Dealing with Judgmentalism and Naïveté

Matthew 7:1-5, 15-20

7:1 “Judge not, that you be not judged. 2 For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. 3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye…. 7:15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

According to Jesus, we disciples are to be neither judgmental nor naïve. To put that in positive terms, we are to be both merciful and discerning. That sounds like a challenging balance to maintain. If we are walking a tightrope, it is no better to fall off on one side than on the other. If we fall off on the right side, it is to little purpose if we shout on the way down, “At least I didn’t fall off on the left side.” One disciple may say, “I may have been judgmental, but at least I wasn’t naïve.” Another disciple may say, “I may have failed to be discerning, but at least I was merciful.” But it avails nothing. Jesus wants both. He wants us not to fall off at all…on either side. We are to be discerning and merciful, merciful and discerning. As we strive for the right balance, there are three key terms in Jesus’ teaching that demand our attention.

Term 1. Judge: Jesus says, “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged.” As Jesus uses the term, judging is making a negative assessment of another person’s ultimate worth and eternal destiny based on his or her present faults while giving no attention to one’s own faults. Jesus warns that this approach will catch up with us. God will judge us with the standards that we have applied to others.

When we judge, we are usurping the role of God, but God is still present, God sees, God remembers, and God has not resigned his position. We will one day stand before him and be judged. Guess what standard he will use for us! This reality calls us to approach our lives and relationships with a certain humility, compassion, mercy, and spiritual honesty.

As we have worked our way through the Sermon on the Mount, we have taken spiritual inventory. How are we processing the anger in our lives? How are we approaching our sexual or romantic lives? How much do we live our lives with genuine integrity? How are we doing with dedicating our material resources to serving the kingdom of God? How are we measuring up to the standard of godly perfection? Anyone who comes through this inventory without having plenty of personal work to do just is not paying much attention.

We all have at least a latent desire to fix the whole world, to set things right, to play God. Jesus is telling us to start with ourselves. When our understanding of our own inner spiritual dynamics has been put to the test by tackling our own sins, then we might actually turn out to be of help to someone else, if they invite our help. And they might invite us to help if they see that we are not judging them.

Term 2. Hypocrite: “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.” As Jesus uses the term, a hypocrite is an actor playing a role, more concerned about appearances, impressions, and reputations than about reality.

If we are obsessed with how we are coming across, it is hard for us to learn anything. When our daughter was a pre-schooler, I tried to help her friend, whom we will call Samantha, learn to read. Samantha was a performer, an actress, completely obsessed with how she was coming across, what response she was getting from her audience. She was bright enough; she could memorize her lines, but, as far as she was concerned, her lines had no relationship to the words on a page. I was not able to teach her anything. As she matured, she eventually learned to read, but I assume that came only as she learned to get her attention off how she was coming across long enough to take in what was on the page. I am not saying that Samantha was a hypocrite; I am just pointing out that her focus on how she was coming across interfered with her learning. The point of comparison follows.

As it is with learning to read, so it is with our moral and spiritual development. We make progress only when we get our attention off how we are coming across so that we can really grapple with putting together the foundational pieces of godly living.

If we go through life focused on our own reputations, it is not likely that we will have very satisfactory relationships. If we expect our spouse, our children, our neighbors, our friends, our church, to constantly enhance our reputations, chances are that not a few of them will resent it and will resist our expectations. Children seem especially resistant on this score. They come equipped with excellent hypocrisy detectors, and they soon catch on if we are more concerned about what others think of our parenting than we are about how they are actually thriving.

Sometimes, the generational rebellion against hypocrisy can go the opposite direction. My great grandparents were students of scripture, faithful church members, Sunday school teachers, and good neighbors. As they aged, they took in my great grandfather’s bachelor nephew, twenty years younger, to help them run their farm. It was a good and happy relationship. When my great-grandfather died, there was not a good alternative for either survivor but to keep the arrangement in place. As my great grandmother had never learned to drive, her deceased husband’s nephew became her driver. My great grandmother’s daughter-in-law, I’ll call her Aunt Hazel, was much concerned about appearances. I do not know if it had occurred to her that the sooner she could get the nephew out of the house, the sooner she, her husband, and family might get into the house, but that was a possible additional motive. She went to my great grandmother and told her that her living arrangement was a great scandal to the whole neighborhood and must be stopped. My great grandmother thought about it for a time, and then announced to the family that, as she and her deceased husband’s nephew did not want to be a scandal, they had obtained a marriage license. So far as I know, all the family and neighbors, and church members, except for Aunt Hazel, were delighted, and for some of them the delight was slightly heightened by Aunt Hazel’s sputtering humiliation. Perhaps some of them too had been victims of her concern for appearances. Hypocrisy does not usually work out well in the end. It is best to root it out early on.

