The Perils of Jugementalism

"The Perils of Judmentalism"

Romans 14:1-12
September 14, 2008

Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over
opinions. Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. Those
who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass
judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass
judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And
they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. Some judge one day to be
better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in
their own minds. Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also
those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who
abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God. We do not live to
ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die,
we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to
this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the
living. Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you
despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.
For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue
shall give praise to God.” So then, each of us will be accountable to God.

There is the story told by Barry Bailey about the “two sons of a Fort Worth, Texas,
woman of 90 who were worried about her safety.   "We are going to get you a pistol,
mother, so you can take care of yourself.   And we're going to teach you how to use it.
There is too much violence out there." So they bought their mother a pistol, which she
dutifully packed in her purse. One day, when she left Ridgmar Shopping Center to get
into her car, she found two young men sitting in the car. She took out the pistol,
pointed it at them, and said: "Get out of my car or I'll shoot." They jumped out and ran
off. She got into the car, put the key in the ignition - and it did not fit. Then she
realized it was not her car. She went over and found her car. She said she would have
apologized to the two young men, but she could not find them. (Ervin Gathings, via
Barry Bailey, Fort Worth, Texas, 4 October 1992.)

Now, I think that is a good example of the problems we get into when we decide to judge
other human beings, to make assumptions about others too quickly, and too
impulsively.   When we judge another human being, we jump to conclusions, we
assume we know more about others than we actually we do, and we act as if we know
their hearts in ways that only God can. I don’t know what it is about human nature that
we usually jump the gun, or pick up the gun, really, of judgmentalism—is it because we
want to play God, we want to decide who is in our out, because it makes life easier? Is
that it—do we think that if we can carve up the world into black and white, good and
evil, quickly and easily, that life will be easier, and the grays that actually do accompany
real life will somehow disappear? Perhaps that’s it: we seek to manage the shadows in
our own hearts by pointing out the shadows that supposedly haunt the souls of other
people.   But, in the end, I really don’t know why we seem so ready to judge each other,
to draw the circle in so tight so as to make sure that you and you and that other one is
not included in the realm of God.

But it does seem to be something that the church has been dealing with for a long time,
since the beginning, if we’re to believe this passage from Romans, the one we just
heard a few moments ago. Within thirty years after Jesus’ death, people were arguing
with each other about who was right about this or that issue, at least in the Roman
church being written to in our passage today. There seemed to be some controversy
over what is the appropriate diet one should have if one is a follower of Jesus—some
had clearly argued in that first century church that only a vegetarian diet would suffice—
that it was God’s will not to eat meat, only vegetables.   Now, we know that there is
nothing in the New Testament about such an idea, nor is there anything about having
to eat meat in general in the Old Testament, so this practice wasn’t some sort of
leftover from the Jewish faith. However, we do know that there were some Jews, a few
Jewish groups that did practice vegetarianism—one in Egypt, actually—as part of their
religious practice. But that’s it, really, that all we know historically, so we don’t really
know why this group felt the need to avoid meat in order to be faithful to Christ.

Whatever the reason, these Christian vegetarians were a part of that early Christian
community in Rome and they felt strongly that meat shouldn’t be eaten—but there were
others who obviously did believe that one could be a carnivore and be faithful, and this
had caused some conflict in the congregation. The writer of Romans, the apostle Paul,
clearly sides with the meat eaters here—he says that the ones who are vegetarian—
are weak, and yet he obviously doesn’t feel that this is all that big of a deal, and if some
Christians want to live out their faith that way, fine—but that is no excuse to judge them,
to accuse them of unfaithfulness, to brand them a heretic, to draw them out of the circle
of God’s love and acceptance. Paul had been an observant Jew for many years,
following the strict dietary laws prescribed by the faith, but since he had become a
Christian, all food was now acceptable to him, and so he saw no point in now
prescribing a new set of dietary restrictions—and yet, it wasn’t that others wanted to be
vegetarians that bothered him—what bothered him were the people who had decided
that these Christian vegetarians were no longer acceptable to the church and to God.
The welcome mat for these folks at this church had been pulled at some point, and it
bothered him, a lot, so much so that we have these words he wrote about it some
thousands of years later.

And what does he say? Well, he reminds them that the church is not their household,
not their domain, not their private club—the church at Rome is God’s household, and
he uses the ancient Roman household structure to remind them that they are not the
head of the household, and that everyone in that community, from bigwig to little wig, so
to speak, from carnivores to vegetarians, are under the leadership of God, the head of
the household. We are all servants, he says, of the Master of the house, and that
Master is God, not Joe or Susan, or Kevin or Sven or John. It’s all very Roman in style,
this structure he paints vividly here for us, but he paints this picture not because the
Roman hierarchical household structure is some sort of divinely appointed plan, but
because he wants to point out that each one of us, is ultimately a servant of God, and
we have no right to judge or manage or bully or kick out the servants of another—I
mean, who made us the Master, right?

And so if there is a person who thinks they should take a special day to honor God,
well, then that is there business, so long as she does it to honor God and God alone,
Paul says. What business is it of ours whether Susan takes Tuesday instead of
Sunday for her Sabbath—or that Tony doesn’t take a Sabbath at all, and thinks every
day is like every other day to God? There is wonderful, almost child-like flippancy that
Paul writes with in this passage—let’s not get lost in the details, folks, let’s not let our
disagreements divide us, he seems to be saying. And ultimately, these things will be
sorted out on the other side of eternity, and I suspect he says that very thing, because
Paul knows that the measuring stick that God judges us with will not be on what beliefs
we held, or the purity of those beliefs, but how we treated those people whose beliefs
were different from ours, and with whom we vehemently disagreed with. Did we include
them in the circle, and let God do the sorting out, or did we take on the job of sorter
ourselves, something we were never meant to do, and decide to play the role of the
Master?

