Original and continuing Commentary on the “critical” “My Utmost” devotional for June 17: This devotional is very straight forward, quoting Jesus’ words, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” Jesus’ words provide all the evidence we need of two things regarding human nature. One is that human nature is “fallen”. That term describes what happened to the spirit of human beings in the Garden of Eden when Eve and Adam disobeyed God’s restriction not to eat the fruit of one certain tree. Until then the spirit God put into humans, that made them human rather than just animals, was pure, free from the self-centeredness that now characterizes every human being who remains unyielded to God’s Spirit. The other is that human relationships are now confused. Try to imagine how unconfused, straightforward and honest human relationships would be if our spirits were centered on God, as our Creator, and each other, as God’s fellow creation, instead of being self-centered primarily! What a difference that would make! But Jesus, as usual, goes to the root of confused human relationships, both with God and fellow humanity, with his words, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” Unfortunately, there is a lot of confusion in our time about what it means to “judge” someone. We easily understand the word “judge” when we talk about judging the height of a tree. That’s just a simple comparison of the height of the tree to some standard we use, like feet or yards or meters. We don’t judge the height of a tree by parts of a mile, like .oo4 miles, because the mile is not the right standard to measure a tree in common understanding. Also, we don’t commonly “judge” a tree as evil or righteous, because evil and righteous are not the right standards to measure a tree that has no will of its own. We might “judge” a tree as good or bad, but not in a moral sense. If a tree bears the fruit we want to harvest from it we call it a “good” tree, and vice-versa. So, why does it get so complicated when we consider “judging” fellow human beings? It becomes confusing once we add another meaning to the word “judge”, other than just “comparison” like we do for trees. So, the question, “What is that other meaning? The other meaning is “condemnation”. When we put together the meaning of simple “comparison” with the meaning of “condemnation” then we can understand what Jesus and Oswald Chambers are talking about. If we have a fruit tree in our yard that has become overgrown and unproductive, we can evaluate the condition of the tree “objectively” by looking at it and comparing its condition to that of a tree that is producing plenty of good fruit. Yes, we have to “judge” the tree’s condition by a right standard, how the quantity and quality of its fruit measures up against a similar sized and aged tree in a similar environment, perhaps one nearby. That provides us a “fair assessment” of its productivity in comparison to what could reasonably be expected of that tree. So our “judgment” and “criticism” of the tree is practical and legitimate. And from experience we know that pruning the tree, clearing out the overgrowth properly, will likely result in returning it to productive health again. So, in our “objective” comparison we “criticize” the tree by the right standards and for the right purposes. We have “judged” the tree to be overgrown and determined what corrective measures will make it productive again. Neither Chambers nor Jesus is telling us not to “criticize” the tree or “judge” its condition, because both are understood to be necessary to correct the tree’s condition to make it productive again. What Chambers and Jesus are saying is that it makes no sense to climb up in the tree and whack at the branches or the limbs or the trunk with a hatchet, inflicting wounds that serve no useful purpose to “encourage” it to be more productive, provide better fruit. Such actions just “condemn” the tree to a worse condition. However, a rightful “criticism” of the tree’s overgrown condition and “judgment” of its lack of productivity will result in “wounding” the tree to some extent, when excess branches are trimmed off properly to “encourage” it to be more productive. That is unavoidable and appropriate. And sometimes the tree is so rotted in its core that it must be “condemned” and cut down to the ground. The purpose of using a tree here, a living but non-personal object, is to define and clarify our usual “criticism”, “judgment” and “condemnation” thinking, without the added confusion of personal reaction from the object of our criticism, judgment and condemnation. It helps us to understand the “traffic” on just one way of a two-way street. Put another way, it helps us understand our own thinking before we complicate the discussion with how other people receive and react to our words and actions. So, there are two more very important considerations to make sense of this devotional. One, of course, is the reaction of another person to our words and actions. The other is our motivation for “criticizing”, “judging” and “condemning”. Chambers attributes a clear and definite admonition to us from Jesus, “Jesus’ instructions with regard to