As I've grown in my faith over the years, I've found myself becoming much more self-aware. Especially since I journal each morning, I can read a passage from, say, 10-20 years ago, consider what my thought process was at the time, and now marvel either at growth or that I'm exactly the same in "this or that" area. It's encouraging and frustrating.
Example: I know that I have become more compassionate and less judgemental towards certain people=homeless, addicts, pregnant teens, homosexuals, etc. In short, the populations I've worked with and had an opportunity to serve over the last 2 decades. I'm certainly not perfect at this but I've so much farther along from where I started.
Where I struggle is with Christians themselves, which I find maddening. I find myself sitting on my mighty throne of judgement from time to time, raising my eyebrows at an action, a post, a new nugget of information about someone that claims to be a believer, and condemning them for it. "It" being both doctrinal compromises and moral absolutes but also the "grey areas" of Christian conduct. Thankfully the Holy Spirit busts in and reminds me of myself, that I also have been on a journey of change, and who the heck am I to sit in judgement on someone else...
Over the last few months our agency has been going through Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, a course i took when I first began at Covenant House 24 years ago and one I decided to do again. Covey was a devout Morman so his principles are largely (and almost secretly) tied to Biblical principles which is part of the reason I like his book/training. It ties in well with what we do at Covenant House and, frankly, with how I desire to grow and mature as a Christian/person.
Providentially, as I've gone through the course, I "stumbled" into Romans 14 quite by accident during my morning devotions. Romans 14 is a great passage that talks about judging other believers and relational conduct towards them. It fit well with the 7 Habits training. Example: on the day we were trained on the principle, "Think Win-Win", my morning devotional passage was Romans 14:19-"Let us pursue what makes for peace and mutual edification." Pretty cool.
One devotional passage that leaped out at me about this whole thing (my struggle with judging other Christians) was this: Jesus invites everyone to the table. The examples given in the devotional were the following:
- Drinkers and non-drinkers
- Cursers and non-cursers
- People who go to churches with 100 people and people who go to church with 30,000 people
- People who grew up in church and those who did not
A line that I wrote down was, "It is spiritual pride to judge another Christian in certain areas. Not everyone is the same regarding spiritual growth", and ending with Romans 15:7-"Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you (INDEED!)--(WHY?)=in order to bring praise to God."
I don't want to be a spiritual snob. I don't want to look at a Christian "baby" and at things in their life they struggle with or have yet to give up or frankly, the way they choose to conduct themselves and have a judgemental attitude about that. It's an ugly feeling and I don't want it, so I'm glad I'm aware of it. God only knows the people in my own life that have looked at ME that way, especially the Lord! Joyce Meyer said in one of her talks regarding leading others to the Lord that often we try to clean the fish before we've even caught it.
Roamans 14:4'WHO ARE YOU to judge someone else's servant?' My fellow Christians WILL give an account for their behavior but not to me! I'm quite certain that just as I might be surprised at who is sitting at the table with me in heaven, others who knew me "when" might be surprised to see me there as well. I added a few folks to the list above:
- Smokers and non-smokers
- Fat people and fit people
- Productive people and lazy people
- Gamblers and non-gamblers
- Neat-house people and hoarders
- People who dress nicely for church and people who come in torn jeans and slippers
You get the picture...
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