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October 16, 2018 - February 24, 2019
A spiritual urban legends just like a secular urban legend. It's a belief, story, assumption, or truism that gets passed around as fact.
And, yes, I know that words like dumb and stupid are strong words. Whenever I use them when speaking to a larger group, I predictably get a couple of notes or even a face-to-face rebuke. Usually it's a mom trying to eradicate the words from her children's vocabulary. She wonders why I can't use kinder, gentler terms that would be more acceptable in play group. But I can't. As noted above, these beliefs aren't just false. They aren't just unfortunate. They're not merely a few degrees off. They are dangerous. They are what the Bible calls “foolish,” which in modern-day terms means “stupid” and
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this kind of hopeful thinking has nothing in common with what the Bible calls faith. It's more about faith in faith than faith in God. Yet it's what many of us have been taught to believe God wants from us when we're confronted with insurmountable odds.
That means that the Bible knows nothing of the sharp distinctions we make between faith, belief, and trust.
The kind of faith the Bible advocates and God wants from us has far more to do with our actions than our feelings. In fact, biblical faith is so closely tied to actions of obedience that the Bible ridicules the very idea of someone claiming to have faith without acting upon it.
But it's essentially what the Bible says that faith (at least the kind of faith that God commends) might do. It may lead us to victory. It may lead us to prison. Which it will be is his call—not ours.
If faith is primarily about trusting God enough to do what he says, and yet it won't fix everything and sometimes will make matters worse, why bother?
Faith is not a skill we master. It's not an impenetrable shield that protects us from life's hardships and trials. It's not a magic potion that removes every mess. It's a map we follow.
Jesus didn't say, “Judge not,” followed by a period—or an exclamation point. He said, “Do not judge,” followed by a clarification of what type of judgments to make, when to make them, and how to make them.
Except for one problem: that's not what Jesus actually said. And it's certainly not what he meant. He not only told his followers to judge, he also gave them instructions for how to judge properly. And he did quite a bit of judging himself.
This is not to say that an emphasis on tolerance is a bad thing. Rightly understood, it's a great thing—a necessary part of the social fabric for any diverse society. It's also a trait that every Christ follower should strive for. But unfortunately tolerance no longer means what it used to mean.
That's a long way from today's definition of tolerance as affirming that everyone is right, no matter what they believe or what they do.
Underlying the idea that we have no right to judge the beliefs and moral standards of others is another widely held belief. It's the dogma that truth and morality are relative—the conviction that there are no universal spiritual truths and no universal moral standards. In other words, in the spiritual and moral realms, two diametrically opposing viewpoints or standards can both be true at the same time. Yet this is an idea that is accepted nowhere else. Only in the moral and spiritual realm do we buy such nonsense. Imagine an engineering student arguing that his calculations don't matter as
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But Jesus told us how to judge precisely because some beliefs are true and some are false, because some actions are right and some are wrong.
One problem, though. Jesus did judge people. To the woman in question, he didn't only say, “Neither do I condemn you.” He also went on to say, “Go now and leave your life of sin.” That's a judgment. He didn't ignore her adultery. He didn't wink at it. He didn't say “I'm personally uncomfortable with it, but as long as it works for you, that's okay.” He called it what it was—sin. No question, he confronted her with grace. But he also confronted her with truth and warned her to make some serious changes—soon. If we refuse to label the behaviors Jesus called sin, sin, we're disagreeing with
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The proper course of action is not to stop judging others; it's to judge properly, in line with the standards and principles of judgment that Jesus taught.
One of the first keys to judging appropriately is to remember that the standard we use to judge others will be the standard God uses to judge us.6
I know firsthand how easy it is to condemn the very things we struggle with most. In fact, I think it's these things that we're prone to judge most harshly.
Another reason we sometimes harshly condemn the sins we struggle with is our desire to protect those we love. We don't want them to endure the same pain and heartache we've gone through, so we step up the rhetoric and rail against the sins that cause us the most trouble.
A second key to judging appropriately is to make sure that we deal with our own sins before we start worrying about everybody else's.
A third key to judging rightly is to make sure that our judgments match God's.
But there is also an opposite mistake when it comes to judging others. We can judge and rip on things God has no problem with.
We put ourselves in dangerous company when we judge others in an area where God has not spoken definitively. Like the Pharisees of old, we can end up pontificating about things God couldn't care less about, while missing the things he cares most about.
