an experiment in not-judging

I’m doing an experiment. I guess it is pretty simple, but excruciatingly challenging.

I am trying not to judge anyone for anything. I am doing my best not to draw lines, not to put myself in the place of God, approving or disapproving of humans, and rather to attempt to see every human as just human, as primarily a human doing their best with what they’ve got.

A few of you may accuse my experiment of being stupid because it appears at first glance to lack discernment. Never fear: I am not sending my small children away in cars with strangers with candy and moustaches; I am not throwing money at every sob story that comes my way; I’m not abandoning my brain – I’m actually using it more, for the sake of Love.

I am just choosing to do my best to see people differently, to avoid all Jocelyn-made categories except for the fundamental category of human: imago dei (image bearer of God). In so doing, I am setting my aim at love and compassion and empathy for them in my heart instead of the inevitable byproducts of judgment (for me, at least, usually superiority or insecurity – whatever it is, it is usually not love).

Like I said, simple, maybe, but oh so difficult.

My motivation comes from three sources, primarily.

1. Last year I read the book Repenting from Religion (Boyd) and was given a new perspective on Genesis 1-3. You can read more about that here. And here. And here. To summarize: the command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a mandate not to judge either good or evil – simply to live and not to be the Judge – to let God be the Judge of all.
2. I recently spent 18 months studying and writing out of Mark’s Jesus-biography. The Jesus I kept finding was one who constantly blurred, erased, challenged, and dissolved lines between people, and between people and God. He brought unity instead of distinction. He held diversity (within and without) in a beautiful, messy, mysterious tension rather than giving in to the human temptation to disperse the tension with a neatly drawn line in the sand. He repeatedly did not give in to the human tendency to reduce everything to black-and-white thinking, good-and-bad assignments, or trite answers to complex problems. He avoided one-size-fits-all statements of orthodoxy (to affirm or deny intellectually) and instead offered individuals within their communities contextualized challenges to live more free and more loving lives.
3. Furthermore, how else might one read Paul in Galatians 3:28? Below is my experiment-inspired, contemporized paraphrase of Paul’s writing, relevant for his time, though a bit limited in ours (italics are Paul’s original):

Galatians 3:28

There is neither Jew nor Greek,

there is neither slave nor free,

there is no male and female,

there is neither fat nor thin,

there is neither healthy nor unhealthy,

there is neither dunce nor brilliant,

there is neither rich nor poor,

there is no deserving or undeserving,

there is no advantaged or disadvantaged,

there is neither special nor common,

there is neither homeless nor mansioned,

there is neither lazy nor workaholic,

there is neither liberal nor conservative,

there is neither churchgoing nor non-churchgoing,

there is neither Christian nor non-Christian,

there is neither vice nor virtue,

there is neither orthodox nor unorthodox,

there is neither addicted nor freed,

there is neither right-about-everything nor wrong-about-everything,

there is neither enlightened nor ignorant,

for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

 

I am not saying that no one is any of these things; I am just choosing not to be the Judge of who is or who isn’t these things. I am admitting that I don’t know who is what and that it doesn’t matter very much what I think anyway, since God is the Judge of all. I am choosing not to let it matter to me as much as it did in the past. I am choosing to let others swim freely alongside me in this vast ocean of Grace that is an extension of God to us.

This experiment has been really freeing. Scary at first: Who will draw the lines if not I? How will I justify myself if I erase all of the lines that I have always used to make myself feel secure and good? But then incredibly freeing. Freeing for myself and freeing for the people around me – whether or not they feel it, my heart is beginning to warm with love a bit more often than it freezes with judgment. And this experiment has left me with far less answers and far more questions. Beautiful, intoxicating, frightening questions like:

And since the actual Judge, this one Christ Jesus, loved humans with a love that cost him his very and entire life, what good is my judgment – except to create incessantly too-high expectations for myself and others in my heart?

And since the actual Judge, this one Christ Jesus, will one day receive all of the glory, fame, and honor from every human whose knee will bow and tongue will confess, what difference does my judgment make – except to ruin love and compassion toward myself and others in the here and now?

Aren’t we all just doing our best with what we’ve got? More or less? For better and for worse?

Isn’t God the One who is in charge of, responsible for, and orchestrating the life and growth of each one of us? Need I intrude?

What does it mean for us all if we are all just mostly, primarily, beautifully human – imago dei – unified in the One Man, Christ Jesus?

Try the experiment with me a bit; let me know how it goes.

{PS. I found this photo after I’d written the entire post. I loved the image of drawing “love” instead of lines in the sand.}