Don't Judge me!

Judgement is one of those things the world has put on it's universal black list. In this day in age, the only person allowed to judge anyone must be seated on a pedestal, wearing black robes and holding a gavel. Unfortunately we still don't really let them judge anyone, we expect them to read off a paper: "You get this sentence because of this law, and a jury decided that legally we're bound to do this to you."

Anyone caught judging is immediately labeled as the worst in society: they are prejudiced, racist, bigoted. If you mention sin, the world has begun to learn a single Bible verse to use on Christians who will tell them that what they do is wrong: Luke 6:37 "Do not judge and you will not be judged, do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven." Alternately, they also like to use Mat 7:1 "Do not judge or you too will be judged."

Interestingly you find yourself stuck in a conundrum to use this verse, because usually the tone is spoken with "You're going to hell because you judged me!" Unfortunately for the unbeliever these verses are grossly out of context when used this way, furthermore, the person who is concerned over their sin is most likely not judging them at all.

Judge, unfortunately, has several meanings, and the greek is no clearer than the english on this one. Too bad it's not like the greek "Love" having five different words. Judge in english should really be like snow to an eskimo. We need a bunch of meanings.

Judge can mean:

To form an opinion through careful weighing of evidence

To sit in judgement on

To determine or pronounce after deliberation or inquiry

To form an estimate or evaluation

To hold as opinion.

Too often I see people actually using opinion number one.

I judge that you are behaving sinfully because of careful weighing of your actions and my perception of your intent. And you immediately say "Don't judge me!" I haven't sat in judgement on you. I just compared your action to a list of actions and said "They look the same!" I haven't told you that you're going to hell, that you'll get herpes, or declared any punishment on you for your actions, to be honest I haven't even really ascribed any quality to you personally by noting that the actions you take are sin.

In essence I believe it is not our place to condemn another by placing our estimation of them as the final say in their eternal value and worth. I do not nor will I ever believe that we ought not carefully observe and weigh evidence to form an opinion, that's called foolishness, but this is what the world wants when they say don't judge.

They say "Just let them alone, they aren't hurting you" "What does it matter?" Basically they are saying that I ought not form my own opinions by weighing the facts. Of course, they came to this conclusion by weighing the facts of their discomfort over being called out on their sin. And they hypocritically tell me I shouldn't judge, then they go a step farther and sit in judgement over me because I dare to call sin sin.

I would ask that men do judge me. Weigh carefully, observe what I do. Form an opinion, and odds are this opinion will show more about you than it does about me. And should you decide you're big enough to sit in judgement and tell me my value, I will kindly disregard, because I judge you inadequate compared to the creator of the universe to estimate my value.

I'm gonna be an awesome parent. I know I'm tooting my own horn here, and the first response from everyone who actually has kids is something along the lines of "Just you wait..." or , "You want mine then?" You are all despicable! I'm going to be a great parent!

How do I know? Well, for starters they're on purpose. Now this is NOT to say that accident children can't have good parents, what I'm saying is that most of the people running around on the planet do things totally capriciously and with absolutely no fore thought. They live completely on accident, and then they wonder why they wind up old, overweight and bitter. My life has not been accidental for a very long time. My marriage was not a marriage build just on a passionate desire to have a hot chick. My marriage was thought out, planned, pursued with the single-mindedness of one running an Olympic sprint, and I still pursue it with that same determination. I can proudly say that I love my wife more than the day I married her, and we grow closer with each day we spend together.

There are principals I have been striving to model for my child from before I asked his mother to marry me. There are further principals we have developed together that we want to raise up in him, and for all the nay-sayers who will tell me "It'll start that way but you will get tired" You are thinking of when you try to instill principals in your child that you don't believe in. I am of the opinion that if the principals are worth instilling in my child they had better be big enough and robust enough to stand up in "real world" adult life. These principals challenge me on a daily basis, and my struggles to live them instill character in my life. Unless you are willing to live the principals you're trying to beat into your children, you will fail. This is because the degree your life matches your rules will give you the degree your child can respect you as a person. This is respect garnered completely separate from your position to them or even your relationship with them, this is respect that is completely for the person you are and live as, this is what will make the difference when your child is struggling with obeying you and having fun with his friends.

Perhaps the biggest of all that makes me assert I will be an awesome parent is this: I will uphold my children's actual needs above their perceived needs. This means rather than working over time at a job to get them new fancy gym shoes so they can fit in with all the cool kids wearing Adidas, I'll buy them pay less, and be home with them, teaching them through my life how they are to treat women and others by the way I treat their mother and them.

