I promise I’m not trying to beat a dead horse. From the fantastic conversations I keep having about judgment, I am learning that the horse is still very alive. In all of us. So I’m just keeping the conversation going this week. And I sincerely thank those of you who are joining in, whether I know about it or not.

For today, I want to say one main thing: The non-judgment experiment is about you and what God desires to do in your heart.

It is not about other people getting away with doing wrong things. People everywhere are always getting away with doing all kinds of wrong things. Our judgment will never ever make the slightest dent in that, rest assured. (I know that might sound terrifying on one hand, but take a look at the other hand! Isn’t it incredibly freeing??)

The entire judgment experiment is, in fact, not really about other people at all. Any potential change in posture toward other people will be a byproduct of the main thing. The main thing is God and what he is doing in and through me.

It is not about what I’m doing or not doing. To be honest, I’m not sure if my actions have changed at all since I started the experiment. It is only my heart that has changed. Maybe my actions will change someday, but that is of no concern to me at this point. My judging-addicted heart is the prominent subject.

It is not about my dumbing down into an ignorant, hear-no-evil-see-no-evil, discernment-less child. It is about freeing me from the hatred, the bitterness, and the pride that judgment invisibly threatens to build up in my heart.

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Relatedly, I offer you my re-write of a short excerpt from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount Matthew 7:1-5:

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. How can you be concerned about the wart that is on your brother’s arm, but do not do anything about the stage IV colon cancer that is ravaging your organs? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘You really need to get that wart removed,’ when you are so crippled with cancer? You hypocrite! First finish your surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation treatments, and then if you’re still alive, you can mention the wart to your brother.”

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So, my best suggestion is: Just try it. It is only an experiment. Just try practicing not-judging for a month and see where it leads you.

If “judgment” seems too big a monster to tackle, might I make a suggestion for simplifying things? Pay attention to just one label or category (for people, organizations, books, music, etc.) you use often. Then eliminate that label for a month. (One example: Stop using the labels “Christian” / “non-Christian.”) See how it goes.

If the experiment leads you to more freedom, more compassion, more trusting God than trusting your own self-assessments, then you’ll know that it is indeed the Way of Jesus.

A warning as you begin: If at first you feel fear, guilt, or like your “rights” are being wrenched from you, stick with it! Those might first appear as signs of “I’d turn back if I were you,” BUT no! They are all of the natural feelings you will experience when something you’ve held onto for so long is put on the altar of transformation. Push through it; it’ll get less scary over time.

Here’s the good(?) news: If, in the end, you hate the results, you can always just go back to how you are now. Life as you know it will always be there waiting for you. But what if the results give you a freedom you’ve never known…??

Today is September 20. Start today and you can be done with the experiment on October 20. (Perfect – right before Halloween, and just in time to get back at it, judging all those slutty tramps for their way-too-skimpy costumes! Ha! Funny? Not funny? Sorry. I couldn’t help it. OR maybe the experiment will change you and skimpy costumes will be the least of your worries…)

A few of you have reached out to me, humbly, to say that my little non-judgment experiment has made you a bit uncomfortable. I must admit that I am very encouraged by the reports of discomfort! Partly because it helps me know that I am not alone. And partly because is must mean we’re growing! After all, how can transformative change happen at al in our minds and lives unless we pass over the hill of minor intellectual discomfort? It was Henry Cloud who taught me that, “People only change when it becomes more uncomfortable [painful] to stay the same.” So then, if we are feeling uncomfortable, we must be changing! And if we let ourselves be guided by the Spirit of God, we can be confident that we will be led in the direction of change for the Better.

We Westerners seem to be masters at comfort and avoidance, and so we must also be masters at getting stuck in our ways! We tend to be masters at arriving and then happily staying put. Culturally, we are mere novices at growth and moving onward.

Anyway, a few of you have asked me to elaborate a bit on this experiment, especially through the lenses of discernment vs judgment and also truth vs grace. I am thrilled to keep the conversation going, but must admit my lack of expertise and scholarship in this area, and so I submit to you just a few of my immediate thoughts.

In my mind, one of the most important questions in the conversation about judgment is: What actually changes people?

Being told that/how I need to change has almost never changed me. Has it worked for you? Likewise, being held in obvious disapproval by someone (for whatever reason) has never been a catalyst for lasting, freeing change. On the sparing occasions that a person’s voiced or silent disapproval has impacted me, my motivation was primarily guilt, fear, or shame — none of which are the means and ends of the Spirit of God. You may argue that the ends justify the means, and that, for example, it is better for a person to be yelled angrily into giving up cigarettes than to be gently, kindly given the freedom to continue smoking. I would argue that God’s spiritual, motivational economy seems to me to be plainly, simply, entirely different than that of humans. The psychological cost of the angry yelling may not be, in God’s estimation of things, worth the physical pay-off of the person’s no longer regularly ingesting tobacco.

