Why Are Christians So Narrow Minded? (Part II: On "Judgment")
Rev. Richard H. Thompson, November 22, 2009

Luke 16:19–31

Perhaps one of the most common complaints leveled at Christians is that they (we) are judgmental. Are they (we)? If by "judgmental" is meant arrogant, holier than thou, strident, rigid, loudly expressing disapproval of various life styles, groups, the media, of political positions, evolutionists, and other religions, the answer is supposed to be, "No." Not that how things are supposed to be is how they are. However, if by "judgmental" is meant the exercise of discernment, of distinguishing between what's good and bad, right and wrong, based on a vision for a better world then the answer is unapologetically, "Yes".

Still, let's face it: we don't like to be judged, do we? We don't like it when we get it at work or on the field of play, let alone by our peers, or anyone else. We like to be left alone and free. Hey Christians! Didn't Jesus say somewhere, "Judge not, lest you also be judged?"

As a matter of fact he did say that. What did he mean? He meant, "Don't go playing God." As in, "Condemn not." As in, "You don't get to decide who goes where..."

I call this the Uncle Harry question. Say I'm helping with a service for someone, call him "Uncle Harry", and as far as anyone can remember, he never darkened the door of a church. I get asked, "Isn't it hard to do a service for a person like that?" And, "Where do you suppose Uncle Harry is now?" I have two responses. One is that these services are called Witnesses to the Resurrection for a reason. We bear witness to who God is in God's mercy, power, wisdom, grace and truth. That God is Judge, but who God is as Judge is revealed to us in his Son and our Savior Jesus Christ. My second answer therefore is, "Thank God I'm not the Judge. And thank God you aren't either!" As a member of a church I once served put it, "I'm in sales, not management."

Besides, "judgment" has shades of meaning that fall well short of "condemnation". The word in the Bible that gets translated as "judge" has the basic meaning "to separate", as in "distinguish", or "discriminate", "select", and "decide". The word "crisis" has the same root as the word "judge" as in having to make a decision, maybe on the field of battle, or in treating sickness. So "assessment" is necessary. It follows that rulers have to exercise judgment to see to peace, provision and protection.

You and I exercise judgment every day about people, situations, risks, how to spend our time, our money, our energy. The artist "judges" that her painting is not yet finished because it doesn't yet express her vision, so she makes changes. The engineer "judges" that her engine does not yet work at its maximum capacity; that it needs to be adjusted. The doctor "judges" that the medication is not yet balanced for his patient to feel strong and healthy.

I'm told an airplane that takes off from LAX and flies to JFK will make not just a few, but thousands of course adjustments while in flight - correcting for wind, air pressure, weight changes as fuel is burned, other airplanes, even sleeping pilots. Every day God is helping us make course corrections, seeing to it that we get to our destination. It's what's meant in the Shepherd's Psalm,

"He leads me in right paths for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff - they comfort me."

Where would we be without God's judgment? We'd be completely on our own. It would all be up to us to decide what is right and good. Put it this way: if God is not the Judge, then who is? Who gets to decide who will be the Judge? How does this get decided? Again, it comes down to power, of who has control, doesn't it? And how does that get decided? Is it by looks, or wealth, education, public opinion?

One reason some people have a problem with God as the Judge is that we live in a very individualistic culture and most of the time we're not even aware of it: it's the air we breathe, the stage we stand on. We assume our freedom right down to our absolute right to privacy. It's our bias that filters what we see, agree with and act on. But what if God has some things to teach us that don't fit our cultural bias?

A former member of our staff, Moses Pulei, was raised as Masai in Kenya. His is a wonderful story of how he came to commit his life to Christ. He is now a professor of theology at Whitworth College in Spokane. He tells the story of returning to his tribe for one his many visits and sitting with the elders. They asked him about his Christian faith. He decided he would explain by way of telling Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son. You know it - the wayward son goes off with his inheritance and squanders it in loose living. He ends up living with the pigs and comes to himself and decides to come home. When he returns the father has been waiting and watching for him. When he sees his son's silhouette on the horizon the father runs through the village and embraces him, puts a robe on his shoulders, sandals on his feet, a ring on his hand, and calls for a huge party to welcome him home. After Moses told this story, the elders sat in silence for a long time. Then one of them said, "Moses, don't ever tell this story here ever again..."

Why? Because the elders believed such a father in Masai culture would create chaos. You can't go having fathers forgive such waywardness. But we love this story. We love to hear about the loving father whom we understand is God. We love to hear about forgiveness, and a new beginning, don't we? We assume everyone thinks the same way. But not everyone agrees with this. Cultural filters make it difficult to hear the whole gospel.

The point is that we can expect that if there is a real God, who has revealed Godself in Creation, and in History in Jesus (we have talked about this in prior messages, they are all available for you), who came to show humankind who God is, how God is, what matters to God and providing very strong evidence in Jesus' Resurrection - that we are going to discover we also have blindsides, holes in our thinking, that at least some of our self-justifying ideas are going to be shown to be exactly that, "self-justifying" ideas.

So part of our problem with God's judgment, maybe a big part, is that we have a lot to learn about God. But we get a lot of help on this.

Listen to some scripture:

"For the Lord you God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers providing them food and clothing..." (Deut. 10:18)

"With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high?...He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6)

The image we get from these and many other passages is of God involved, invested, holding us accountable for the purpose of teaching and disciplining, and disciplining us. It's the image of God who cares about the condition of our souls.

