, this hinges again on two things.  One, that the person whom I am engaged in the conversation with is has expressed a shared commitment to following God in the way of Jesus and two, that the issues at hand in the person’s life are around moral rightness and wrongness as the Bible sets out those categories.  This is not about majoring on the behavioural minors, which the church has been guilty of in the past. 

To help us set the tone for what healthy judgment looks like, let’s look at what Jesus says about it in Matthew 7:1-5.  Some people look at this and say “ah ha! Its right there in the Bible… Do not judge others!”  And these same people look at Jesus’ life and say “you know, Jesus wasn’t judgmental at all – so what gives you the right to come marching into my life and make a judgment about something if Jesus never did that?”  I think we have to be careful about how we understand and use Matthew 7 and the life of Jesus.  On the question of HOW am I to judge?  Jesus invites us to make judgments without being judgmental. This is very hard to do

I like the way Dr. Craig Keener reflects on Matthew 7 in his commentary when he says “Jesus is warning us not to assume God’s prerogative to condemn the guilty; He is NOT warning us against discerning truth from error.  Furthermore, Jesus does not oppose offering correction, but He does oppose offering it in the wrong spirit”.  When you approach me, Matthew 7 is instructing you to do it with the Right tone: Gently, lovingly, patiently, clearly and out of sincere concern for my spiritual health and well-being, not out of a desire to be more right.  (Remember our definition of self-righteousness?)  The bottom line HOW to judge others is that that we should treat others as you would want to be treated if you were committing a soul-damaging act and putting yourself at risk.  If I was sinning in such a grievous way that I was going to risk not inheriting eternal life, I would sure as hell want you to come and talk to be about it.  Anything less would be profoundly unloving.  And that is the not so gentle truth about judgmentalism – that because of all of the abuses we have been scared off from rightly offering correction to one another.  Speaking the truth in love is making a judgment without being judgmental or slipping into a culture of judgmentalism where we run around pointing out all the things that are wrong in someone else’s life without willing submitting our own life to scrutiny. 

And this is where it gets less philosophical and more personal…  This topic is really isn’t about those people out there doing all that kind of stuff.  It’s about the state of my own soul and your soul.  The things in your life that are incongruent with your identity as a follower of Jesus.  And I want us to use two pictures to guide our time of reflection and response today. 

Image #1 – A Thermometer

What does a thermometer do?     

• Purpose: Assesses internal temperature of a willing patient

This photo is of one of those in-ear ones.  I can remember when our kids were little trying to take their temperature in their mouths or, um, the other way you can take it.  And I was struck again this week as I reflected on my own life that in order for me to grow into the person God wants me to be, in order for you to grow into the person God wants YOU to be, we need to start by regularly taking the temperature of our souls.  We need to be honest with God on what would come up on that little screen if you and I could stick a thermometer into the depths of my life, what would the reading be?  This is super-hard to do on your own and this is why Christian community is such an incredible gift.  God has placed people around you that have the capacity to assist you in this process.  But let me ask you:

• What is your level of willingness to submit your soul to scrutiny? (By the Holy Spirit; by others in the community that you trust)

Every two weeks I meet with a trusted friend and he jabs that thermometer into the depths of my heart and pulls it out and says “this is what I am seeing” and I do the same for him.  Sometimes the reading reveals some painful stuff, but when we sit and talk together about it, we are not judging one another.  Far from it.  We are willing offering correction and speaking the truth in love.  So my question is who does that for you?  Perhaps your spouse does it, I know Meg has a part to play in that process in my life simply because she knows me so well that it is easier for her to take a reading.  But I know that I need others around me to do this.  You might need to think about speaking to Pastor Keith today about getting into a small group like a Life Group or a 4 quarters group for guys or the Women’s Bible study on Wed night.  Being in a group is not magic bullet, it is simply a tool to help put you in a willing position where others can speak into your life.  Because have you ever tried to stick a thermometer into an unwilling patient?  It doesn’t work!  That is like judging someone who doesn’t want to participate in the process of mutual accountability – there will be squirming and kicking and fussing.  So make the choice to open your life up to someone that you trust, perhaps for the first time.  [Invitation for salvation].  And be willing if you are the one holding the thermometer as a person bears their soul to you, to exercise wise counsel, knowing that there are specks and logs in each of our eyes that need careful and repeated extraction. 

This is the purpose of the second image:  If we want to grow, we not only need to put ourselves in individual relationships where the people can judge us without being judgmental, but we also need to be part of an environment where this is normative.  Because in our culture, it usual isn’t. Tolerance has reduced the level of honest conversation in most communities, and sadly, in most churches.  The church here in Canada needs a temperature adjustment when it comes to clear thinking about judging others.  So the second image is that of A Thermostat.  What a thermometer does in an individual body, a thermostat does in a room.  

• Purpose: Assesses & adjust the temperature  of an environment

This is a key difference...  A thermometer doesn’t have any say in adjusting the temperature in your body.  It is simply a diagnostic tool.  But a thermostat actually changes the temperature.  This morning, I got up and it was 66 degrees in our house.  And I didn’t just think, “oh well… I hope it warms up.”  I made the changes necessary for it to warm up.  I took action.

This is what Paul is after in I Cor. 5 – he says “you have a responsibility to change the climate in your church”.  This is not just the role of leaders or elders or pastors.  It is the role and responsibility of everyone who is a part of the community! 

• Each of us has a part to play in shaping a “high accountability,  high challenge” culture at JRCC

That is why we have a team working on re-shaping the membership process here at Jericho Ridge.  This is why we come for pre-gathering prayer at 9:45 upstairs why we have response time following all of our gatherings… we want to create as many opportunities for the Holy Spirit to speak to you individually and to us corporately as possible. Our goal in this is not to create some kind of pristine huddle. 

• Goal: That God would be honoured as many lives are transformed both now & for all eternity

We are going to move into a time of worship in song and I want you to ask God to stick the thermometer into your soul and see what comes up.  I also want and expect that many of you will come forward for prayer and share the “reading” with others.  These are trusted and wise people who can help you listen to and process what God is saying to you. 

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