Freedom is [one way to say what is] the aim of God for every living soul. The mystics say that, “Our greatest task in life is to become free.” The early Christian writer Paul chimes in, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.”

Would a person experience greater freedom if she were not addicted to cigarettes? Maybe. It depends. Perhaps freedom from cigarettes would unleash an even greater flood of even worse addictions, were she to give up cigarettes at this time. Would the cigarette smoker experience greater freedom (being fully known and truly loved?) in her friendship with you if you told her that cigarettes are bad and that you think she should stop smoking them? Maybe. Probably not. Doesn’t she probably already know that cigarettes aren’t good for her? Doesn’t everyone pretty much know that? Aren’t there things that you know are bad that you still do all the time? Would someone’s telling you that they think that those things you do are bad help you quit? Would an expert Christian’s published theological statement saying they are bad change you? Would someone withdrawing their relationship with you until you quit doing the bad things change you? I have found that there are actually very few things that people need me to tell them are good or bad. Even my young children can intuit most good and bad.

However, yes. I know that there may be just a few – ahem – moral issues about which you and your neighbor disagree. You think it’s permissible, they think it’s wrong. Or you think it’s wrong and they think it’s fine, or even good. Well, welcome to the world. Isn’t it great?! People disagree. Harmony is over-rated. I am sure that I disagree with every single person on this planet about at least one thing – and I’m so grateful! My kids are beginning to disagree with me – thinking for themselves, being formed by God and others for better and for worse, growing up, becoming the particular iteration of themselves that God intends them to be. We ought to be celebrating this, not shaming it.

Unity is not unison, but rather letting Love and Relationship beat out intellectual, moral agreement in one’s life priorities. And the quality of Love and Relationship is best measured by the amount of freedom it offers each party.

So: If you feel like you must tell someone that you think it is wrong to do what they think is good, then you have the freedom to do so. And, you also have the freedom not to do so. Which is the greater freedom, I wonder?

Don’t get me wrong – you have complete freedom to continue to think that whatever-it-is is wrong; I am just asking you to consider whether your “need to stand up for what is right” or “need for them to know where you stand” is based on your own ego / pride / faulty people-pleasing sensibilities and less on freedom, unity, and “love your enemies; pray for those who persecute you.” Are you communicating your views for their sake or for yours? Maybe their lifestyle is really hurting them, but will telling them that you think it is hurting them bring about more freedom, unity, love, and change? For both of you? If not, then maybe their self-harming lifestyle is actually less harmful than the harm your words will bring.

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Lastly, at least for now. Two things:

All of this judging of others seems so insignificant, so wasteful, and so lame when I hold it up to all of the “mowing” that needs to be done in my own yard. The amount of work still left to do overwhelms me daily. I cannot even come close to keeping up with it. I am so far behind that it would be darkly comical for me to offer to help anyone else with their yard work. I think I just mean that I feel very deeply the reality of the “plank in my own eye” against the “speck in my brother’s.” I care very much about the people around me, but, try as I might, hardly any of my attempts at “mowing” in their lives have changed them at all. My mowing has certainly not led to more freedom for both of us. Isn’t it all I can do to live with, toward, and alongside them in a way that gracefully encourages them to do their own mowing?

We are not meant to live Grace and Truth. We are meant to live just Grace. Truth can be Grace sometimes. But Grace is the aim, the end, and the means. Grace is It.

I pray sincerely that these last two things will especially become more and more true for all of us who are seeking to find and live the Jesus Way.

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.}

Growing up in church, I got the impression that the people who were serious about God had only, always positive thoughts and feelings toward church, prayer, Bible-reading, and God. I thought that my feeling any sort of “high” in the emotional-spiritual department of my life meant that I must certainly be on the right track, getting closer to God, and making God more happy with me. I longed to remain on the mountaintop experiences of ecstatic “spiritual” euphoria. Why can’t I always feel this way?! I sometimes berated myself.

What’s more, I thought that any signs of negativity and numbness toward church or prayer or God were clear signs of my not being serious enough about God. I associated a feeling “low” about God with distance from God. Valleys, darkness, or apathy in my life with God were to be avoided (and/or at least denied!) at all costs.

I noticed recently that my mind has been turned pretty nearly upside down about pretty nearly all of that. I can’t say that I went about intentionally trying to change my mind; I don’t remember ever definitively coming to a place where I saw that it even needed changing. All I can say is that it has been changed. So maybe, hopefully it was God that saw that it needed changing and then went about in his inconspicuous way, changing it.