It also puts us at risk of being branded a spiritual liar, no matter how strongly we feel about an issue.11
This same tendency was noted by the apostle Paul in his letter to the church in Corinth. He chided them for their endless arguments and then said sarcastically, “Of course you have to fight over these things, or how else would you be able to prove your spiritual superiority over one another?”12
Back then, just as today, most of the fiercest divisions among Christians were not over things spelled out clearly in Scripture. Instead they were between competing factions over areas of interpretation where the Bible was silent, obscure, or granted freedom.
Perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of judging biblically has to do with how we evaluate and judge the non-Christian world around us. It's here that many of us make a well-intentioned mistake. We judge non-Christians by Christian standards.
Usually it's an attempt to take a stand for righteousness. But judging non-Christians by Christian standards puts the cart before the horse. Even if we successfully convince non-Christians to live by Christian standards (or successfully legislate it), without bringing people into relationship with Christ, all we've done is populate hell with nicer and more moral people.13 More important, the Bible specifically forbids us to judge non-Christians by Christian standards.14
job was not to judge and condemn the pagans around them. Their job was to win them over.
In the case of judging our fellow Christians, the purpose is always to discern and restore.
Finally, we must judge with grace. When our judgments lead us into personal attacks, bitterness, or raging anger, something has gone terribly wrong.17 The old cliché is right. Hate the sin and love the sinner. But if you're anything like me, you've probably wondered how it's possible to hate one without hating the other. The sin and the sinner seem inexorably tied together, don't they? Frankly, that cliché always struck me as a great sound bite but a practical impossibility. Until a friend pointed out that I was already doing it quite well in regard to one person. Myself.
He was right. I seldom have any problem hating my own sins while still loving myself. In fact, that's one of the primary reasons I hate my sins. They not only dishonor my Lord, but they also hurt and destroy me personally. And I hate to see that happen to a good guy like me. This concept of self-love is so natural and deeply ingrained that Jesus used it as the basis for how we are to love others (and that includes our enemies and those who are advancing a sinful agenda).18 When it comes to judging them or anyone, God wants us to judge in the same way we both judge and love ourselves—boldly
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Their words varied, but the message was always the same: someday you'll be glad this happened.
But that doesn't mean he's the direct cause of everything that happens. It doesn't mean that everything that happens is something he wants to happen. And it certainly doesn't mean that everything he allows is good.
the idea that God causes everything that happens comes from a combination of wishful thinking and a twisted interpretation of a few key Scriptures.
It appears to say that, given enough time, everything that happens will prove to have been good or necessary.
Notice the difference. It doesn't say that everything that happens is good. It simply says that God is at work in all things.
It's the tragic consequence of past actions. Actions he now regrets. Actions he's been forgiven for—but actions he's paying for, in this life, just the same.
The beauty and promise of Romans 8:28 is not that the progression of his disease will eventually prove to be a good thing. It's that no matter how bad things may get, God's ultimate and eternal purpose in his life won't be foiled.
Those who assume that everything that happens has God's fingerprints all over it fail to distinguish between what God allows and what God causes—what God permits and what God prefers.
And don't forget Murphy, her cousin. Also unleashed at the fall, he shows up uninvited (but regularly) just to mess things up. Adam knew him as the weeds in his garden. We know him as the reason why the other line always moves faster; why whatever can go wrong, does go wrong; why the later we are, the more traffic signals we hit. Murphy isn't God's emissary. He's Adam's legacy.
When it comes to the consequences of the fall, we aren't offered immunity. We're offered eternity.5
Such thinking is nonsense. God never approved of these people's sin. He didn't cause it. He didn't even “use it.” He overcame it. That's what grace does.
She was caught in an emotional quandary. As long as she saw God as the direct cause of her son's seizures, there was the possibility that he would stop the seizures. In that, she found great hope. But if he was the direct cause of the seizures, he was also the author of her son's private hell. In that, she found great despair.
But notice that Joseph didn't call his brothers' evil actions good or necessary. He didn't say that everything happens for a reason. He simply pointed out that God was at work despite their evil intents.
The fact is, just as it was for Joseph, it's nearly impossible for us to distinguish which of the painful events in our life result from Gods orchestration, which ones he is planning to use, and which ones he'll overcome in eternity.
The answer is straightforward. God lingers because for every day he delays, more of his former enemies become his friends and family11
The prospect of sticking around for a lifetime of frustrating ministry with minimal fruit in an environment where success seemed improbable didn't jibe with my idea of God's wonderful plan for my life.
Those who buy into this myth and live by it end up paying a high price. Important spiritual lessons go wanting. Godly character is stunted.
If we run from every messy situation on the assumption that God can't be in it, we'll never experience the miraculous power of his deliverance. After all, a miracle needs a mess. Always has. Always will.
