Love Judges
That’s about as unpopular as a statement can get.
But I felt like it needed to be said by somebody. Actually I feel like there is much that needs to be said regarding this title, because it is so consistently not said correctly in our culture.
One word before I begin. I hope to shed some light on a couple of very important teachings of Jesus. But I’m not the final authority. Check them out for yourself. Feel free to disagree. These are just some thoughts on what it means to faithfully listen to what Jesus is saying to us. Feel free to comment in the response section and we can discuss whatever.
If you make it through.
Here we go.
Half-Teachings
I want to write about two “half-teachings” of Jesus that our popular culture glues together. We hear the glued-together concoction repeated so often, and applied so consistently, that it becomes what everyone understands to be the heart of the gospel.
The first half-teaching goes something like this: The most important of Jesus’ teachings is that we love one another. The verse that gets quoted is A new command I give you: Love one another. - John 13:34a. Seems simple enough.
And the second: We should not judge anyone or anything regarding morality…ever…for any reason… Judging something as right or wrong is anti-Jesus. This idea comes from the verse Do not judge, or you too will be judged. – Matthew 7:1. Again, that seems pretty straightforward.
When you put them together, something like this comes out, “Love one another. And this primarily looks like not judging one another. Live and let live. You do your thing and I’ll do mine.”
So what’s the problem?
Context Matters
Let’s begin with few words about the importance of context.
As with most of scripture, if you just rip a verse (or half a verse in the case of John 13:34a) out of context, without bothering to see how it fits in the light of the surrounding verses, you might completely miss the point. With these verses, because they sound so straightforward and universal, it’s hard to see why this matters so much. But it absolutely does.
If we ignore the point of the passage these verses land in (and for that matter, the rest of the “whole tenor” of scripture as John Wesley would say it), then we risk interpreting them according to our own context, our own inclinations and our own ideas of what things like love and judgment are. In other words, we substitute what they actually meant for what we want them to mean.
Here’s how this works. Let’s say there is an agenda (not necessarily a naughty word…just a reality that we all have a point of view and a purpose for doing what we do) for inclusivity and a broadening of moral standards. As a component of the development of this agenda, people begin looking for support of this agenda from as many places of “authority” as possible. So someone stumbles upon these two verses in a rather important place of authority for a good many people, and then footnotes them as the words of Jesus that must apply in defense of the agenda being promoted (or even uses them as the basis for their argument).
There is little effort to consider what else Jesus was saying when he mentioned these things. There is little attention paid to how these short sentences fit into the larger teaching. They’re just pulled out and blindly applied.
Okay, so that’s not a hypothetical situation.
Maybe you’ll notice that these two verses are most often cited by celebrities in Grammy speeches, folks with marginal connection or commitment to the life and teaching of Jesus, journalists, bloggers (ha! irony noted www.erikgernand.wordpress.com), etc… and are almost universally applied in an attempt to move our culture towards a more “tolerant,” less “judgmental” environment (so many things about the meaning of the word “tolerant” need to be said here…but maybe another time).
I’m not judging…just making an observation. We’ll leave the judgment for later.
On top of that, we have all seen the problems of living in a culture of soundbites, where half-sentences can be ripped from their overall argument and used to make a person seem to be saying the complete opposite of what he actually means (i.e. John Stewart interview with Fox News a couple of months ago…or on the other side, most of what John Stewart does every night haha). The same thing applies here.
Point being – if we pull a few words out of their context, we remove them from their intended meaning and effect. And most of the time when we do this, we infuse the original words with meaning they never intended in order to suit our own purposes. I’m not saying that people have evil intentions when they do this. I’m sure I do it occasionally without realizing it. I’m just saying it happens.
At this point, can we just pause and ask a simple question?
Do we really think that Jesus’ main goal in life…and death…and resurrection was that we’d all go on living in whatever direction we want and pat each other on the back for it along the way? That his two most important teachings (in the eyes of the soundbite crowd – his first most important teaching, according to him, was actually to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength…but that conveniently gets overlooked most times) would essentially be about making sure that when we are boldly sinning against God, we could do it in peace without people butting in and trying to correct our path?
Is that what Jesus was ultimately about? Was that the heart of his message?
In the words of Amy & Seth, who I’m sure would not appreciate being referenced in this blog, “Really?”
A Few Words About Love
Now, a few thoughts about love.
Jesus spent much of his life defining love by who he was and the way he lived. This was the first half of his “new commandment” that he gave to the disciples. He saw it as the core of the summation of the Mosaic law. John, as a result of watching and being in relationship with Jesus, noted that “God is love.”
It’s not a question of whether or not Jesus thought love was uniquely important. To him it was and is at the very center of the gospel.
But (and I know this is going to sound pretty philosophical and heady but I can’t help it) what is love?
Has there ever been a more complicated word to define? It’s one of those words that we apply all over the place, from our feelings for Blue Coast Burrito (!) to our first Junior High crush to the reason someone would give their life for another person.
It’s a concept that is ridiculously hard to pin down. For this reason, love tends to be communicated through poems, music, touch and other ways that transcend hard and fast definitions. The ancient Greeks thought it was so complicated they had four different words that we translate “love.” That being said, don’t we have to at least try to understand the “kind” of love Jesus is referring to as being of primary importance?