I don't know how many single moms I've seen in communications and counselling classes who get to the part where your actions reveal your actual values, and they have a crisis that "Do I really value my child? I'm putting them in daycare so I go to class!" and they quickly justify it with "But I'm getting this degree to provide for them better!" And they are usually lying! Often they have a degree they pursue as a status symbol, usually to prove something to an abusive first husband. They've told themselves that the degree will get them a better job, something that anyone who has gotten a degree in the last five years can tell you, is nothing to be assured of, and meanwhile their child gets raised by strangers. If I were to be utterly and brutally honest, I'd say to put their child first they should find a good, godly man who is desperately passionate about God, and children, get in his way, get married, and raise their children with someone who can help them model a healthy life of principal and character while they raise them and he does whatever he can to put food on the table.

I know it's not popular, but honestly, what is better for their children? Saying "Mommy makes 5 thousand more annually than she did when I was born, hey can I go to your house, there's no one at my house for three more hours" or "I can't wait to go home to mommy and daddy, they love me so much!" This is the difference I want to make for my children. Be there, love them, and help them discover and grow into whatever God intended them to be. This is why I'm going to be an awesome parent.

You Deserve It!

I find it amusing that people are all into what they "Deserve". They like it when they've earned something, when someone else has a legal obligation to them. This American infatuation with deservedness has pierced even into our emotional and personal lives, and has for a long time, to the point where I find songs in The Sound of Music claiming boldly "Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could; so somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good." and songs like Butterfly Kisses declaring "With all I've done wrong; I musta done something right; to deserve hugs every morning, and butterfly kisses at night."

My short, easy, simple response is NO! Lets just start by exploding the idea of exactly what you do deserve. People get all bent out of shape about their freedoms, but all they will do is bitch about them, they won't actually TAKE them. People will complain when you tell them they can't pray in school, but they don't act like it's really their liberty. People will say "Why should you deserve to practice your religion when it offends the beliefs of Agnostic Johnny over there?" The answer is that practicing my religion by praying over my meal is not something deserved. It's (if you read the constitution) an inalienable right. That is, you can make a rule, but I can actually flip you off and do it anyway. In all truth I can pray and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. It is a part of making me human, and while little agnostic Johnny will go bitch to the school board, the fact that I pray over a cup of peaches asking God to bless it neither indoctrinates Johnny nor does it prevent him from unbelief in God, any god, or the idea of a universal power, or, hell, even the power rangers or sunlight, or conservation of energy and matter! Johnny has the inalienable right to unbelief in all of these things, even if this unbelief is illogical, stupid, and will get him docked a grade.

What we feel however is that we deserve to practice these things without anyone making life difficult for us. Let me just clear this up right now:

You Deserve Nothing (except punishment for the bad things you've done)

Even if you write up a contract with someone, if that person is at root dishonest, you don't actually deserve the money, you were stupid enough to make a contract with a dishonest person. The courts can even side with you, but you will still at base level have agreed to do something for someone who makes it a practice to give no one anything, therefore it should be assumed going in that you're essentially doing this for free plus the cost of court fees and a lifetime of frustration that you'll be unwilling to collect on this bill.

You don't get love from your children because you deserve it, and you don't give them love because they deserve it.

You don't practise your religion because you deserve it.

What you do get off of deserving are things like traffic tickets and hell. You agreed to the rules of the road when you hopped in the car, you agreed to the rules of the country when you moved in, and you agreed to the ticket when you parked in front of the fire hydrant. It's pretty simple to grasp.

You are made to worship God, You are made to be like him, God's nature precludes sin from his presence, guess where sin by definition deserves to wind up?

Furthermore, people in this country have the audacity to believe that buying a girl a meal and a movie entitles them to sexual favors.

We even go so far as to believe that because you have received it in the past you were deserving of it to begin with, or because you meet qualifications to receive charity that you deserve the charity. Note well-fare.

I hope that in my life I can get through life with little I deserve dropping into my life and much undeserved charity and grace (like getting a good paying job, and having a healthy family) and that I can be correctly thankful for these gifts rather than implying to myself that "Well Gee, I must have been really good somewhere in my life to get a good paying job and healthy kids, and that slob over there with the mentally handicapped child was just a jackass growing up."

What's the Difference?

A friend of mine posted a great, intelligent question that I feel I'll qualify my response for, but I LOVED the question. His question: What is the difference between Christians and Non-Christians?

