The Culture of Condemnation

A long time ago, Jesus arrived on the scene into a culture of condemnation.  The religious culture was run-a-muck with self-righteous leaders who had the appearance of piety and holiness and handed down judgments of condemnation to those sinners who committed the most heinous and public sins.  Stone the adulterer.  Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.  Cast out the sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes.  Demonize the unclean.  Jesus turned things upside down.  He said that being angry was the equivalent of murder.  He said that adultery starts in the heart, and that lusting after another is just the same as the act.  Wait...what?  Jesus said that there isn't one of us that has it all figured out, even the ones that look like they do.  He went on to say to the religious leaders some pretty harsh words:  "On the outside you seem righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness" (Matthew 23:28).

Social media has again ushered us into a Culture of Condemnation.  Our keyboards have simply made it easier to condemn everyone -- athletes, movie stars, politicians, and acquaintances.  Everyone has an opinion, and we now have a forum to share it -- with little consequence.  In fact, we'll probably get a few affirming 'likes' for our tirade.  The situations in the NFL over the last week or so has brought this to light even more.  Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, and Greg Hardy have shed an ugly light on abuse and violence.  Domestic abuse to anyone, especially to a woman or child, is reprehensible.  We can all agree on that.  Moreover, when laws are broken, society needs people to be held accountable.  However, what I have noticed is how these situations have allowed so many of us to get on our high horse and condemn these men.  "We would never do such a thing."  "They are monsters."  "They deserve the worst."  Maybe all those things are true.  I'd never hit a woman or child.  They certainly need to be punished as anyone else would.

But I keep thinking about what Jesus said.  I keep thinking about how I might not have broken laws on the outside, I'm often "full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."  I keep thinking...

• What if my worst moment was caught on camera like Ray Rice?
• What if there was a camera in my soul?
• I'd never hurt or hit someone...but does it count if I've thought about it?
• What about all those times I've been so angry at someone I could scream?
• What about the times I did scream?
• Have I ever crossed the line in disciplining my children?
• Do lies that no one knows about count?
• What about lust?

Don't get me wrong.  We need to discipline law-breakers and educate people on how to be good citizens.  But, Jesus seemed much less concerned about 'just being a good citizen' in the neighborhood.  He said you could look like a good citizen and be dead on the inside.  He said we're all broken.  Jesus challenges us deeper.  This is why I'm so slow to condemn.  I've got so much of my own mess to clean up.  I think we know wrong when we see it.  No one that hears of the pending cases in the NFL could dispute that.  But I know there is stuff that I don't know about everyone that gives me pause to condemn.  And it's what I do know about myself that gives me the most pause.

Create in me clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Hope in the Brokenness

There is a great deal of hurt and brokenness going on in the world.  I'm reminded of that with ugliness going on around us.  Ferguson, MO is struggling, to say the least, with peace in its community.  There are ugly things happening and being said there concerning race issues we thought or wished were long gone from our country.  The ISIS threatens peace everywhere.  We are scared and searching for the ways to deal with terrorist.  We're not even sure we CAN deal with terrorist.  The NFL, the world's most popular sports league, is dealing with the backlash of how poorly it handled an incident of abuse from one of its marquee players on his then fiancee.  The video of Ray Rice seen 'round the globe has opened our eyes to the ugly world of domestic violence.  The situation with Ray Rice has shed a dark shadow on even our justice system.  Prosecutors and the judge HAD SEEN the video that rocked our world this week, and they still accepted Rice into a pre-trial intervention program that will eventually lead to the assault charge being dismissed from his record.  We're learning that our justice system sometimes doesn't bring justice.  And just this week, in a story that hit close to my heart, police and the FBI arrested a man that lives in the small town in South Carolina where my brother and his family live.  The man had killed his five children, driven them to Alabama, and dumped their bodies off a dirt road.  A man capable of killing his own five innocent children was living minutes away from my two nephews.

I'm not in the politics business, so I stay away from politics.  There are a lot of politics surrounding the situations in Ferguson, the ISIS, and Ray Rice.  There will be politics in the trial of this man in South Carolina.  Politics are complicated.  And they don't fully work.  Our world doesn't need more political maneuvering.  Our world needs healing.  Because it is broken.  This is the truth from the Bible that so many miss.  We point to the beautiful things about life that point to how the world really is.  That's not quite right.  The beauty we see or experience points to how things could be.  They are a 'foretaste of glory divine.'

Politics, policies, legislation, suspensions, and boycotts don't save people.  Jesus saves people.  Our world needs saving.  Our world needs Jesus.  The problem is that getting Jesus to the world is complicated.  You won't get a chance to meet Ray Rice.  You're probably not looking to meet someone from the ISIS.  You probably don't have a vacation scheduled to Ferguson, and I don't think a revival in Ferguson is the answer.

The answer is you and me.  The answer is teaching our sons how to honor all people (including women) because the Bible tells us to honor others above ourselves.  The answer is to treat our co-workers and neighbors as children of the Most High God, made in His image, instead of according to our differing skin colors.  The answer is in praying for our enemies because Jesus told us to pray for those that curse you.  The answer is loving our neighbor as ourselves, instead of ignoring their drug and alcohol abuse, before they do something horrific in a substance-induced rage.  The answer is in being Jesus for a broken world, one person at a time.  The answer is in showing others another way of life, a new world, a Kingdom in which love of God and love of neighbor reign supreme.