Here comes the Judge!

I had a recent conversation with my siblings (and step-sibling) about the role of judgment in the life of a Christian. We had a slight disagreement over the appropriateness of judging someones faults in the interest of helping. My sister strongly repeated the famous "Judge not lest ye be judged." scripture and took the opinion that Christians are not meant to judge. At the time I did not take enough notice of her use of that statement because it heavily effected the rest of our conversation. Her opinion starts with her definition of what judging is. Her definition obviously puts the task of judging strictly into God's hands meaning it is a task that humans are incapable of doing correctly. She also stated that only God knows a persons heart therefore he is the only one who can judge. Again this is a statement that shows that her definition of judging includes the fact that in order to properly judge one must know the heart of that individual. These statements and others caused me to reconsider the definitions of judgement that we used in our conversation. If judgement is exclusive to God because he can see the hearts of people then my guess is that Chrissy defines judging as determining what are right and wrong actions for each man. This is not hypothetical or a guess this is knowing exactly what is right and wrong in every situation and is absolute truth that only God knows. Under this definition I agree that we are not to judge other peoples actions. God is the only one who can say one thing is right and another wrong. Man can only look at what God provides as a guide and through the spirit take an educated guess. I have come to this conclusion because there are many times God has used events and people in ways that I would consider horribly horribly evil and wrong. My understanding of right and wrong obviously has a long way to go to be in line with Gods understanding.

The other side of the argument taken by pretty much everybody else is that it is OK to judge peoples actions as right or wrong and attempt to help them to change those actions. In this argument the definition for right and wrong in judgement is based on the understanding we gain as Christians through reading inspired word and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We are not able to tell the absolute truth of other peoples actions because we cannot see their heart and we do not know what right is in every situation. However the argument we are making is that we look at the actions of others based on our limited understanding and make a decision of whether to help a person based on that understanding. While this may lead us to speaking out of turn and leading others down a road that may not be right in God's eyes (a situation we pray the spirit guides us safely through) much of the time it will lead us to helping others become more capable of making decisions closer to God's understanding of right and wrong. This argument relies heavily on faith. Faith that God can and does guide us in the assistance of others. I am a firm believer that if you have time prayers for guidance and submission are an excellent way to prepare once you've decided that you should help someone change their actions. After all it is merely the righteousness God placed in us acting to help others. All actions that do differently come from our own hearts and the influence of evil forces.

After much thought (and still probably not enough) I think that both parties are correct. God is the only one who judge a persons salvation and the right or wrong of the actions they choose. This is evidenced by numerous situations in the Old Testament when God ordered the killing of entire races of people or a more personal example when God instructed Hosea to marry a prostitute. Normally things like that are considered wrong or at least not entirely right. Hosea is a little more ambiguous but I think still holds as Hosea himself would probably never have considered that a right choice without God's guidance. I think the second argument holds because we make decisions to help people with many things that are based on our faith that God has given us something of an understanding of right and wrong. We see someone beating up an innocent person we intervene because that is a strong wrong action in our understanding. We see someone say hateful words to a friend we stick up for them. These are the easy rights and wrongs that we hold strong. There are other situations more difficult to address. A coworker steals a pen from the secretary. While the action may be technically wrong we have no way to know if the secretary hasn't already agreed to lend out pens thus most of us say nothing. Hear a friend say something about how much he hates work and wants to get a new job. Complaining is wrong however if they want a new job perhaps they are trying to find one and merely desire to vent about work in the meantime. They may need someone to listen to their plight and empathize more than someone to tell them they shouldn't complain and give them job hunting tips. The bible is expansive however we have so many situations today that are simply not addressed directly by inspired word. These are the situations we pray for guidance to do what is the absolute best to do in that situation, the submission to God's will to have the desire, the courage to take the action, and the faith to leave it in God's hands when we must.

I don't know if this summary of our conversation is particularly accurate especially since I surmised my definitions and did not ask anybody involved to actually give me their definitions. I hope I captured the heart of the disagreement and that God uses this post to enlighten someone in some way. I know that it was helpful to me. Chrissy, Matt, Stephen, Brittany, If I missed something please let me know. If you have any input of any kind please feel free to comment.