One of my favorite quotes that I memorized as a teen was from a DC Talk album:
“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians… who acknowledge Jesus with their lips… and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” –Brennan Manning
Even if an unbelieving world doesn’t believe in God, they know that the God we claim to follow tells us to consistently live out His teachings. And part of living out those teachings is loving others.
Instead of loving people and speaking the truth in love to them in hopes of them changing toward more God-honoring behaviors, many Christians instead choose to judgmentally condemn others. We are told that we can view peoples’ behaviors in order to judge how to win them to the Lord in love. But we are not told to be harshly condemning of people, pointing our fingers at them as if to say “shame, shame, shame.”
Passages such as “Do not judge so that you will not be judged” aren’t about us accepting peoples’ ungodliness as OK, but rather they are about the issue that God’s problem with our judging is that we not only judge right from wrong, we then stand in judgmental condemnation.
Too often we condemn while we hold onto our own similarly ungodly behaviors. This is called hypocrisy.
Some examples:
We condemn murder, while we hold onto hate;
We condemn those who won’t forgive us, while we are still angry with others;
We condemn adultery, while we are filled with lustful thoughts;
We condemn liars, while we hold back the truth to benefit us;
We condemn greed, while we are not generous;
We condemn criminals, while we find little ways to break the law (such as speeding);
We condemn those who gossip, while we talk about them behind their backs.
We condemn ungodly behaviors, while refusing to see how ungodly we are in the same areas.
What we are doing is standing in judgmental condemnation of others, rather than trying to win people for Jesus through an attitude of loving reconciliation.
We are all sinners. We cannot stand before God on our merits. Therefore we are not to condemn others for being in the same boat as us. Instead we are to use our wisdom and compassion to judge only with an eye toward loving reconciliation… to help others get on track (or back on track) with God.
God says that He does not take pleasure in the death of an evil person, but that every person who is doing evil should turn toward Him and find life. Do we have the same attitude of compassion as God?
There will be a day of judgment. And God will be the One to preside. My hope is that I will have fulfilled my role of pointing more people to life in Him through loving reconciliation on that day.