At my church we just had a “Hard Questions” Panel. A friend of mine got some questions from her son, who lives in another state and is not a Christian, but is at some level curious or interested. We did not have the opportunity to answer these questions during the forum.
I thought they were pretty good questions, though, so I’m posting them and my attempts at answers to them here. Here’s the first one.
Question: Why does it seem that religious people are the first people to judge other people when Jesus said "Let he who is without sin throw the first stone"? Why don't Christians lead by example instead of telling people when they are wrong? I believe actions speak louder than words and when you point your finger at some one you should look at the three other fingers pointing back at you. Why don't we focus on what we can do better as people? Take for example the person who killed the abortion doctor the other day. If he would have looked at himself and focused on his faults instead of worrying about others he could have changed the world for the good instead of giving Christianity another bad name.This is a fantastic question. Let me begin with the part about judgment.
When Jesus taught, “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” the typical reading is if we judged other people, then we will be judged by God. I think this is a misreading. I think it means if we judge others, then others will judge us. And I think it’s absolutely true. The fact that this guy has asked this question means that he has seen judgmental Christians and is (quite fairly) judging them right back, and asking why they don’t live up to their own principles. He deserves an answer.
Christians ARE judgmental, often much more so than unreligious people. I think this is true for a few reasons:
First, the Christian faith is based on believing certain things to be true—and not just any things, but absolute, transcendent truths that, if true, affect all people in all places. Firm faith in these truths (existence of God, deity of Christ, authority of the Bible, etc.) begins as conviction—which is a good thing—but easily slips into pridefulness and arrogance.
If I’m completely convinced of these truths and I see everything through the lens of them, then other people’s failure to live up to those truths will stand out to me.
If I’m young in my faith, spiritually immature, or frightened and uncertain, then I will use my “certainty” defensively, and point out or even lash out at things I see as offensive to God. I’ll also decide that things that offend God should offend me, too, and I will seek to fight God’s battles for him by opposing the “infidels.” Most perniciously, I’ll see myself as superior for having seen and recognized the truth, and be patronizing, condescending or mean to those who don’t agree.
Here’s an example. A Christian friend of mine knows a fellow from his work who is gay and has a live-in boyfriend. The gay guy was moving to another city, and it was his last day at work. There were two Christian ladies at his workplace who decided to get him a gift. They bought him a Bible—a nice one—and as a service to him, highlighted all the verses in the Bible that condemned homosexuality. This was their going away present.
That these ladies did not see how utterly rude, patronizing, condescending and plain old mean this was, is as astonishing as it is common.
By contrast, a mature approach to this would be to hold those truths with no less conviction, but not be intimidated when I find people who don’t agree, and live as if they don’t agree. Further, I will hold those convictions with humility, meaning that I’ll be the first to recognize that I have fallen short of God’s standard and in many ways still do.
A mature approach will recognize that everyone has the right to make their own choices and decisions, and will give them perfect freedom to do so, like Jesus did, and will not attempt to coerce or manipulate or guilt people into agreeing. This does not mean that they will not share with them or even try to persuade them, but they’ll do so without the need to hold others who continue to disagree at a distance or in contempt.
In my experience, it takes Christians many years to achieve this kind of maturity. Consequently, that leaves lots of zealous, immature Christians running around the world, reinforcing the judgmental image that we have unfortunately given to our faith.
The other dynamic at work here, I think, is that people can be threatened by those who don’t share their worldview. If I’m firmly convinced, for instance, that abortion is wrong, then if I meet an abortion doctor at a cocktail party, there is going to be instant, awkward tension between us. The same would be true if I was an animal rights activist, and I met a guy who runs a factory chicken farm. The person’s very presence somehow incarnates a challenge to my beliefs… or at least it feels that way.
That no doubt is what was at work in these ladies, who had this guy at work who fell into a prohibited category according to their worldview, and probably didn’t know what to do, but felt like they had to do something.
As far as Scott Roeder, the man who murdered the abortion doctor, he violated the tenets of his own faith while seeking to defend it. I think I can understand it: if you believe that unborn babies are human lives, made in the image of God, then the reality that there are 1.3 million aborted in this country every year is going to seriously burden you. It certainly burdens me. I mourn and lament it.
All of the prolife community’s efforts to address this problem through legal channels have paid off very scantily. They’ve worked hard with legislatures to pass some restrictions, and they are almost always slapped down by the courts, and every day, more and more babies are killed as birth control. It’s easy to see how that leaves a person with his convictions in a very frustrating position.
In every constituency and ideological group, you’re going to find emotionally disturbed or unstable people. So I’m not surprised when occasionally something like this happens. The details and thought processes differ, but this guy has company: the Unabomber, the 9-11 terrorists, the kids who shot up Columbine High School… each of them was serving an ideology which, mixed with their instability, was a recipe for tragedy.
In fact, I would say that the problem for both the Bible-giving ladies and Mr. Roeder was that they did not believe their faith enough. The ladies didn’t have confidence in gospel’s ability to change a person, so they resorted to the law. They believed that what he needed was to understand that homosexuality is a sin, but what he really needed was the same thing the ladies need: the grace of God in Christ forgiving their sin and enabling them to be better people. Mr. Roeder didn’t believe his faith enough, because he conveniently ignored the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” There is no clause in the Bible that permits killing in defense of the faith. Vengeance belongs to the Lord, not to us.
At the end of the day, people can recognize the inconsistency between the example of Jesus—the prophet who hung out with prostitutes—and the judgmentalism of Christians.
In fact, the conclusion of the guy’s question, in my opinion, is right on:
“If he [Mr. Roeder] would have looked at himself and focused on his faults instead of worrying about others he could have changed the world for the good instead of giving Christianity another bad name.”Amen.
Let me conclude my response, however, with a caution. It’s easy to dismiss the teachings of Christ because some of his followers get all screwy. In the same way that it’s unfair to judge a teacher by his worst students, it’s unfair to judge Christianity by its worst adherents. If the students do things the teacher would never have agreed with and even condemned, it’s not really right to hold that against the teacher.
Fair judgment of a teacher involves looking at the full range of his students… but mostly at the teacher himself. So I would encourage you to first and foremost evaluate Christ himself as the best barometer of the worth and value of Christianity. If you don’t find him compelling, then you need not bother with anything else.
I'll try to address his other two questions soon.
will be released September 29.
for $20.70 at Amazon Video on Demand… which is what I did.