Furthermore I loved the variety of responses he garnered from the question. Everything from "No one really knows, even the Bible doesn't really say" to "I'm sorry you feel challenged in your faith." There was even a few run of the mill "Well if you don't believe in Christianity they are wrong and stupid and hypocritical and judgmental and mean and jerks and....." It was even suggested that the real Christians are the ones that live like the Jews did. You know, the ones Jesus pissed off to the point they tried to stone him several times and finally manipulated the government system into allowing them to crucify him. They were mostly pissed at him btw for his disregard for their laws and the ways they showed off their holiness.

My friend said, almost in conclusion to the variety of posts "There is no observable difference"

So, when you walk into a church, how do you play the Where's Waldo? game of finding the real Christians and setting them apart from the posers? Considering the mass confusion of what exactly makes a Christian on the inside that came off of just this post, and the much larger confusion I see in the general public, I can understand how Christians get labled "hypocrites" and "judgmental" and "Jerks" and so on. Most of the people addressed Ideologically what makes one a Christian and many of them appeared to be answering from outside the camp, and a couple from inside a church building.

What I want to tackle is actually the much stickier "When you walk into a church building in US of A, how do you tell who is really a Christian" Who gets the doctrine the evangelical, trinitarian, Christian church pulls from the Bible? (which is, by the way, according to the JW magazine the view you would adopt if you read the Bible apart from their SPECIAL insight into it)

It's tough, you walk in, there's usually a greeter who hands you some booklets, and smiles at you, shows you a seat, and everyone seems to look at you a little funny. Somehow you manage to feel both like an unwanted intruder and a piece of meat at the same time. The pastor rambles about stuff that doesn't make a lot of sense, church breaks, and people split off into their pre-designated groups that don't include you. On your way out the door people invite you to come with them to a restaurant you didn't plan on going, so you head off, they talk about stuff that isn't relevant in your life, they ask you very few questions about yourself, and you wind up paying for more than you intended when you showed up. If you continued going the invitations to do other things would quit coming, and getting involved in small groups very often could make you feel more and more of an outsider because anyone that doesn't just thoughtlessly swallow their particular denominational dogma gets the cold stare until they shut up and let the "grown ups" talk which consists of stupid rhetoric like this "When the Bible says 'not even a sparrow falls to the ground unnoticed' what's it saying, put it in your own words" and it's answered with "Well I think it's saying that if a poor little sparrow falls to the ground God knows about it, and we're a lot bigger than sparrows, so God's gonna pay attention to us!" And everyone nods with glazed over eyes as thought the verse really was talking about God's attention to seismic disturbances across the face of the earth.

What I find truly amusing is that those who clearly do not affiliate with the church will look at me wondering why I go to church and how I know such things, and those who are always at the church will shake their finger at me for saying it.

I find a LOT of fakers in the american church, I find it truly amusing that in the JWs, Mormons, and Catholics, there's actually a decent number of people who misunderstand the religions preached there for Christianity and will likely wind up in heaven because they were not correctly taught the false teachings being pushed by others. Though I'd push this is not the ideal way to get into heaven.

First I want to make a clear-cut internal distinction between a Real Deal, True Blue, covered in Christ's blood Christian, and the guy that no one is sure about. The real Christian has absolutely no doubt in his mind that Christ is the only answer for sin, that sin is so severe, so crippling, so cancerous that without Christ, death, the second death, is the only option and direction. I often find the guy that is questionable see-sawing. I find him saying "Well if you don't believe in hell you won't go there." Really? that's the answer? The only people who will go to hell are the ones who believe in it? Well then the solution is not Christianity, it's repression of the knowledge and idea of hell, ultimately in my mind, the solution would be to redefine hell as like Heaven, but with weed and sex. You'll often find them claiming the "blessed are the peace keepers" in the beatitudes, and saying things like "You can't just pick a sin and tell people they'll go to hell for it" they will also say stuff like "Oh, if you read the Bible literally like that, you should sew four tassels on your coat and grow a beard!"

Externally, Cory is very close, at first glance there is absolutely no difference between the Christ-following and the non, between those who are daring enough to take the Bible at what it says, dive into the difficulties, and let it change their lives, and those who use select portions of the Bible as a beating stick to make everyone play nice together.

