Judgmentalism

Why the Kitschy “God’s Not Done with Me Yet” Is the Most Profound Truth You’ll Encounter Today

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It starts with a girl, because for many a guy, that’s where life lessons often begin.

I’d known her for years, but one day she took me into the off-limits basement of her home to show me a secret. There sat her dad, engineer’s hat in place, surrounded by his model train “kingdom.”

I say kingdom because the spread was impressive, perhaps 20 feet by 15, and from his perch, her dad controlled it all. Multiple trains, switches, throttles, and on and on. You could tell by the look on his face: He loved this hobby.

And nothing on those tracks escaped him. He knew the beginning, end, and everything in-between.

This imagery comes back to me because I continue to think we all need some perspective about perspective.

It bothers me greatly to see America descending into factions so imprisoning that no one seems capable of understanding anyone else. Soon, the verbal sparring turns into questions of an opponents’ intelligence, and all parties retreat to their corners still attempting murder with words.

We have become a people with no ability to step outside ourselves and to inhabit another person’s perspective. Worse, we question the other person’s motives, without any understanding of that person’s past, upbringing, hurts, joys, or hidden beliefs.

One of the sad realities I see played out online every day consists of the “enlightened” Christian believer tearing to shreds the novice. The sage must publicly destroy the naïf to show not only the sage’s wisdom but also to defend the honor of God against fools, regardless of how much punishment the supposed fool must endure and its personal cost.

And because pounding idiots into the dust is fun.

But it shouldn’t be.

You see, God is not done with any of us yet. Each of us is made in the image of God, yet we are all marred by sin. In our current form, we are flawed, but God can reshape us as He will. And He promises He will if we let Him.

When you and I encounter another human soul, we see a slice of a life, a moment in another’s journey. We do not see the departure from the gate, nor the arrival at the final destination.

But Father God watches over it all. Like my friend’s dad, He is the celestial engineer who knows the entirety of the track and all that is possible on the journey. He stands apart from time and sees the beginning, the end, and everything in-between. To Him, no surprises are possible, and the ultimate journey of each passenger He knows down to the second.

But only the Father knows.

The Bible says this:

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
—Colossians 3:3-4 ESV

Not only can we not know another’s life, we cannot even know our own. We do not know the future. We incorrectly process the past. And we don’t see at all the workings of God in our inmost person. Our life truly is hidden in Him.

But He sees everything.

Which is why it’s such foolishness for any person to presume superiority over any other. We see a fleeting slice of another’s life, but if we try to draw suppositions from that slice, chances are we will miss the truth entirely. We critique another, and the criticism is based on vapor. If each of us cannot comprehend even our own thoughts and lives correctly, how can we be assured of anything about another’s life, especially as to where that person might be in the journey?

Each of us is a clay pot in God’s hands. The final form we take is not up to us but to God:

Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the thing made should say of its maker, “He did not make me”; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, “He has no understanding”?
—Isaiah 29:16b ESV

But now, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.
—Isaiah 64:8 ESV

The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do. Then the word of the LORD came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the LORD. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel….”
—Jeremiah 18:1-6 ESV

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
—Philippians 1:6 ESV

Potter & clayUltimately, if we rashly condemn another believer in Jesus and deem him or her inadequate by our standard, we presume to judge God’s working in that person’s life. We stand in judgement over God Himself, questioning His sanctification, His timing, and His thoroughness.

This does not mean that if we think that young woman over there is about to throw her life away or that elderly man is slandering someone without cause that we cannot make a judgment in that moment, one that might demand we intervene or correct.

But what we cannot do is write them off or think that they are outside of God’s redemption. If we do, then we presume to play engineer and to see all of the track, every train, switch, tree, hill, co-passenger, and all beginnings, middles, and endings. Or in the potter’s case, we question the artistry, the process, and the outcome. We commit the sin of the Garden. We attempt to strip God of His title and instead enthrone ourselves in His place as the engineer or potter.

Each one of us is in process. What you see in me now is neither who I was or who I will become. The same for you.

For the Christian, the journey is to make us more like Jesus. It’s an effort God undertakes but never completes this side of heaven. Much now is hidden. Only when the End comes, and Christ who is our life appears, will all be revealed.

