What the World needs now is ….

Right now I have about a million other things I need to be doing…at least a hundred that need my almost immediate attention in order to keep my life running.  However, my head is swarming in a circuitous fashion, while my heart feels like a huge leaden ball waiting to drop right thru to my feet – and so I turn to the faceless internet to send out my questions and my pleas.   Perhaps this is the “P” of my ENTP (Meyers Brigg’s) profile that seems to be coming out more and more the older I get.  I also scored just as evenly as an ENTJ…supposedly a more organized and directed individual than the ENTP cousin…but I feel myself slipping more and more into the P side of things.  So, I digress from my organized life in order to help me process where I am today…but mostly to say that if there is anytime I need help understanding this world, anytime I need a little encouragement…this would be it.  For I feel like I am dangling backwards over a cliff, waiting to repel back down to solid ground – but am a little frozen stiff at the fear of having to lean backwards and not knowing if anything or anyone is going to catch me before I fall to my death.

I have been reduced to a pulp yet again today…not literally nor emotionally – for I try not to let anyone’s words have that kind of power over my life anymore.  No, I think it is spiritually that I am reduced – for my spirit is just yearning for something else, something better than this war-torn earth that I live in right now – where we as people hurt each other for sport…thinking we are better than the other, that we have more revelation on how God works over another person…and thus we are right to judge them and tell them that they are putting “God in a box”.

This is a post that has been a long time in the works in my head…one that has been discussed with many new friends as of late…for I am trying to understand where in the world we get off in the Christian circle being so judgmental?….when Jesus told us to FIRST take the plank out of our OWN eye…so that then we would see that what looks like a plank in our friend’s eye is actually just a small speck of dust!  What we saw as a plank in their eye was…drum roll please….was really a plank in our own eye!   And that this is to be amongst friends, brothers, sisters…not amongst complete or almost complete strangers that no nothing of your life.  Not that I have found even the close connection always guards you from judgement unfortunately either.

Before I go any further,  I just want to say to all of you, Christians and not, that I will be the first to admit that I NEED to apologize for being judgmental….perhaps even to you, my friend, family member or some more distant acquaintance reading this now.  For as I have more and more judgement thrown at me for my decisions, I feel the knife of judgement pierce my soul…and realize that I too have thrown this knife at others out of my own pride and arrogance, my own desire to prove a point and help persuade you to see things my way.  I am deeply sorry for my puffed up knowledge that flew at you without your asking for it.  I am moved beyond words for the damage I have caused to countless relationships all in the hopes of bringing others closer to Jesus and God or some other information that I deemed the absolute truth…especially when I realize now that I did exactly the OPPOSITE.  I am so, so, so sorry for ever deceiving myself to think I was mightier than you in some way, shape or from.  Please believe me, I am working thru the wrongs I have caused others and if you feel you should be on that list – please lift it up to the Lord and ask Him to put it on my heart…and I am positive that God will help me find you and give you a proper apology from the bottom of my soul.

For once, I am really not sure where I want this post to go…I guess I just want to offer it out there to y’all as a thought to be mulled over this week, next week, next month and for the rest of your life.  For I find the more I try to rid myself of judgement of others – the more I seem to be judging.  Or maybe I am just more acutely aware of my judgement of others.  It’s really hard to not judge.

I know full well that being judgmental is not just a Christian problem, but a human problem.  However, since Jesus called His Church to separate ourselves from the rest of the world so that they would “know us by our love”…I cannot think of anything better to get rid of than judgement.  For if you want to kill love a sure way to do this is to mix in one portion of knowledge plus one portion of pride and the results will be a judgmental church looking more like the Pharisees than the disciples and apostles that worked so hard to evangelize the world for Christ and His GOOD NEWS.

Furthermore, driving last week I heard a new song by Kid Rock and Martina McBride called “Care”.  In the interview he was quoted saying that if he can do nothing else on this earth at the end of the day but to give a darn, at least he can care about his fellow man.  By golly if Kid Rock can get things in God’s kingdom right more than those within God’s kingdom…then what in the world is the Church doing???  God has forewarned us that even the “Rocks” will cry out…I guess it is becoming true!  (And as I am trying not to judge…maybe I truly will be surprised at who is in heaven.)

This point was driven home yet again today as I discussed the roles of men and women in the church vs. what God actually says in His word.  As I played “devil’s advocate” as I often do…I realized that as many in the Christian world…she wasn’t really open to being questioned on her views of God…to stepping back and asking herself if perhaps there was any weight in my responses.  One by one they were shot down, knocked off the chess board and dismissed until I was asked to stop putting God in the box.  Am I?  Just because I don’t feel God is going to work in my life as He did in hers….and mostly because I KNOW that I have heard from God on these issues in VERY concrete ways thru His word…..am I the one that is putting God in a box?  Am I judging her or worse yet, judging God?

All of this interaction left me in a horrible mood as I described above, but mostly I am left with a whole LOT of questions that I am asking myself…and you as I seek to rid myself of judgement:

Where is the compassion in the Church if we are so quick to tell others they are doing wrong, not according to the bible…without ever listening to them fully?   If we are standing in judgement, arms crossed and hearts hard…does that allow us to open our ears and hear their side of the story?  Are we able to see the immense pain and hurt they are in that have led them to make decisions they felt best to protect themselves from further damage?  To give them a chance to voice their frustrations, fears, concerns and doubts about God and where they are at in their journey?  Are we more concerned about saving face, saving marriages and families because we are Christians and we are not supposed to do those things?  Are we afraid that if we accept people were they are and how they are at that moment in time, honoring this point with them…that we are not living biblically?  Are we not allowed to have doubts about who we are, who God is and who others are?  Are we supposed to have all the answers and say that we know how God decides to work in EVERY situation…and that it must be like He decided to work in your situation…because if it is not exactly like how He worked in yours, then it is not biblical?  Or that the person isn’t hearing from God?  How in the world do you know whether or not someone is hearing from God?  Who made you God over them?

Or even if they made wrong decisions that have led them down a more destructive path…what right do we have to stand and lord it over them that they made the wrong decision?  Did Jesus do this to the woman caught in adultery?  Or did He simply ask the Pharisees to analyze their own hearts and see if they were without fault?  Did Jesus ever focus on the Law with anyone but the Pharisees? Or did he offer them (Pharisees and Gentiles alike) grace first and then explained the law to them?  (Hmm, need to look at this one more.)

I have my own answers to these questions…but feel the need to just offer these out there for you to read and struggle with on your own.  I think the more I carry on in this path God has sent me down, the more I find that yes, I have gotten a LOT of things wrong…yet there is grace there…and with that grace there is HOPE for trying again.  If I mess up again, that there is more grace and then more hope.  So maybe I have gotten things terribly, horribly wrong yet again…but my faith is not in what I do…but in the “object of my faith” – which is the almighty God.  I sooooo do not understand His ways or pretend to know how He decides to work in anyones life – including in my own.  For if I pretend to know God’s ways, then I deceive myself into thinking I can grasp who God is fully…and this will only lead me to judge others yet again…see the circuitous nature of all this?

After all this exploration, all I have to say is that if I stand in judgement over another for their actions…then I am NEVER able to get down on their level, to BE in the sand WITH them … and I will never see them for who they really are.  And isn’t that all any of us want – to be seen and known by others…but not to feel the knife of judgement stabbed in our back when we are down?

So, I will finish as I started… as I sit here writing before you now I ask you to join with me as I pledge to make the world full of