Term 3. Recognize: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits.” As Jesus uses the term, to recognize is to see who person really is. While we are not to judge, we are to recognize, to discern. Jesus said that we will recognize truly godly people by the fruits of their living, not by appearances and reputations, but by real productivity. Godly people, people of spiritual depth and maturity, people of compassion and mercy, people of wisdom and discernment, will leave a trail of good fruit in their tracks.

Let’s take my grandmother as an example. Like her mother, she was a godly church woman and Sunday school teacher, but she added touches of good-humored, broad-minded compassion and skill in human relations that were extraordinarily fruitful. She spent much of her adult life living with her husband in a tiny, one bedroom telephone office where they not only raised my mother, but also by turns a couple of nieces, the extra bed being a fold-down by the switchboard. She was in many ways, the human center of her small town of Bluff City, Kansas. She would talk easily with anyone, rich or poor, respectable or scandalous, sober or drunk, and treat them all the same. Two generations of young people saw her as the embodiment of acceptance, wisdom, and guidance. When she was terminally ill, and in such pain that she could not sleep, she sat up at night writing letters of encouragement to young people that she knew to be going through hard times. When she died, the funeral home in Anthony, Kansas, had to set up speakers outside so that those who wished to attend the service but could not get in, could at least hear it. She never had any significant money, never cared a whit about appearances, but she was one of the most fruitful people I ever knew.

Acceptance, mercy, and compassion are good, godly qualities, but Jesus also wanted his disciples to be careful about who they selected as spiritual leaders, guides, and models. He warned them against leaders whose spiritual lives were not fruitful. We are not to judge people for their faults. We are to be merciful and compassionate to people who have fallen short of Christian standards. But we also are to be careful about who we select as our spiritual leaders.

At First Christian Church, we welcome into our fellowship everyone who wants to learn about Jesus and about following him. We welcome into our membership everyone who professes Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, Lord and Savior of the world, who has been baptized into union with him, and who wishes to be part of our fellowship and mission. But Jesus wants us to be careful, discerning, recognizing, about selecting our leaders because he loves us and does not want us to be led in the wrong direction.

In this passage, Jesus is warning against false prophets, who disguise themselves as good sheep, but are really destructive wolves. But his warnings apply to other leaders besides prophets: evangelists, preachers, pastors, elders, Sunday school teachers, and so forth. No leaders are perfect or without fault, but we want our leaders to be established on the solid foundation of sacred scripture, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. We do not want leaders who teach false doctrine. We want our leaders to be subject to the moral teachings of the New Testament, and if they fail, to be duly repentant. We do not want leaders who break New Testament moral rules and remain unrepentant. We want our leaders to be moving in the right direction, growing in all of the 9 ways. We do not want leaders who are complacent about their walk with Christ. We want our leaders to be developing discernment about the difference between essentials and nonessentials, about what is clear from scripture and what is debatable, about when we must be united and when we can allow diversity. We do not want leaders who ride off on their speculative theological hobby horses in ways that are divisive of genuine believers. We want our leaders to learn how to hold important lines without being unnecessarily offensive. We do not want them unnecessarily driving people whose faith or morality does not yet measure up out of hearing range of the gospel. We want our leaders to understand the priority of expressing the redeeming love of God in effective ways to lost and broken people. We do not want leaders who do not care about broken people. We want our leaders to be humbly merciful and compassionate

Now, none of us will perfectly measure up to what we want in our leaders. All of us are unworthy. All of us require grace and mercy. All of us are on a journey, but a spiritual leader should at least know our need for help, should know the direction of the journey, and should be willing to learn, learn, and learn some more. With that kind of leader, Jesus can work with extraordinary patience and great results.