Alright, before starting, again I want to state, this is a
blog post. It is about 2 – 3 pages
long. This is not a comprehensive
work, and it should not be treated as such. I am simply hoping to try and help
clear up some of the things, both for believers and non-believers alike, that
are not necessarily understood due to misunderstandings of language and
practice. Because there are some very
real differences between our worldviews and these have lead to a large amount
of incivility of late. The idea that I
am looking at this go around is something that has been talked about a lot over
the last decade or so, judgment.
“Christians are so judgmental.” Bypassing the delightful irony of the
condemning tone people use when they say this, judging those they deem
judgmental. Many would direct us to
Matthew 7:1, quoting “judge not” out of context. However, people make judgments every day; we
cannot function as a society without making a judgment actually. We are not truly being condemned for judging in these instances, but rather we are judged for judging “incorrectly” by
today’s standards.
To declare an action wrong is an affront to the modern god
we have erected named Tolerance. We will
sacrifice dignity, intelligence, and sanity lest we ourselves be judged
intolerant. If you would like a
fantastically satirical example of this, I suggest watching South Park’s “DeathCamp of Tolerance” episode, but be warned, it is incredibly offensive. Not only do we insult the modern ideal of
tolerance by declaring something wrong, but we also find ourselves running up
against the modern relativistic philosophical conceptions of truth and reality,
and here I believe is where we find ourselves at a disconnect with the world we
now live in.
But before we tackle the differences in worldview, let us
examine how we as Christians tend to exacerbate these misunderstandings. The first is the idea that by judging an action wrong
we are condemning not only the action, but also the person. This is inaccurate, but it is easy to understand how the conclusion is reached. To begin, judging an action made by a person,
and judging a person, are fundamentally different things. That seems to be something that we forget. If a person declares that something is a sin,
or morally wrong, they are judging an action, not the person committing the
action. Sadly, people fail to stop at
that point and rather than simply declare that an action is wrong they change the
focus of the conversation to the person committing the action.
This just is not a good way to make friends and influence
people. And a huge part of this is
connected to our beliefs about human nature, and how badly flawed these have
become. When we declare an action sin,
people think we are condemning them for that action. Biblically speaking we were all condemned
well before whatever action we are discussing took place. What the world hears us saying is that the
action that we are condemning condemns them.
It would be more accurate to say that a person commits an immoral action
as proof that they were already condemned. (Investigate the doctrine of Total Depravity to start)
This is an important distinction. Biblically, all persons are born under a
curse (see Genesis 3). Everyone is equally damned from
square one. People are not pure beings
made impure solely by a specific action.
People are impure beings, whose actions will reflect that impurity. Christians are no different. They are impure people who have been made
pure through the blood of Jesus. A lot
of the misunderstandings that exist out there exist partly because Christians
in their pharisaical piety have forgotten this.
Sadly, we fail to recognize the reality that we are no
different from the person whose actions we are standing against. All have sinned according to Romans 3:23, and
the wages of that for all persons is death according to Romans 6:23. Within a Biblical framework, we are all in
the same boat and it is sinking.
Christians are just the ones that grabbed the life vest we were offered
that we did not pack on our own.
Telling someone they are going to drown if they refuse help and try to
swim it on their own may not be what the other person wants to hear. But what is more loving, to tell them
something they do not want to hear in the hope they will not drown, or to let
them drown and just float on by?
Now, so far we have basically looked at how Christians do a
bad job through losing focus, and perspective. Some of this is just bad marketing and frankly
Christians seem to be terrible when it comes to any sort of PR. But it is not all a matter of bad PR. Beyond the simple difference of belief
regarding human nature, there are some serious points of disconnect in our worldviews
that we are running up against. This is
the difference between relativistic morality and absolute morality. It is very popular today to pick and choose
what we want from the Bible. This seems
to be most readily discussed and demonstrated in the way we ignore the rules
set in place regarding sexual morality (in general) on a regular basis.
Within moral relativism, we have no real standard. The consensus would seem to be “everyone has
a right to their happiness”. There are
no legitimate grounds to call an action good or bad, right or wrong, just or
unjust within this framework. These
concepts become completely arbitrary. We
cannot defer to democracy to save us, there have been plenty of times when a
majority have been morally wrong. To see
this, we need look no further than Jim Crow laws. What about determining what is right for you, as an individual based on your own philosophy? This is basically the definition of an ethical sociopath.
What about love, does that then become our standard? After all, there are some who will say that
the Bible is primarily teaching us to love.