What I find is as you get to know a person, the truth leaks out. Unfortunately, not many in the world, and, hell, even in the church get close enough to tell the difference, and I believe I know why: Being around a real Christian is a little like getting sunburned all the time. They are gracious, they don't condemn you, and yet, at the suggestion that sin isn't that big a deal, that it'd be okay to sleep with your boyfriend, or tell them about what so and so did the other night, and a sudden hardness appears. They might not even say anything, they certainly won't tell you that you're going to hell for it, but it's like you crossed some invisible line in the sand, and they are extremely uncomfortable about it and are watching you from the other side of the line. You'll resent this because often it is mistaken for them being morally superior. If you looked closer you'd detect concern and sadness, not superiority. Indeed an analysis of your feelings would show that the anger at their 'moral superiority' is actually emanating from your own attitudes. It also irks you that when you chastise them for doing things you don't approve of (like not congratulating your gay friend on his recent move-in with his boyfriend) You feel that same sad hardness like they are pitying you from across the line, rather than them feeling bad for offending your ethics.

If you're a Christian, or close to becoming one, their presence becomes a little like a soothing balm you dread to open. You'll find yourself asking their opinion on questions that are none of their damn business, because somehow if they say it's okay you can shut your conscience up about the whole issue, and you know what they'll say, and when you say it, you blame them, but at the same time the fact that they will always let you come back, they will not bring up your past offenses over and over, gives a stability to the relationship that you'll often begin to crave. They aren't too hot on the rules, they let people do a lot of things their own way, but they are rock solid and can seem downright mean on what they say the Bible says. But there's something immovable under there. They genuinely believe in this Jesus, that him dying on the cross changed something fundamental and relevant to their lives, and you find them tying it into unexpected things, but they won't tie it into others you might expect them to.

They'll talk of love, but their love is weird. You'll go off on love and sometimes you run against that sad resistance to your words when you thought you were trying to lift up love just like them. Most of all, perhaps most frustratingly of all, when you ask them questions, they'll irritatingly explain in terms of a relationship to Jesus. I'm not talking "what do you want for lunch" questions. I mean questions that start off almost as jokes and then they start to take a serious turn. "Do you have regrets?" starts with telling about a bad haircut, and somehow you wind up listening to a story of them doing things you didn't think they could ever have done, and they smile with relief as they talk about Jesus removing their shame. Unfortunately usually the non-believer will walk away confused, feeling like the person they've been getting to know is a hypocrite or a liar. Either they never did what they say they did, or they aren't the good person you thought because they have done some of the things that they look at you sadly for doing.

I think the big miss in this is that Christianity is a completed belief. It's not a "try harder" or "Do harder" or "Live better" philosophy, it's a "Jesus did it, and I'm free" that when embraced, and once set loose in your life, attacks you on a personal level, and dynamically alters your perception of your self and the world, and will work this alteration in you until the day you die.

So it becomes vastly confusing to a non-christian and I don't mean someone who doesn't go to church, I mean someone who has never just trusted Jesus act of salvation and trusted and allowed the Holy Spirit to literally beat the hell out of them. It is confusing because this person has done wrong, and still condemns it, most importantly, condemns it in themselves.

One of the most effective witnesses I ever gave was to a person who challenged me that if I had never been where she was I should shut up because I don't know what it was like. When she found that I HAD been there, she got quiet for a moment and told me "Well, it's okay" and I had the incredible opportunity to look at her and say "No, it wasn't and it isn't, and I can't change it." that THIS is why Jesus is the necessity.

So yah, when you walk in the door and see the greeter, you have to go in understanding that entrance, and a name on the membership roll and knowing all the songs, being in the praise band, shouting Amen, wriggling on the floor, and raising your hands do not define you as Christian. Further you need to be aware that many of them ARE Christians mechanically and on technicality, but they are dysfunctional, and like a dysfunctional family, they kind of work, but they damage themselves and those around them as they do. and finally that even if you walk into a church without a single real functional Christian, this does not negate the truth of the Good news that Jesus completed our righteousness and provided what we are dually undeserving of: salvation, that is the privilege and ability to abide in him, to be with him, to talk to him, to walk with him, and this is not just getting what we pray for, it's not the performance of miracles, it's not miraculous healing, it doesn't put a halo on our heads, or make us sprout wings, it doesn't make us rich, or give us nice houses, it doesn't end our pain, it doesn't remove our disease, it doesn't eliminate our sadness, it doesn't liberate us immediately from the curse, it opens the door for us to go and enjoy the relationship we were built to have. That in the end, the Gold in the streets of heaven is there because we all dropped it when we were able to enjoy the relationship with the God in heaven. Heaven is where Jesus is, and if you aren't into just Jesus, heaven will be significantly different from what you'd desire it to be.

How do you spot a Real Christian? I'd challenge you to stop trying to spot one, and just become one.