Judgment in the church
When it comes to feedback, I mostly hear positive things. That’s not because there isn’t negative feedback out there. I’m sure there is. It’s just that most people don’t share their feedback when it’s negative. I have never once had someone come up to me after a Sunday sermon and say, “Well, they can’t all be home runs,” not because every Sermon I give is noteworthy, but because most Christian people are nice.
To a fault.
In fact, my experience has been that if I say something that offends someone, they are more likely to just leave the church and pretend like we never knew each other than they are to tell me that what I said offended them and talk it out.
So, when I do get “negative” feedback, I consider it a real honor. It means that the person values me, or our relationship, or what we’re trying to do at the church enough to take up the issue. I’m grateful for that.
It also provides opportunity for clarification and extension, which is at least an implicit act of grace.
I bring this up because I received a little pushback from my last blog post “A call for fewer Jesus shirts,” that I’d like to address. If you didn’t read the post you can check it our here, but the basic argument is that our lives, not our tshirts, are our witness to the world and when we identify as Christians with our clothing but fail to live up to the standard of Christ with our lives (as we all do at least sometimes) we run the risk of maligning the church in the eyes of the world. Since we are all likely to do something in public that doesn’t represent the church well, perhaps better to just not wear clothing that makes the association obvious.
Some of the feedback I heard (again, very gracious but still what I would consider “pushback”) was that perhaps people don’t wear their religious swag for the purpose of bearing witness but simply as an expression of their gratitude for God’s mercy. They are not trying to project that they have it all together but that they have been rescued by a gracious God.
That’s a perfectly good reason to wear a Jesus tshirt. I hope we’re all finding ways to express our gratitude for what God has done for us. What I hope we can appreciate as Christians is that the message that we are “sinners saved by grace” communicates differently to those outside the church. To those inside the church it is a powerful, galvanizing identifier. We know that we are imperfect which is why we’re so grateful to have a merciful God. We’ll never get it totally right. Thank God we’re simply loved.
But to those outside the church, that same anthem can sound like an excuse, at times even a justification for bad behavior. They see us act badly and wonder how we can call ourselves Christians but still live like jerks. Because following Jesus is supposed to change how we live. We might fairly rebut, “If you think I’m a jerk now, you should have seen me ten years ago,” or “If this is what I’m like with Jesus, imagine what I’d be like without him,” but that’s the thing, we don’t get to make those arguments to the world. The world simply sees our bad behavior, associates us with Jesus and the church, and takes another step back.
If you’re looking for grace and understanding, you’ll find it in Jesus and, hopefully, the church. Where you won’t find it is in the world. That truth ought to influence how we publicly carry ourselves.
Which brings me to another important piece of feedback I received: that my critique came off a little “judgy.”
Anytime one person critiques the behavior of another person, as I did in my post with a woman I witnessed at Cedar Point, especially when they don’t or can’t have all of the information and they don’t very carefully qualify their statements, it comes across as casting judgment which is like a cardinal sin in our “you-do-you-and-let-me-do-me” culture.
First, there is a difference between judgment and condemnation. Judgment is simply assessing the behavior of another person; calling a right thing right or a wrong thing wrong. We do this sort of assessing all the time. We have to. I simply observed a woman hogging the shade as other people “suffered” in the sun and I called it selfish.
Because from where I was standing, it was. And I’m guessing I’m not the only person who made that observation.
To say that this woman did a selfish thing in that moment is not to say that she IS a selfish person or that she has no value as a person or no future with God. I’m sure she’s a wonderful person who acts in selfless ways all the time. In fact, I’m sure she’s far more selfless than she is selfish. I bet she loves God and I know God loves her.
It is simply to call a spade a spade and say that in this moment she chose to do something selfish.
That’s judgment, yes, but not condemnation.