Jesus reserved some of his strongest, what some would probably call "judgmental", language for religious leaders. That's probably because they thought they had God down to a system. It went like this: the blessed will be well off, those who are wicked won't be. So if you're successful it's because God is showering his favor on you. And, if you are poor and down and out, it's because you've got it coming. You did something, or a lot of somethings, wrong. Sound familiar? We're tempted to make these kinds of judgments, aren't we?

So Jesus told those religious leaders this parable about God's judgment. It goes like this.

'There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, "Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames." But Abraham said, "Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us." He said, "Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house— for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment." Abraham replied, "They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them." He said, "No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent." He said to him, "If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead."'

The religious leaders' heads must have been spinning. This parable did a "180" on how they thought God judged things.

It turns out the rich man's riches have led to his arrogance and indifference to the man laying at his front gate. The rich man seemed to have lost all sense of what it means to be human. It's the problem with material wealth - that it becomes "materialism", its own kind of god. Then people become objects to step over on the way out the gate.

Is it "narrow minded" of Christians to believe in God's judgment? Maybe it's narrow minded to not believe in God's judgment...

But what about this business of "hell" Jesus describes in his parable? I've struggled with this too. I grew up my whole life "Presbyterian". I never heard much about "hell" because I suppose we Presbyterians are more "heaven-bent". For a long time I wondered about whether such a place could even exist. Of course, many of us know hints of it, don't we? Of "hell on earth" - places of cold cruelty, uncaring, trapped in oppression. The 20th century was the most brutal in human history. There are many places where you can find hell on earth today.

Several times and in many ways Jesus speaks of such a place as he does in this parable. That other parable we just heard a little while ago (Matthew 25: 31-46) describes a Day of Judgment, call it the Day of Accountability, where the Lord calls everyone to account based on how they responded to the Lord's presence in the "least of these", his brothers and sisters. And then there is separation of sheep from goats, and there is heaven and there is hell.

What is this place? Maybe we best answer this question by who is in this place? So the rich man finds himself separated from God forever. The rich man has no name. He is only identified by his wealth, whereas the poor man has a name, Lazarus. Perhaps this is Jesus' subtle way of telling us that it's possible for a person to so completely lose his or her person-hood that person wants absolutely nothing to do with God. That anything to do with God is completely and utterly repulsive. Tim Keller writes, "In short, hell is simply one's freely chosen identity apart from God on a trajectory to infinity..."

The rich man's god was his own comfort. He wants nothing to do with the real God. And in the end, God grants the man's deepest desire. God says, "Your will be done."

I highly recommend C.S. Lewis' classic, The Great Divorce, where Lewis describes a bus load of people from hell visiting heaven. They are welcome anytime to come, but find the whole idea repulsive. They reluctantly step off the bus and find that the grass cuts their feet. They pick an apple off a tree but it is too heavy to hold. The light is too intense. Heaven is too intense. They rush to get back on the bus so that they can go home, to hell.

Lewis writes, "Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others... but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God ‘sending us' to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud."

These two parables of Jesus give us some idea of what we are being held accountable for. It's trust as opposed to fear. It is because we trust God that we are becoming generous, generative, caring people as opposed to stagnant, stuck, pulled-out-of-life people.

Every day God is working on us. Every day we get new opportunities to meet God, and to decide what we want to become.

An example. This week while I was thinking about all this a poem appeared on my desk. It took me a day or two to actually read it. I was amazed. You'd think I was getting help, that Someone wants us to understand something of who God is. This is written by one of our members, Barbara Rehab.

A great cathedral in grandeur rose-
Near Regensburg where the Danube flows-
Around its corner was a humble arcade,
Where Karl the cobbler applied his trade.

It happened one day toward fall's late end,
Two neighbors called on their dear old friend.
They found the shop, so meager and mean,
Was brightened up with fragrant green.

"Old friends, good news! At dawn today,
As the cock's crow scared the night away-
The Lord appeared and said to me:
"I'm coming tonight as your guest I'll be."

So I've busied myself before we're to dine,
Strewing the floor with branches of pine.
I've washed the window- the bench is shined-
While over the rafter the holly is twined.

He comes tonight and the table is spread,
With milk and honey and crusty bread.
So his friends went home while Karl sat still,
As he watched for a shadow to cross the hill.

He would wash the feet where the spikes had been,
He would kiss the hands where the nails went in.
And then at the last, he would sit with him,
Break bread and talk, as the day grew dim.

As the cobbler mused there passed his pane,
A beggar drenched by a driving rain.
He called him in from the stormy street
And gave him shoes for his bruised feet.

Soon after the beggar there came a hag,
With wrinkled face- footsteps that drag-
The bundle of kindling had bent her back,
Strained by the weight of the shifting stack.

He gave her the bread and asked her to rest-
She gladly accepted his kind request.
Then to this door came a frightened child-
Lost and bewildered in a world so wild.

He gave it is his milk in the waiting cup-
And he watched as it eagerly drank it up.
Then he carried the child to the mother's arms-
Where it nestled safely from danger and harms.

So the day went down in the crimson west-
And with it went hope of the blessed guest.
Karl sighed as the sky turned to dusky gray,
"Why is it, Lord, that you delay?"

Then soft in the silence a voice was heard,
Lift up your heart for I kept my word.
Three times I came to your friendly door,
Three times my shadow crossed your floor.

Every day we are getting help. Every day we get to practice trusting God who loves us, and this world. And for this we are grateful beyond words.

God bless you, and Happy Thanksgiving.

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Questions for Reflection and recommended reading.