Let’s not break the bruised reed or quench the smoldering wick. Instead, let us partner with God in the journey, whether it’s our journey or another’s. Let’s trust Him that He knows what He is doing in the lives of you, me, and everyone.

God’s not finished with any of us yet.

View from a Glass House

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So, how about that recent celebrity performance in the news?

Or that latest ghastly thing our government leaders did/said?

Or that unbelievable event that caused that stir among Christians that we’re all up in arms about?

Or that thing that happened there?

You know, that thing.

Notice how generic those questions are? They’re that way because not a day goes by when there isn’t some uproar from Christians about something that happened that made the news and is causing us to shake our heads and lament the age we live in.

While I may lack the ability to breathe the rarefied air at the altitude occupied by pundit Victor Davis Hanson, he nails the intellectual response to that recent celebrity performance in the news in his “An American Satyricon” post at the National Review. As always, please read the whole thing (though I offer no additional commentary on it).

I have only one general statement:

But evil people and impostors will flourish. They will deceive others and will themselves be deceived.
—2 Timothy 3:13 NLT

In other words, no matter what the latest buzz is, ho hum. Just another day in Babylon.

To all the Christians riled by the latest completely expected behavior from lost people, I ask this:

What are you doing concerning your own glass house?

If I have a beef with the contemporary Christian Church in America, it’s that we seem to be startlingly reflective about what other people are doing but almost never so about our own behavior. Broken glass cuts everyoneWe can wonder what kind of lousy father or mother some debauched former teen superstar might have had that led that fading star to commit whatever sins he/she committed, but then we scream at our kids on the way home from church and generally let ourselves off the hook for our own miserable taint.

I wish there were some way to get Christians in America and their self-appointed spiritual leaders to start looking in the mirror and asking what can be done about the person staring back. You know, that person who never goofs, never blows an interpretation of world events, never makes a hypocritical comment, and never does anything that requires amending, fixing, or apologies.

With an indignation right of hell, we do a smash-up job of judging the other guy, and I wish we would stop.

Lost people act like lost people. We should not be surprised.

When we SHOULD be surprised is when saved people act like lost people. And even then, the surprise shouldn’t be that great. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Our biggest problem is that we don’t respond appropriately to what causes our indignation.

Rather than join the masses by spouting off, do something almost no one ever does: pray instead. Rather than posting on Facebook about what some celebrity, government leader, or 15-minutes-of-fame-grabber did, pray. Pray for that person and for the situation. Pray that the holy and perfect light of Christ would dawn in that broken life and dismal circumstance. Do this every time instead of adding to the shrill discourse. Just pray and move on.

And after we’ve prayed, let us consider our own state as a creature of dust that is here one day and blown away by the breeze the next.

There’s a reason the eldest in the crowd dropped their stones and walked away first when confronted with words from Jesus regarding a terrified, guilty-as-sin adulterer. And yet that reason doesn’t seem to grab us anymore. We all think too highly of ourselves and our accumulated “wisdom.”

I wish there were more personal reflection in the American Church today. I wish we all could acknowledge our own glass house. I wish we all spent more time dealing with our own failings rather than concerning ourselves with another’s. I wish we would stop thinking that people who don’t know Jesus should act as if they do, especially when those who do know Him act as if they don’t.

But then, perhaps I should stop wishing and start praying.

A Response to “Five Types of Critics in the Church”

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Light in a dark churchOver at Challies.com, Tim posted a link in his A La Carte section of Oct. 1 to a post by the head of Lifeway, Thom Rainer, “Five Types of Critics in the Church.” As they say on the Interwebs, read the whole thing (hey, it’s short too!).

Rainer posits his five types of people who criticize church leaders:

  • The constructive critic
  • The negligent critic
  • The hurt critic
  • The sinful critic
  • The self-serving critic

He then adds:

“…make every attempt to discern the type of critic with whom you are dealing. In many cases, the criticisms will benefit your life and ministry. In other cases, you may have the opportunity to deal with the critic in a pastoral and redemptive way.”

The more I pondered the article, especially the list of five critics and what Rainer says about them, the more critical of the article I became. Ironic, eh? It seemed to me the article brought into focus a big issue in the contemporary American Church.

