Foolishness to Greeks: Judgment

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.

Foolishness to Greeks: Repentance

One thing that has been brought to light to me recently is a better picture of the extent to which Christians no longer make sense in society.  This wasn’t always the case, but within the last generation we have shifted away from a society rooted in Christendom and toward a Secular society.  There are a lot of consequences from this shift and I haven’t the time, space, or interest in unpacking all of those here.  However, one of those is that Christians continue to use terms and language that people do not understand.  

So, in an attempt at foreign relations, a task which I am immensely under qualified to perform (as I am not a scholar in Greek or Hebrew nor am I a linguist), I want to try and unpack some of the terms that seem a bit contentious.  To begin, I’d like to look at the idea of repentance.  Repentance has come to be understood as equivalent with an apology.  The term apology is defined as synonymous with regret, confession, admission of guilt, request for forgiveness, act of contrition, and expression of regret.  The term repentance, however, is synonymous with regret, sorrow, remorse, penitence, atonement, shame, contrition, and penance.

The dictionary doesn’t even define these things as being equivalent to one another, rather this is a cultural misunderstanding.  A part of this misunderstanding may be in the common language that both use to express themselves.  When we are apologizing we say “I’m sorry”.  This is a part of what is done when a person repents.  We have to ask forgiveness from those we have wronged when we repent.

However, when a Christian speaks of repentance it is not simply a matter of “saying I’m sorry to their imaginary friend in the sky.”  It’s also not as simple as just saying I’m sorry (and saying this to the person that was wronged, not a third party).  Repentance is predicated upon the recognition of wrong doing, and therein lays the largest distinction between the two ideas.  We apologize all the time, but we do not always admit we have done something wrong when we do so, and we certainly don't always make a change to ourselves.  It seems “I’m sorry” a lot of the time not for an action we have taken, but rather we are sorry for the reaction that was caused by our action.  

In Hebrew, there are multiple words that are translated repent. שׁוּב shuwb {shoob} is one (Ezekiel 14:6).  It means to turn back, or to return.  It does not always connect to the idea of returning to a starting point.  In some ways this might be a good thing to note.  From some actions, even if a person acknowledges wrong doing, they will have burned bridges that are not able to be repaired. נָחַם nacham {naw-kham'} is another. This is connected to the idea of sorrow, grief, but also to the idea of comfort.  A strange connection perhaps, but admitting we are in the wrong and wish to cease this, while it may be painful to go through is necessary if propitiation is ever to be reached.

This point is driven home in 2 Corinthians 7:9, 10:

⁹ As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, 

but because you were grieved into repenting. 

For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us.

¹⁰ For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation 

without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

The Greek word for repentance used here is μετάνοιαν.  Its root is μετάνοια metanoia {met-an'-oy-ah}.  This is a change of mind.  Taken subjectively this is a compunction that drives one to reformation, and by implication is a reversal. 

So, I hope that helps clear up what repentance means in the Biblical sense.  This is no simple apology, this is declaring that we are in the wrong without excuse or exemption.  Admitting our wrongdoing to the party we have wronged is a part of this.  But we must also turn our backs on our wrong doing.  We can't persist in wrongdoing, that is not repentance.  Repentance demands actions on our part.  Not all bridges can be rebuilt.  Some trusts may never be restored and some fences may never be mended, even if a person forgives someone for wronging them.  But if we don't repent, and meld our apology with our actions; we can't even begin to try.

Why I still love Masters of the Universe

So, lately I have been on this gigantic Masters of the Universe kick.  I enjoyed He-Man and She-Ra growing up.  I never really saw the New Adventures of He-man when it came out, but I was able to watch it on YouTube not too long ago and quite enjoyed it.  When I got into college I loved the Mike Young Productions series.  A friend of mine called it an example of what American Anime was capable of at its best.  I agree with him on that to this day, the animation holds up and is absolutely gorgeous.  I've fluctuated a bit with how the comics have been handled since they came out, but overall I have enjoyed them, The Eternity War series has loads of potential that I can't wait to see explored. 

Starting with the 200x series, I also started to appreciate the sculpting and artistry of converting an animated character into an action figure.  With the Masters of the Universe Classics series, my appreciation for this has grown tremendously.  These action figures are gorgeous.  They really are works of art, and the story that has been built for these characters using their biographies is one I have found myself enjoying quite a bit.

But it's not the cartoons or the action figures that I think has me loving this series so much at this juncture.  Rather, I believe it's the two dominant concepts that the series consistently presents that I am still enjoying.  The first one is the idea in the title, Masters of the Universe.  The characters each act as epitome's have achieved mastery over something.  He-Man is the strongest man in the universe.  Beastman has mastery over beasts, Tri-clops over vision etc.  True the naming scheme is fairly simplistic a lot of the time, but it is a fun idea and employs a system of checks and balances that is a lot of fun from a story creation stand point (hey I did grow up playing with these characters after all).

But even more simplistic than the naming scheme of the characters is I think why I enjoy the series the most.  The good guys are good, and the bad guys are bad.  The villains have depth to them, the idea that Skeletor is actually the rightful heir to the throne of Eternia is really enjoyable.  I love that we are seeing a family at war with itself as it adds a bit of personal interest to each engagement.  But at the same time, the villains remain villainous and the heroes heroic. 

We live in a world that seems to celebrate the grey areas of life.  We can no longer trust our leaders and the sources of information we have available to us seem less and less reliable.  Having a moral stance against anything is no longer acceptable, and adhering to certain standards casts us as elitist or oppressive.  We live in a world where we practically can't do anything without someone being offended or somehow socially irresponsible, and in this world, the lines between good and bad, light and dark, are often blurred.  We've taken the Star Wars approach of everything depending on a certain point of view to preposterous levels.  Forget about confusing, it's exhausting.

I think that's what I enjoy the most about this series, is the simple demonstrations of good and evil.  True, the good guys will team up with the villains to fight a greater threat, but at the end of the day the lines aren't crossed.  The villains come in various shapes and sizes.  The Evil Warriors, the Horde, the Snake-Men, none really likes the others, evil takes many forms in the universe.  Heroes may abandon their principles and become villains (Snake Man-at-Arms), while villains may choose to reject who they had been and become heroes (Force Captain Adora).  But a hero does what is right while a villain does not.  A hero looks out for others, a villain only for themselves.  A hero plays the long game, a villain looks at the short reward.

In the real world, doing the right thing can get messy.  Even knowing what the right thing to do is sometimes can become complicated.  We are all fallen and we are all going to mess up.  But simply screwing up is not the same thing as switching sides.  When we are redeemed, we are given a new nature.  We wage an internal war that actually might well resemble the struggles of these characters.  But at the same time, no matter how complicated things become, there remains a line.  One of the truths that we are given in the Bible is that "If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand." (Mark 3:25)  We can't be both hero and villain, we ultimately will have to choose.  While the Masters of the Universe is not real, like all mythology it gives us a chance to experience the complex realities we are surrounded with in a way that gives us the opportunity to process the things we are grappling with.