Now, a blog like this can’t even scratch the surface of all that needs to be said regarding Jesus and love. But let’s at least start with finishing the verse that so often gets quoted.
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. - John 13:34 (the whole thing)
So, there is a concrete reference point for what the kind of love Jesus is referring to looks like.
It’s his love for us.
If we widen the scope of this passage even further, we find that Jesus is explaining these things in reference to his impending death on the cross. He picks up the theme again in John 15 and repeats himself with some commentary.
Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. - John 15:13
So the kind of love that Jesus is talking about is a selfless, life-giving kind of love. A love that lays down our own needs in order to serve the needs of someone else. A love that lays down agendas and personal desires and egos for the eternal benefit of someone else. This is love.
And if we keep widening the scope (because we can’t possibly understand Jesus without the larger story of God in scripture…and if we can’t understand Jesus, then according to Jesus, we can’t understand the kind of love he’s commanding us to practice in our lives), we find that Jesus was giving his life on the cross because of our sin.
In fact, John tells us that if we were ever looking for a snapshot of love (because pictures speak louder than words), that would be it.
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. – 1 John 4:9-10
Interesting.
The ultimate picture of love is the definitive judgment on sin – at the same time.
It seems, then, at the very least that we shouldn’t use the absence of judgment on moral character as our standard for how much love someone is expressing.
Context tells us that the kind of love Jesus is promoting takes sin dead seriously. It calls it out. Deals with it. Stands in the way of it. Even if the weight of that sin kills you in the process. Because it recognizes where it always drags the people engaged in it.
This is love.
We can’t see it or practice it best by turning a blind eye to the destructive patterns of those around us. We can’t get closer to it as a culture by treating each other more nicely as we all continue to walk down a dead-end road. It’s not primarily about our feelings or someone else’s feelings or how my feelings affect someone else’s feelings (that’s a mouthful). We can’t all hold hands and sing “Shiny Happy People” and think that we’re getting anywhere near what Jesus had in mind when he was talking about love.
Love can be seen most clearly in the dead body of the Son of God lying in a tomb after having taken on the consequences of the weight of our sin.
And secondarily every time one of his followers puts her life, status, reputation, body, etc… on the line to stand in the way of a person’s sin wrecking another life.
I understand that this isn’t always politically correct.
It won’t work in a government sponsored PSA with a tagline “The More You Know.”
It doesn’t belong at the Grammy’s (well, it does, but not in an acceptance speech…actually…).
It will probably get you sued if you take it seriously.
You might lose your job.
Or your reputation.
Or worse.
But it is more like what Jesus was talking about when he mentioned we should love others the way he loved us.
A Few Words on Judgment
Finally, some thoughts on the second “half-teaching” of Jesus, that, when paired with the first half-teaching takes on a meaning all its own. Again, let’s start by looking at the whole passage.
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. - Matthew 7:1-5
Did you notice how this all ends up?
Jesus doesn’t actually end with the kind of relativism that most people think he’s promoting. He ends with the restoration of the other person. The other person eventually does get the speck removed. How ironic! So we tend to hear the verse about not judging as a proof-text that we should mind our own business when in actuality Jesus was telling us to make sure we have our eyes clear before we do the necessary (loving?) work of helping others with their eyes.
Sometimes we use the Bible to make points the Bible is not making.
I think this is one of those cases.
I don’t want to beat this simple point to death, but if we’re going to dig a little into this. We have to recognize that it’s important that Jesus ends with the other person getting help.
He begins with us getting help ourselves. He begins with getting the log out of our own eyes.
This makes it a difficult teaching. It’s why we’d rather think he meant just leave everybody else alone. That would be much easier.
We all have a natural tendency to look at others faults as a way of ignoring our own. I mean you do…I don’t really have that problem (haha).
Jesus knew this. And Jesus knew how destructive it was and how much of a barrier it was to a life that could be transformed by God.
Not only that, but people running around with logs sticking out of their eyes is just nasty.
Nobody wants that.
But Jesus, sickened by a self-righteous religious culture, is telling us that before we help others with their problems, we have to be willing to face our own.
I wonder if Jesus had Psalm 139 in mind when he made statements like this.
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
- Psalm 139:23-24
If we could all just start there, then there would be lots fewer botched eye surgeries out there because of surgeon impairment.
We might actually be able to help one another.
And of all the things in the world, I think we could use more of that than more of leaving each other alone.
Some really cool things end up happening when you have this spirit about you where you recognize that everything in your life is not perfect, that you need growth and change.
Your level of grace goes up when you are looking at others.
You stop needing to find faults in others so that you don’t have to look at your own.
We become more capable of helping our friends and family deal with sin in their lives.
And one other really cool thing happens when we learn to submit ourselves regularly to God and let him search us for areas of growth – when someone points out an area where we need to grow, we’re not so easily offended.
It’s not that we need less judging. I would argue that we need more.
It’s just that it needs to start with God judging and redeeming our own patterns of sin and self-centeredness…helping us put those patterns to death…so that God can raise us to a new life of love for others.
Just some thoughts.
Take them or leave them.
Feel free to judge.