Reflecting on what Rainer wrote about the five critics (you did read the article, right?), what came through more than anything is the chasm that separates paid, professional ministers from “the laity.” The descriptions of the critics seemed to have a built-in class distinction, as if the people in the seats or those “in support” don’t have much right to criticize what happens in a church or parachurch ministry. By listing five types of critics and then telling leaders it’s essential to discern which they are dealing with, Rainer betrays a general lack of connection with what is really going on in the lives of “the laity” and enforces a classification system that further insulates leadership from criticism. Nothing puts uppity, troublesome people in their place like a label.  And though Rainer tries to temper this by saying that criticism can be good for one’s ministry, it seems tacked on and “Christianized.”

Here is my experience…

I have noted many times on this blog that what many people interpret as sin, stupidity, and opposition is nothing more than people just trying to get by in life. My experience is that the vast majority of people are desperate for some kind of stability, a foundation that will keep them going through the motions one more day. Most of what we don’t like in other people’s lives is their coping mechanism in operation.

We live in turbulent times. People feel powerless and angry. Many are losing control of their lives and fear acceleration of that loss. Mental illness is an epidemic, with the number of people on psychoactive drugs at the pandemic stage.

In the middle of this stands the Church. That Church says, “Jesus is the Rock,” and claims to be a port in the storm of life. People believe that too.

Criticism doesn’t erupt in a vacuum. Most people become critical when change happens (or when it should happen but doesn’t).

When I see criticism building in a church, it is often because leaders tinkered with aspects of church life that were a comfort to distressed people. Those people saw their respite toyed with and it created further stress in their lives.

More than anything, church leaders today do not take into adequate account how change affects the flock. Those leaders get into their heads that they want to adopt the latest hotness even when people are perfectly fine with the way things are. Leaders think of “Behold, I am doing a new thing” as a verse that gives imprimatur to every whim of change.

Fact is, this is highly disruptive to folks who see the Church as their last refuge of peace and tradition in a world changing far too quickly, and often for the worse. Church leaders who force change—and often do so rapidly so as to keep up with whatever is new and trendy in church programming and growth theories—are often breeding their own critics.

What bothers me about the Rainer article is that leaders create this disruption and then don’t want to be bothered by the fallout. Worse, when people feel threatened by changes, they end up having to face a leader who has been told that threatened people must be labeled by the leader with one of five types of critic tags. I find this advice startling in its superiority, perpetuating the “touch not the Lord’s anointed” mentality Christians often face in their leaders.

Of the five types of critics Rainer sketches, I honestly believe that most people are constructive critics with some level of self-serving. When church leaders disrupt the safety people feel in the normalcy of their church life, those people lose a valuable sense of personal stability, so of course there is a self-serving aspect to their frustrations. How could it be otherwise? Most people won’t come forward unless they feel some personal attachment to the criticism they risk sharing.

And it is a risk. What gets “laity” disenfranchised faster than saying, “Um, Pastor, should we really be doing this?”

Five types of critics make it sound as if the majority of criticism is wrong, what with “constructive” seeming as if it comprises only 20 percent of all criticism. I disagree. Most people are constructive because they love their church and really don’t want to see it run onto the rocks that have destroyed so many other cherished institutions in life, the wreckage of which is all around people and ever obvious, fostering much of the ill-ease they feel about life in the 2010s. That many churches ARE hurtling toward the rocks because of leaders who DON’T listen to the criticisms of “laity” is one of the epidemics of our age.

As a counter to Rainer, I offer that leaders need to lose the labels. We don’t need to see a label on a type of criticism; we need leaders who recognize that we may be feeling disrupted by something that has happened in or to the church.

Also, leaders, discern the times. People are looking for safety. Messing with what people find safe is a recipe for generating frustration, which leads to criticism. Realize, too, that critics are not stupid, nor are they attempting to halt everything that can be good about change. Most are asking is for greater temperance in moving forward and a recognition that change for change sake has wrecked more than one solid church. Many are frustrated with having yet more lack of input in yet one more aspect of life.

To the leaders I ask that you be more wary of the new than you are of your critics. Today’s new and hot is tomorrow’s old and busted, and not every “vision” proves to be of the Lord. And sometimes, the “laity” understands this better than you do.