I’ve been trying to characterize the change, trying to crystallize it in my mind. Naming it often helps me integrate it even more.

So here’s what I think I know:

I have come see that God is always near to me; God is among, before, behind, and through all of my life. God is in all of the stuff of my life. My life is hid with Christ in God. What’s more, God is always at work in me, through me, forming and re-forming me — whether or not I’m paying attention. God is always at work in me, through me, forming and re-forming me — whether or not I give credit where credit is due.

I’ve even become – dare I say!? – somewhat suspect of spiritual highs. I know how fickle my emotions can be, and I have determined to rely on them neither as a way of measuring my closeness to God nor as a force that will definitely carry me in the direction of closeness with God. Furthermore, I am sure that suffering, pain, and “low” times are invaluable conduits of Love and Growth and Change in my life, not necessarily to be sought out, but neither to be categorically avoided out of fear or discomfort.

I have also come to see great value in all of the “normal” moments, days, and years of life I live right around the line, neither joyous nor depressed. God values, is present in, and uses the mundane – the laundry-folding, the showing up at work on Monday mornings, and the relating to the non-celebrity people around me – the stuff that accumulates and then becomes most of our lives. Most of my life is lived in the middle and in the margins, neither down in the dumps nor high in the sky; I have come to see that this must be part of God’s created good intention.

Another way I’ve been visualizing the change is that basically my emotional-spiritual bell curve has become completely inverted. I used to try always to stay “above the line” (in the realm of positive / happy emotions) and always aspiring always to rise to greater and greater heights of spiritual-emotional rapture! Now staying “right around the line” of embracing God in all of the normal stuff of my normal life is desired, even celebrated. Further, sinking way “below the line” into the lowest emotional-spiritual lows are what have produced the greatest growth in me. Suffering, prayer, and love in spite of feeling emotionally down (angry, apathetic, sad, despairing) have been my path toward greater understanding of God and of myself in God. Struggle, spiritual discipline, and compassion while I feel like I’m in a spiritual slump have molded my inner character in ways that spiritual-emotional ecstasy simply cannot.

As a finite being, I am simply unable to exist in perpetual spiritual, intellectual, relational, or emotional ecstasy. For one thing, I have dishes to wash and refrigerator shelves to sanitize. Furthermore, when I attempt to fake a constantly elated spiritual-emotional state, it takes all of the joy out of ecstasy on the occasions when it actually arrives.

When I pine for spiritual-emotional highs, I undermine the incredible joy and value I may find in normal life. When I pine for spiritual-emotional highs, I miss out on the opportunity for pain and suffering to change my very self. When I pine for spiritual-emotional highs, I expose my immature and self-focused love: Perhaps I actually love the high itself more than I love God.

Here’s to our becoming a people who love God more than we love the spiritual-emotional highs God sometimes graciously gives…

I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear about the broken-hearted and the oppressed (the underprivileged, the downtrodden, the marginalized, etc.) the picture that usually jumps to my mind is a starving orphan in tattered rags, a strung out prostitute on a streetcorner, or a single mom with only sour milk in her refrigerator. And rightfully so.

But over the last few years, I’ve found that picture changing in me, bit by bit. I’ve begun to see that, in some way, everyone is oppressed and broken-hearted.

I haven’t done any extensive research. I’ve only asked, “How are you?” among my own family, friends, and neighbors and then listened to their actual answers.

“Oh fine,” turns into, “My teenage daughter has suddenly become a different person; I feel like I’m losing her.”

“I’m good,” has turned into, “My baby fusses constantly; I’m losing my mind and myself.”

“Fine fine,” becomes, “I just received a cancer diagnosis.”

People are hurting! – no matter what their lives look like on the outside. From among my intimates and all along the margins of my little life, I’ve accidentally, gratefully found a lot of people who feel, often, broken-hearted and oppressed.

Broken-hearted and oppressed people come in all shapes and sizes, with all shapes and sizes of broken-hearted oppression. We all are broken-hearted, if we’ll admit it. We all are oppressed in some way -physically, vocationally, financially, relationally, psychologically, spiritually.

To be human is to be broken-hearted. To be human is to experience oppression.

I have wasted a lot of breath, time, and energy judging who is most broken-hearteded, comparing varying oppressions, and trying to size up which people have been more or less marginalized. I think we all have.

I have also wasted a lot of breath, time and energy on my own private pity parties. I think we all have.

