Stumbling Blocks of Faith: Judging Others

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Matthew 7:1-5
November 4, 2012

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, "Let me take the speck out of your eye,” while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.

            There are a series of statistics I can’t get out of my head. I think about them a lot because they have to do with what people think of me,… and of you. These statistics pop up into my head whenever I read our passage for this morning. But they also pop up into my head whenever I talk with someone who tells me that they are spiritual but don’t see the need for church.

            I heard one such statement this past week when I visited a woman in drug and alcohol rehab. She said that one of the things they had told her was that “religion is for those avoiding hell, while spirituality for those who’ve been through hell. It’s a nice phrase, especially for those who have an aversion to religion. The only problem is that the statement has very little truth to it, especially for Presbyterians. Our theology is not one that teaches that going to church, being part of a church, or doing religious stuff gets us out of hell or even into heaven. We believe we’ve already been gotten out of hell by Christ’s forgiving death on the cross. We are not a people who avoid hell. We are a people who respond to God’s love by sharing God’s love, and religion is something we practice to open us up to God’s love. Religion doesn’t keep us out of hell. It trains us to share heaven.

            Still, I completely understand why people, and especially non-Christians, might quote that phrase. Religion does not have a good name with younger generations, and a lot of it has to do with how we act towards non-Christians. We are not well regarded in our culture among the non-religious. David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, two evangelical Christian researchers studied the perspectives of non-Christians between the ages of 18 and 30, and what they found was surprising. They wrote about their findings in a book, UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters. I know that I’ve shared these statistics before.  Here’s what they found:
  • 91% believe that Christians are antihomosexual.
  • 87% believe that we are.
  • 85% believe that we are hypocritical.
  • 70% believe that we are insensitive to others. 


            These statistics are what people think about you and me, and the fact that 87% believe we are judgmental, especially in the face of our passage for today, is really sad. And the problem is that they aren’t wrong in thinking this. Many Christians ARE judgmental. I’m not necessarily implicating members of our church because I’ve found that the members of Calvin Church tend to be very supportive of differences. Still, we are Christian, and what people think of Christians in general is also applied to us.

            The fact is that many Christians are quick to judge those of different religions, different races, different ethnicities, and different nationalities. For instance, how do Christians typically talk about Muslims, Buddhists, and people of other religions? How do white Christians tend to regard African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and others? In fact, many Christians are incredibly judgment toward Christians who don’t seem to be the “right” kind of Christian.

            Why are people, especially Christians, judgmental like this? It has to do with human nature. At our cores all of us feel fragile, insecure, and at the mercy of forces larger than us. We don’t admit our fears. We don’t act like we’re afraid. But we all have secret anxieties, and one of the ways to deal with them is to find subtle and not-so-subtle ways of making ourselves feel safer and more secure. Judgment of another is one of those ways. We feel stronger whenever we can place someone else in the category of being weaker, dumber, less moral, in the wrong group, or of the wrong. The fact is that we always feel better about ourselves whenever we can relegate someone else or a group to a status worse than our own. The basic gist is that even if I don’t like much about myself, if I can find someone in a worse position, then I will end up feeling better about myself.

            All of this has to do with the way our minds work. Our minds play tricks on us by convincing us to judge another so we can feel superior. Let me give you an example: A number of years ago an American man attended a very prestigious international conference.  Delegates from all over the world gathered together to try to solve the world’s problems.  At dinner, he was seated next to a Chinese man.  Not knowing any Chinese, the American sat there not knowing what to say to his dinner partner.  When the drinks came around, he leaned over to the Chinese man and asked, “Likee drinkee?”  The Chinese man sipped it, nodded his head, and grinned.  As the first course came, he leaned over to the Chinese man and said, “Likee soupee?”  The Chinese man grinned and nodded his head.  When the main course came, the man leaned over and asked, “Likee fishee?”  Again, the Chinese man grinned and nodded.

            After dinner the guest of honor was introduced with all sorts of accolades over his accomplishments and deep understanding of the issues.  With that, the Chinese man got up, went to the podium, and delivered an incredible speech in perfectly fluent English.  He was articulate, witty, and tremendously insightful.  After he finished his speech, he sat back down at the table, leaned over to the American, and said, “Likee speechie?” 

            Unfortunately, so many of us judge others, like the American man of the story, without even realizing it.   We Americans, even though many of us say we are a Christian nation, have created a culture of judgment. We judge so often that we don’t even realize it. For example, I’ve seen the wealthy judge workers as beneath them, and workers judge the wealthy as snobs. I’ve seen Christians judge Muslims, Muslims judge Jews, and Jews judge Christians.  I’ve seen Evangelicals judge Protestants, Protestants judge Catholics, and Pentecostals judge evangelicals. Whites judge blacks, blacks judge whites, both judge Hispanics, Hispanics judge Asians, and Asians judge whites. Men judge women, women judge men, and both sexes wonder why God would do something as cruel as making us have to live together. Heterosexuals judge homosexuals, leaving no one for homosexuals to judge. The old judge the young, the young judge the old, generation lines up against generation until we find it hard to worship together. Christians judge atheists, and atheists judge Christians. And it all goes round and round in a cycle that never ends as we pile on judgment on top of judgment on top of judgment until no one is safe from our judgments.  And one thing is certain: even though our passage says that we will be judged by God using the same standards that we judge others, God is merciful because if it was left up to us no one would be saved.

            So, how do we overcome our judgmental nature? One thing that helps is something the 6th century mystic and monk, Dorothoeos of Gaza, said: “The root cause of all these disturbances, if we are to investigate it accurately, is that we do not accuse ourselves…  We remain all the time against one another, grinding one another down.  Because each considers himself right and excuses himself, as I was saying, all the while keeping none of the Commandments yet expecting his neighbor to keep the lot!  This is why we do not acquire the habits of virtue, because if we light on any little thing we tax our neighbor with it and blame him saying he ought not to do such a thing and why did he do it—whereas ought we not rather to examine ourselves about the Commandments and blame ourselves for not keeping them?”

            Basically he says that to overcome our judgmental nature we have to learn to diminish ourselves and raise up others. We can start by questioning ourselves every time we catch ourselves judging others. Ask, “Why am I judging this person? Is it for something I’d judge myself on? How can I see what’s good instead of what’s wrong in her or him?”

            C.S. Lewis talks about this. In his book, The Great Divorce, he deals with the question of judgment—about who’s right and who’s wrong. The book is about heaven and hell. In it, residents of hell get to take day trips to heaven to see what it is like. The main character gets a tour of the outskirts of heaven by a guide. They discuss who was right and who was wrong when it came to all of our theological and religious battles, and the guide says, “That’s what we all find when we reach [heaven]. We’ve all been wrong! That’s the great joke. There’s no need to go on pretending one was right!  After that we begin living.” In essence his point is that whenever you judge, you’re wrong. Whenever I judge, I’m wrong. It’s not till we let go of our judgments that we begin to live.

            There’s a larger point: Whenever we judge another for anything, we harm our souls. We tear our souls apart, just a little bit. And the antidote is to catch ourselves whenever we judge, and to find a way let the judgment god so that we can let God’s love in us flow

            Amen.