And judgment is something that we are supposed to lovingly offer one another in the church, and precisely for the concern I raised in my post. As the Apostle Paul instructed the Corinthians, Christians are not to judge those outside the church. But we are to judge one another inside the church.[1]
That does not mean we can’t look at those outside the church and call a wrong thing wrong. We can. It simply means it is not our place to be the world’s moral police. But we are supposed to provide that function for one another and precisely because if we do not, we may behave badly in the world and negatively impact the church’s witness. Loving judgment is how we help one another become more Christlike.
Again, if you’re looking for grace and understanding, you’re not going to find it in the world. Yes, we are sinners saved by grace and we’re not trying to pretend we have it all together, but the fact is that we are supposed to be very intentional about how we live in the context of outsiders recognizing that they are passing a different kind of judgment on us all the time.[2] So, we offer loving judgment to one another that can help us more intentionally align our behaviors with our professed beliefs so that when the world sees us, “they have nothing bad to say about us.”[3]
I recognize that by writing about the woman I observed at Cedar Point rather than talking with her, I may have unintentionally vilified her in your minds without actually helping her live more honorably, which I just said is the purpose of insider judgment. But I felt pastorally it would be instructive and I thought it safe given that her identity is unknown.
I do not condemn her, just as I do not condemn anyone. But because she chose to wear a Jesus shirt I did assume she is a professing follower of Jesus. And that puts her behavior in a different light. Had she not been wearing that shirt I probably wouldn’t have thought much about it. I wouldn’t have just assumed she was a Christian and because I expect people outside the church to do selfish things, I may not have even registered it.
That’s the point. None of us have it all together. We are all sinners saved by grace. But as Christians we all bear the responsibility of public witness. When you leave your home and go out into the world, every word you speak and every action you take in front of non-believers communicates something to them about what following Jesus looks like. The consistent pastoral advice in the New Testament is not, “It’s ok to act badly in public because at the end of the day we’re all sinners saved by grace,” but something more like, “Think very carefully about what you do and don’t do. Be very intentional about what you do and don’t say, because how you carry yourself in public bears witness to Jesus.”
Let us continue to lovingly judge one another, encouraging each other to holiness both privately and publicly.
[1] 1 Corinthians 5:12
[2] Colossians 4:5
[3] Titus 2:8
To a fault.
In fact, my experience has been that if I say something that offends someone, they are more likely to just leave the church and pretend like we never knew each other than they are to tell me that what I said offended them and talk it out.
So, when I do get “negative” feedback, I consider it a real honor. It means that the person values me, or our relationship, or what we’re trying to do at the church enough to take up the issue. I’m grateful for that.
It also provides opportunity for clarification and extension, which is at least an implicit act of grace.
I bring this up because I received a little pushback from my last blog post “A call for fewer Jesus shirts,” that I’d like to address. If you didn’t read the post you can check it our here, but the basic argument is that our lives, not our tshirts, are our witness to the world and when we identify as Christians with our clothing but fail to live up to the standard of Christ with our lives (as we all do at least sometimes) we run the risk of maligning the church in the eyes of the world. Since we are all likely to do something in public that doesn’t represent the church well, perhaps better to just not wear clothing that makes the association obvious.
Some of the feedback I heard (again, very gracious but still what I would consider “pushback”) was that perhaps people don’t wear their religious swag for the purpose of bearing witness but simply as an expression of their gratitude for God’s mercy. They are not trying to project that they have it all together but that they have been rescued by a gracious God.
That’s a perfectly good reason to wear a Jesus tshirt. I hope we’re all finding ways to express our gratitude for what God has done for us. What I hope we can appreciate as Christians is that the message that we are “sinners saved by grace” communicates differently to those outside the church. To those inside the church it is a powerful, galvanizing identifier. We know that we are imperfect which is why we’re so grateful to have a merciful God. We’ll never get it totally right. Thank God we’re simply loved.