Now, having said that, I do want us to struggle a bit with the larger question of
judgment, of how and when we make decision about right and wrong in this world. It’s
not that Paul is saying that he doesn’t think there is right and wrong in this world—
anyone who has read his writings in the New Testament know that he has strong
opinions about right or wrong, some of which I and the larger church have come to
disagree with him about. So, he does make judgments, but I think the difference
between believing something is right or something is wrong is when we stray from
making a judgment about a person’s behavior to making a judgment about their soul, or
their character, or their being. The moment when we cross that line, the moment when
we say that “I don’t agree with Johnny’s behavior” to implying or outright saying that
Johnny himself is evil because of that behavior, that he is without light in his soul, is not
loved by God or whatever, it is at that moment when we cross the line into
judgmentalism and we put our own souls at risk before God. That man on death row
who killed his neighbor, what he did was wrong, and sinful, and evil, but his heart, his
soul, his being…well, that is God’s to judge, not mine. That friend or relative that hurt
you so deeply, what they did may have been wrong, but it’s not your job—or my job—to
decide whether they are in or out with God, whether their opinions or behaviors have
excluded them from the realm of God’s love. When we label other people as evil or
unacceptable to God or others, rather than what they have done, rather than label the
actions and behaviors that hurt themselves and so many others, as wrong, it is then
that we, ironically enough, exclude ourselves from the circle we are trying to draw other
people out of. We may disagree on what is right and wrong in this world—folks, the
reality is that our tradition has more gray areas than black and white areas, that is why
we Christians are so notorious for fighting with each other—but if we choose to believe
the best of each other when we fight with each other, if we avoid pronouncing other
servants of God as unacceptable to their Master because we don’t agree with them on
this or that matter, if we can avoid that, then we’ll be living out the kind of love Christ
spoke of thousands of years ago.

And I think the primary reason why the Christian tradition, through Paul and Jesus, and
others in the New Testament have been so adamant about us not falling into personal
judgmentalism is because we all know how easy it is to move from labeling someone as
evil to then deciding that their life, their family, who they are shouldn’t be allowed to
exist. Aren’t we supposed to fight against evil, and if THEY are evil, then we should
take care of the problem—we need to wipe out evil, and that means we need to wipe
out those who are evil. So many of the brutalities that humans have visited against
other human beings have started from that moment of labeling of the other as so evil
as to be non-human. But there are not purely evil people and purely good people in
this world—no one who is just a saint or a sinner—there is no one who is only a saint or
only a sinner. Most of us are too complicated, we are too full of both light and shadow,
for us to know that someone is only evil, or that someone is only a saint.

Martha Bishop, in a collection of sermons written women preachers of the Christian
Church, Disciples of Christ, tells of this truth in a story she shared with her
congregation:

"When my children were still preschoolers, I drove a route regularly for Meals on
Wheels, primarily in a housing project in Dallas. One day the sitter didn't show so I had
to take them with me. I scooped up several old magazines for the elderly people on the
route and off we went. At first, the boys were a little hesitant, but after several stops,
they were enjoying themselves immensely. "There was one older woman on the route,
though, who was a real pain in the neck. She had broken her hip and the experience
had apparently soured her toward everything and everyone. If there was nothing to
complain about, she'd bark out, 'Just put the meal in the refrigerator, I'll get to it later.' I
tried to talk with her once or twice, but she was so rude, it was hard to be nice.
"Garnett, who was 5, picked up a couple of magazines and said, 'I'll bet she will really
like a magazine.' (Fat chance, I thought.) Then Andrew, who was only 2 1/2, wanted
something to carry. I handed him the milk, but not satisfied, he stopped and picked a
couple of dandelions. "I knocked on the door. The cranky voice said, 'You're late
today. Come on in, it's unlocked.' I opened the door and the boys pushed past me and
ran to the woman. 'We bought you some neat magazines, see?' Garnett fairly shouted.
"'I brought something too,' chirped Andrew, practically falling into her lap with his two
bedraggled dandelions. I apologized for their rambunctious behavior. Garnet romped
down the stairs, and I turned to take Andrew's hand. 'Bye-bye,' he said, waving. I
glanced back at the woman. She had pulled herself up, clutching the two dandelions in
the hand that held onto her walker and was waving with the other. The bitter expression
on her face had melted into a smile that brightened the tears rolling down her cheeks.
"Blinded by a Log," in Bread Afresh, Wine Anew: Sermons by Disciples Women, ed.
Joan Campbell and David Polk, (St. Louis, Mo: Chalice Press, 1991), 122.

Its moments like this that we miss if we judge each other, if we decide that someone is
not to be included in the great story that God is weaving into this universe. Life is too
short, and too complicated, for us to play God with each other—as I have said in the
past, when we play God with each other, we quickly realize that it’s too much a burden
to bear, and that we humans were not meant for such a heavy load. It’s a grace to be
told not to judge each other, to just allow God to be God, and we humans, well, to be
just human. The world is a beautiful place, full of shadow, full of light, and full of people
that have both within them. Let’s let God sort it all out, and let’s just enjoy the
opportunity to journey with people we don’t always agree with, who cause us to struggle
with ourselves, but who also give us a good glimmer of who God really is. Me—I’m a
carnivore, that’s for sure, and you, you may be vegetarian, but that’s OK. What I hope
we both can agree on is how generous and graceful the Host, the Master, at the end of
the table has been to both us, inviting us to be together under this roof, eating dinner
together at this very moment. Amen