Saturday, March 30, 2013

Love, Judgement and Computer Files

By this all men will know that you are my disciples,
if you love one another. John 13:35

I'm the type of person who likes lists.
My favourite types of sermons are the ones titled "5 keys to....." or "3 steps to.....".
I decide what political side people are on by a mental list of stereo-typical left-wing / right-wing traits.
I like everything to be to be neat and tidy in its own box in my head.

Or, to put it in computer terms, I like everything to have its own folder and/or sub-folder.

For most of my christian life I've managed to do this with 2 big folders. "Right" and "Wrong".
But nows there's some glitches and it appears that some of sub-folders may be in the wrong place.

So how did this happen?

I'll take the two biggest sub-folders challenging the church today. The 'LGBT issue' and the 'Gender Roles' issue.
I'm not going to debate which folder they should be in. In fact, you would have to break down the issues into lots of smaller sub-folders that could potentially end up in either main folder.

The main issue is what criteria was used to determine which folder these issues ended up in.

I believe that to a large extent we have used judgement instead of love to decide what folders go where.

I haven't read Phyllis Tickles book, The Great Emergence, but for me, part of the 500 year rummage sale within the church is the need to replace judgement with love.

For example. If a LGBT person becomes a christian, then surely, getting their life right with God is no different to a 'straight' person getting their life right. It takes time and ultimately it's between them and God.
Just as a side note. Gossip is a sin but I don't see christians picketing churches because they have gossips in their congregations. (This is probably because the gossips organize the pickets!)
My right/ability to to offer any guidance is determined by the the relationship I have with that person and the love that I show toward them (Not the judgement I show toward them).

If a mum decides she needs to go out to work to support her family shouldn't we show our love to her and her family by offering our support etc rather than judging her through our interpretation of the Bible.

Too often we go into a situation with an attitude of judgement - "I'm going to change that person no matter what." 
We don't change people. God does. Yes, God uses people to speak into other peoples lives but usually it's people who've formed relationships over time.
Instead, our attitude should be - "I'm going to love that person no matter what."

In Philip Yanceys book, What's so amazing about Grace, he asks why it was, when Jesus lived on earth, that sinners flocked to him but now sinners stay well away from the church?
His conclusion was that judgement has taken the place of grace.

Love and grace go hand-in-hand. You can't have one without the other.

So, getting back to my computer folder analogy.
I've got rid of the glitch and now have one main folder called 'LOVE' and everything else is a sub-folder of that.
A note of caution though. You've got to watch out for a virus that tries to return things to the old filing system. But don't worry....."LOVE NEVER FAILS" 1 Cor 13:8





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