Necessary Evil
We are good at judging one another, aren't we?
Why do you pass judgement on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgement seat of God. For it is written, ‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.’ So then, each of us will be accountable to God. Let us therefore no longer pass judgement on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling-block or hindrance in the way of another. - Romans 14:10-13
There will always be people who do things I don't understand. Chances are, I will have an opinion about their actions, and as a result, about them as well.
We were born to judge, to make choices, to assess good from bad. It is part of our defense mechanism. If we deem someone good, we approach, but if our antennae go up, we stay back.
So, in that sense, we need to be good at judging one another. Friend or foe? But Paul isn't talking about strangers here. He is saying we should not judge our brothers and sisters, those who are like family, people we know, work with, worship with.
Yet these are the people we are best at judging for we know them better than strangers. Strangers tend to be lumped into groups. It makes it simpler for us to rationalize our behavior towards them. If I know little about the individual, I need to have some way to judge them, right?
We say we shouldn't do that, but can we help it?
Perhaps we start out with no opinion. No input, no idea. But experience with one member of the group we create in our minds becomes the example for the whole group.
We don't do this with people we know well, because we see the differences between them and others who are similar.
Then we can distinguish between the actions of the individual and those of the group.
So, judgment is both necessary and evil. We need it to survive in a frightening world, when we know little about one another, but when we know each other well, it takes on a different purpose.
Paul's advice is to remember we are accountable to God who is pretty good at judging all of us. Let's leave it to him.
More to come...