judging others is very simply put; He says, “Don’t.” But as we’ve seen with the tree, Jesus isn’t talking about “judging” in the limited sense of “comparison” or “fair assessment”, or even “objective criticism”. Jesus is talking about “condemnation”. Chambers: “The average Christian is the most piercingly critical individual known.” OUCH!!! At this point we need to consider an important historical change. When Oswald lived, a hundred years ago, things were different culturally in the West, and America, than they are today, in a particular way that bears on our discussion. In the early nineteen hundreds the “holiness movement” in protestant Christianity was still very strong and much more influential in the general culture. The spiritual revivals, repentance and returning to God, in England and America of the hundred and fifty years before 1900 had a profound effect on the Protestant movement, resulting in many beneficial changes in the collective Body of Christ, an outpouring of missionary efforts world-wide, and tremendous beneficial changes in public policy and law in keeping with Biblical principles. However, as Satan is so adept at counterfeiting godly results of God’s work, there also arose a legalism, both in the Christian body and in the culture that was unsupported by Biblical principle. Legalism is a lifestyle counterfeit to true holiness in which people determine to live by rules and regulations without living with clean hearts before God. Over time, Satan was able to get the second, third and fourth generations of God’s holy people to focus mainly on the outward rules and regulations handed down to them instead of mainly on the submission of their spirits to God. While the original rules and regulations were good, in honoring God’s Biblical principles, the heart condition of following generations added many rules and regulations that were not supported by Biblical principles, thinking that would maintain holiness in the culture. That’s legalism. And when the culture’s understanding of the Biblical basis is lost, people reject the rules and regulations as hypocritical and unjust imposition of someone else’s morality upon them. This is exactly what happened with the Jewish nation over time. This is exactly what has happened to formerly Christian Western culture in recent times. We are now reaping the whirlwind of radical rejection of Christian values at every level of culture. So, while there was still a strong influence of righteous Christian understanding of holiness in Chambers’ early 1900s, that understanding has nearly evaporated in the cultures of the West, America included, and it has been replaced by humanism. Humanism, at its core, is philosophy that puts trust in human reason to determine what is culturally right and wrong rather than God’s moral revelation as given in the Scriptures. This has led to the present “tolerance movement” because there is no longer any absolute right and wrong, so everyone should be “tolerant” and “respect” everyone else’s “cultural code” as their rightful choice. Of course the exception to this “tolerance” and “respect” attitude is the Biblical moral code because that would impose someone else’s “legalism” on others. The result of this cultural sea change is that most Christians in the West are no longer openly critical of wickedness, even that which is clearly wicked in God’s sight. In his craftiness, Satan has reversed the tables on Christians by using bits of Scripture in the common culture to intimidate weak and ignorant Christians, those who don’t thoroughly study their Bibles with sensitivity to the Holy Spirit. The primary Scripture used to hammer Christians into psychological and emotional submission is “Judge not, that you be not judged”! And in this submissive mode, Christians will judge (condemn) other Christians who do take a stand for righteousness, and they will stand with the world against the efforts of mature Christians to expose the truth of God to the world around them calling for repentance and return to God. This attitude of submission to the culture’s, and Satan’s, priority on “tolerance” and “respect” for those who promote evil pervades the Christian church in the West and in America. This is why Oswald Chambers’ reference to “The average Christian is the most piercingly critical individual known”, may no longer be true, at least as it was in his time. The tables being turned, it may be Christians who are the most “piercingly critical” of other Christians who do stand openly for Godliness. All of this is why it is so important to properly understand Chambers’ and Jesus’ words about judging others. A proper understanding deals with the need for righteous “pruning” of the “trees” in God’s “orchard”, while preparing those whom God uses to “prune” and those God wants “pruned”. God used Paul as a master “pruner”. Anyone who is sensitive to the Spirit and reads Paul’s rebukes, admonitions and encouragements is “pruned”, even radically. But the pruning isn’t the main issue. It’s the resulting fruitfulness God is after. (To be continued…Welcome to Follow)
Posted on: Mon, 23 Jun 2014 15:24:10 +0000
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