The second greatest commandment is to love our neighbor as
ourselves. But then who is to decide
what a loving action is and is not? Does
love not have restrictions placed upon it?
It most certainly does. No loving
parent will let their child put a key in an outlet, they will run toward them
yelling “no”, fearing what harm might come to the child. Love puts restrictions on people, for their
own good. So then who determines what
those restrictions should be? Instead of
love, do we defer to whatever makes a person happy, as long as it does no
harm to another? We have already defeated
that very notion by putting a restriction on people. What if what makes someone happy does cause
harm to another? Do they not still have
a right to their happiness in a relativistic framework?
Without an absolute standard of right and wrong, the very
concepts are meaningless. So we must
have an absolute standard. For a
Christian, this begins and ends with the Bible.
Yes, this does take the approach of Biblical Inerrancy. Yes, I do understand this is an approach to
the Bible and not one that is shared by all who claim the title Christian. However, as previously demonstrated, once we
start picking and choosing what we will and will not use, we essentially defeat
the entire concept of morality. For if God is not to be taken at his word, and remains a mutable being, then we have no legitimate basis for declaring anything right or wrong.
Moreover, when we start to tear passages out of the Bible,
further questions must then be answered.
If we ignore this moral rule, then why do we need to be saved? What is sin if we are not going to pay
attention to what the Bible says about how to live a good life and only give credence to the pleasant spiritual lessons? Why
did we need to be saved if there was no sin?
What was the entire point of Christ’s sacrifice? If Christ was not who he claimed to be, then why should his example be followed? The entire thing becomes a house of cards
when we start to simply pick and choose without Scriptural justification.
Some will readily point out the supposed hypocrisy that
Christians do not apply Levitical law to everything, only what they deem
offensive. That Christians are applying
Levitical law to anything is incorrect actually. Levitical law should only apply under the New
Covenant to flesh out the guidelines laid down in the New Covenant. Christians are explicitly told they do not need to become Jews, and many of these laws exist solely to create a Jewish
cultural identity, setting them apart from the rest of the world. But not all of the
rules given in Leviticus were specific to a Hebrew culture, and these are again
referenced under the New Covenant.
Indeed, sexual immorality of any sort is one of the things readily
written against in the New Testament (again referenced as this seems to be an area we are quick to let lapse).
Under a paradigm where God is the judge of what is right and wrong and has handed us instructions on how to best live our lives in fellowship with Him and with our fellow man, Christians are not actually able
to make a moral judgment. The ability to
determine, or to pretend to determine, right and wrong for ourselves is one of the things we abdicate. This is because God is the judge, not
us. Christians should not be pointing
out lapses in others as if they were the law.
We ought to be pointing them out as children telling someone something
is a no-no. The entire purpose of a
Biblical Christian making a moral stand, saying that anything is wrong, is to
help people realize they need a Savior just as badly as we do.
“Judge not” is a misquote.
The Bible does not teach us not to judge, that would mean we fail to use rational discernment in our day to day lives. Rather it teaches us that we are not the
judge. An action has already been judged
as right or wrong by a God who is just.
It is not our place to argue with that judgment. Recognizing when a rule has been broken is
seldom a judgment call, a rule was either broken or it was not. There are grey areas, I grant this, there are
things that people will avoid so that they do not present an appearance of
evil. But the rules that are laid out
regarding many of topics of morality, such as fornication and adultery actually
have pretty simple lines. It just does
not seem as fun to stay within them so we readily will leap across to the other
side and then rather than admit we did something we should not have done, we
instead stand firm in our folly and try to justify our decisions.
We are not to leap to judge others, removing the speck from their eye while beating them to death with the plank in our own. We are to judge ourselves first, and the
stick we use to measure ourselves ought to be, if anything, harsher than the
one we use to examine others. We ought
to point out a moral lapse, not because something offends us, but only because
we are trying to help people reach the point where they are willing to offer
the help they are offered through Christ. And this only after examining ourselves, prayer, and with solid Biblical support. If you try to take a stand against something as wrong because it offends you rather than on solid Biblical grounds, you will likely find yourself planting your feet in quicksand.
Everyone had had a moral lapse, everyone will have one
again, and again and again. We are not
being good Christian soldiers when we jump on them for falling. Does approaching someone as if to say “see
what a bad person you are” help anyone seek Christ? When we see someone who is mired in a lapse
of morality, we ought to examine our own heart, and then offer a hand out in
help, telling people that it is okay they fell into a trap, because so do
we, and God pulled us out of that one too. If we were to be really honest, the only reason we might recognize the trap our brother is in is because we were there not too very long ago.