But to those outside the church, that same anthem can sound like an excuse, at times even a justification for bad behavior. They see us act badly and wonder how we can call ourselves Christians but still live like jerks. Because following Jesus is supposed to change how we live. We might fairly rebut, “If you think I’m a jerk now, you should have seen me ten years ago,” or “If this is what I’m like with Jesus, imagine what I’d be like without him,” but that’s the thing, we don’t get to make those arguments to the world. The world simply sees our bad behavior, associates us with Jesus and the church, and takes another step back.
If you’re looking for grace and understanding, you’ll find it in Jesus and, hopefully, the church. Where you won’t find it is in the world. That truth ought to influence how we publicly carry ourselves.
Which brings me to another important piece of feedback I received: that my critique came off a little “judgy.”
Anytime one person critiques the behavior of another person, as I did in my post with a woman I witnessed at Cedar Point, especially when they don’t or can’t have all of the information and they don’t very carefully qualify their statements, it comes across as casting judgment which is like a cardinal sin in our “you-do-you-and-let-me-do-me” culture.
First, there is a difference between judgment and condemnation. Judgment is simply assessing the behavior of another person; calling a right thing right or a wrong thing wrong. We do this sort of assessing all the time. We have to. I simply observed a woman hogging the shade as other people “suffered” in the sun and I called it selfish.
Because from where I was standing, it was. And I’m guessing I’m not the only person who made that observation.
To say that this woman did a selfish thing in that moment is not to say that she IS a selfish person or that she has no value as a person or no future with God. I’m sure she’s a wonderful person who acts in selfless ways all the time. In fact, I’m sure she’s far more selfless than she is selfish. I bet she loves God and I know God loves her.
It is simply to call a spade a spade and say that in this moment she chose to do something selfish.
That’s judgment, yes, but not condemnation.
And judgment is something that we are supposed to lovingly offer one another in the church, and precisely for the concern I raised in my post. As the Apostle Paul instructed the Corinthians, Christians are not to judge those outside the church. But we are to judge one another inside the church.[1]
That does not mean we can’t look at those outside the church and call a wrong thing wrong. We can. It simply means it is not our place to be the world’s moral police. But we are supposed to provide that function for one another and precisely because if we do not, we may behave badly in the world and negatively impact the church’s witness. Loving judgment is how we help one another become more Christlike.
Again, if you’re looking for grace and understanding, you’re not going to find it in the world. Yes, we are sinners saved by grace and we’re not trying to pretend we have it all together, but the fact is that we are supposed to be very intentional about how we live in the context of outsiders recognizing that they are passing a different kind of judgment on us all the time.[2] So, we offer loving judgment to one another that can help us more intentionally align our behaviors with our professed beliefs so that when the world sees us, “they have nothing bad to say about us.”[3]
I recognize that by writing about the woman I observed at Cedar Point rather than talking with her, I may have unintentionally vilified her in your minds without actually helping her live more honorably, which I just said is the purpose of insider judgment. But I felt pastorally it would be instructive and I thought it safe given that her identity is unknown.
I do not condemn her, just as I do not condemn anyone. But because she chose to wear a Jesus shirt I did assume she is a professing follower of Jesus. And that puts her behavior in a different light. Had she not been wearing that shirt I probably wouldn’t have thought much about it. I wouldn’t have just assumed she was a Christian and because I expect people outside the church to do selfish things, I may not have even registered it.
That’s the point. None of us have it all together. We are all sinners saved by grace. But as Christians we all bear the responsibility of public witness. When you leave your home and go out into the world, every word you speak and every action you take in front of non-believers communicates something to them about what following Jesus looks like. The consistent pastoral advice in the New Testament is not, “It’s ok to act badly in public because at the end of the day we’re all sinners saved by grace,” but something more like, “Think very carefully about what you do and don’t do. Be very intentional about what you do and don’t say, because how you carry yourself in public bears witness to Jesus.”
Let us continue to lovingly judge one another, encouraging each other to holiness both privately and publicly.
[1] 1 Corinthians 5:12
[2] Colossians 4:5
[3] Titus 2:8
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