To Judge the Quick and the Dead

This has come up several times in the last several days, and I've done a lot of thinking about it, and now that my classes are finally finally finished with classes I can write about it.

One of the most interesting thoughts I read this quarter came from my Apostles' Creed class (way too lazy to go get the book and tell you the author, but I will if someone asks) was the idea that God's judgment is not a harsh thing. The criticism, much as we hate that word, is actually in it's purest form an expression of love.

One of my friends posted a blog (which you can read here) that speaks of Christ's death as having saved us all from God's judgment, as though God were the bigoted small town judge, and we were the poor ethnic kid who was in over their head. (Lucky us Jesus is a good lawyer.) Which, in my opinion, is a total misinterpretation of Jesus "fulfilling the law" actually means.

I should come clean that I would have totally taken the post at face value a couple of years ago, and I don't disagree that God's grace through Jesus' sacrifice is the reason that we no longer have to feel guilt for the wrongs we do each other and God. But it kind of feels like pitting Jesus and God against each other, God as the somewhat malevolent overlord who doesn't necessarily want to punish us, but has no other choice, and Jesus as the only thing that stands in God's way. Which makes no sense as at if they're the same person.

It's hopeful, open minded, wonderfully uplifting posts like this that lead to hour long conversations with good friends who are unable to believe that God is inherently good. And to be honest, if I bought into that theology, I don't think I'd be too sure either.

I'm not trying to say that I'm right and the dude who wrote the post (who I'm fairly sure is a pastor, and thus has quite a bit more experience and education than me) is wrong. I think he's exactly right when it comes to the grace part of the gospel. The problem is that there's no truth to a gospel that lacks judgement. And not judgement as we know it, but judgement that comes from the being that knew us even before we were an idea. A being that knows so well what we're capable of, the good and the bad of us, our capacity for both compassion and harm, and all of the things we hope and fear for ourselves. That being can judge us, because that being knows our everything.

And it's ok that He judges us. Because he doesn't do it harshly. His standard is high, and seems to most of us entirely unreachable, but reaching the goal is not the point. God knows we're broken, but he also knows how we were created. He knows that we were made for better things than we're given in this world. That the earthly things we find, like hate, and judgement based on assumptions, and causing others pain, last only for a while, and that our capacity for love is greater than those things. Because he created us in his image, and his capacity for love is vast. Likewise we judge because we are made in his image, but the bad things in this world make our view so small, that just like love, we can't get to the full meaning of judgment.

One of my favorite Bible verses has always been the plank in the eye. Found in both Matthew (7:1-5) and Luke (6:37-42) it is a brief blurb in the middle of one of Jesus' sermons about judgment, and how we shouldn't, and pretty much that none of us is living right, so commenting on what someone else is doing wrong is stupid, because you're dong stuff wrong too, and no one likes to be called out like that. One of the reasons this piece of scripture is my favorite is that it's just so beautifully ironic to quote.  People love to call each other out when they are being judgmental. And yet in that same moment, the person quoting is also assuming that the other person is doing something they shouldn't, thus also needing to look at their own eye before the other person's. Thus begins the terribly ironic circle of judgement that can never, ever be escaped as both people make assumptions about the other until the end of time.

That's where we mess up judgment. In the assumptions. There's a delightfully witty answer to the statement "You know what assuming does" that I won't write here because my mom and grandmother read this, but basically assuming just makes everyone mad at each other. Judgment in the godly, loving sense, has nothing to do with assumption. Judgment in the  broken, post fall, knowledgey (knowledgy? knowledgie?) sense is all about assumption. Of course we know what that person is like, because they, or this situation, or this place, or this time is exactly like this other person, situation, place, or time I was in before. And in the same way the scary judgeGod misses out on truly and honestly judging the poor, innocent ethnic kid, we end up missing out on getting to know a new person, situation, place, or time because we're too busy telling him/her/it who and what they are.