When only certain people with certain problems are allowed to claim oppression and broken-heartedness, we altogether lose some ground on the frontlines of human hope. When we silence others by raising our voices above theirs, we miss out on the compassion that comes from hearing their stories. When we compare our problems with the not-so-bad problems of others, we believe the lie that there is no goodness left in this world: we become atheistic without knowing it. When we insulate ourselves from admitting that we are all at some times and in some ways broken-hearted and oppressed, we rob ourselves of the opportunity to experience the compassionate, full-hearted, steadfast God that is Love.

What if, instead, we could set each other free to share burdens, admit our own needs, and humble ourselves before a God whose heart is especially near to the oppressed, the broken-hearted, and the downtrodden — to each one of us??

What if, instead, we could quietly, humbly bear the weight of the hardship of the persons around us, and what if they could bear ours for us as well? Might that keep the weight of hardship from becoming far too heavy for any one of us to bear? Might we then each be kept from taking the drastic measures that seem to become necessary? And might our prayers, our postures, our very selves — our entire world — be entirely changed in the process?

A girl can dream.

On a warm but windy evening this week, I went on a walk with my friend Donna.

And I accidentally dominated the conversation. I guess I had a lot on my mind and in my heart. Donna asks such good questions and listens with such interest and patience that I always hardly notice when I’m talking the whole time. It is truly a gift.

Nelle Morton says that one of the greatest tasks of our time is to “hear people to speech.”

Now that I think about it, a lot of my intimates have that gift — hmmm… I wonder what that means about me and my insatiable capacity to talk about myself!? Ahem.

Anyway, the next morning, I emailed Donna to say, “Thanks again for the walk last night and for letting me talk all about myself. I needed it.”

She emailed back, “Have to laugh, because I had met a friend for lunch and pretty much took over the conversation. Felt better afterwards.”

It got me thinking: I guess we all have the need to dominate the conversation at times. I’ll own it – I have the need to dominate the conversation lots of the time. It makes me feel sublimely grateful for all of the dear ones in my life who seem to tolerate it – even encourage it – so effortlessly, so graciously. You know who you are.

And I guess we all have the need to be the one who lets the other person dominate the conversation at times. We all get to be the ones to give the people around us the gift of “hearing them to speech.” We all get to practice the very spirit-ual discipline of hearing, asking, listening, understanding. Even when it’s a bit boring. Even when they’re problems are something we struggled with long ago and have moved past. Even when it seems like they have the same old struggles regurgitated over and over again. Even when it all seems quite childish to us (as it often does with, well, our children).

I find that I often benefit most from conversations in which I both talk and listen. (Duh, right?) The talking is easy for me; the listening is more difficult. But when I listen, I reap the benefits of hearing others’ insight, wisdom, and perspective. Probably there are some people (wired oppositely of me) for whom the listening is easy and the speaking up is more difficult. If they’d speak up, they’d reap the benefits of shared vulnerability and acceptance from others.

I also think that “hearing others to speech” is a dynamic practice that must happen in two directions, simultaneously.

On one hand, it is much more than just being quiet while the other person talks. You know exactly what I mean, right? Haven’t you poured out your heart to a quiet person only to find that 1) they weren’t thinking at all about what you were saying, but rather they were thinking of what they ought to say next 2) they were distracted with something else going on in the room 3) they misunderstood what you were saying in a way that ultimately made you wish you’d never started talking. A vital part of “hearing others to speech” is opening oneself up to the other, accessing one’s empathy and compassion for their situation.

On the other hand, we who are speaking must also open ourselves up to our listener. Even when it is our turn to dominate the conversation, we must return the favor and also “hear them into speech” – allowing them to ask, to speak, to give insight back to us and into the mess that is our lives.

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All of this seems to me to have a lot to do with the relationship and the conversation that is Prayer.

I tend to dominate the conversation with God. I feel a lot of things very deeply; I have a lot to say! My direction of growth in Prayer has been toward sitting in silence, just listening and just being with God. Other people must feel more at ease in the quiet being with God. They must be better listeners than me, but perhaps they are more restrained in what they tell God, hesitating to pour out what they really feel, think, and want. Their direction of growth in Prayer must be opposite mine.

I also think that God must want to mature us relationally and conversationally so that Prayer will eventually, actually change us. The psalms are an obvious invitation to pour out all of our thoughts and cares to the One who cares for us. But maybe He, too, wants to be “heard to speech.” We must open ourselves up to Him. We must let Him say more than only what we want to hear from Him. We must let him say what need be said, especially when it does not fit with what we’d always thought about Him, about ourselves, about the world.

What is your direction of growth in Prayer? Are you quiet and engaged enough ever to “hear God to speech?”