unChristian: Judgmental

I think the Judgmental chapter moved me to self-examination more than any other in the book.  To summarize: unChristian is an analysis of polling data from the 16-to-41-year-old age groups regarding their views of Christians and the church.  Six “impressions” stood out from the noise: hypocritical, anti-homosexual, sheltered, too political, overly focused on conversion and judgmental.

A definition, “To be judgmental is to point out something that is wrong in someone else’s life, making the person feel put down, excluded, and marginalized.  [It] is fueled by self-righteousness, the misguided inner motivation to make our own life look better by comparing it to the lives of others.” (p182)  If this definition knocks us off-guard, the authors immediately follow-up with the statistic that 87% of non-Christian young people polled used the term judgmental to describe Christians.  This becomes a prejudice and a challenge we face when introducing ourselves as Christ-followers to unchurched people (p183).

While there is a place in our walk for standing up for our beliefs, Kinnaman points out four ways in which we trip ourselves up when doing so: wrong verdict, wrong timing, wrong motivation and playing favorites.  Too often we tend to forget that we are dealing with real people and don’t consider how our absolutist statements or quotations of scripture can come across as arrogant, awkward and self-satisfying.

I won’t go into all four but I was reminded of a situation that exemplifies the “wrong timing” attitude.  Several years ago, a young Christian married couple had their first baby who was born with several medical complications.  Their little son died after about a week in the hospital.  After an obviously difficult couple of months, they packed up and moved to a town in a neighboring state.  A few years later, Julie and I became good friends with someone who was closely acquainted with the couple.  Apparently, several well-meaning Christian friends of theirs mentioned during and after this episode that God wanted to heal their son but they hadn’t a) prayed correctly or b) prayed enough or c) believed or d) something else.  Now, I believe God wants to heal people and demonstrated this in the life of Jesus.  But really.  Was that the right time to do this?  And to a Christian couple?  To what end?

The chapter moves from a discussion of motives to a practical, Bible-based reminder of judgment’s place in our lives: basically it’s God’s job, not ours. Judgment robs us of our ability to genuinely love and interact with others because it subconsciously works to place us on a pedestal above them.  As a result, our attempts a relationship become just that: fabricated attempts instead of the real thing.  The authors point out in several places how the under-29 generation is very savvy to manipulation and disingenuous intentions.  If people can pick up on anything, it’s a superiority complex.  If anyone is justified in a having a superiority complex, it’s God…and yet He chooses not to have one.  The Bible tells us that we should follow His lead.

The chapter closes with a description of respectful access that replaces judgment, including: listen to me, don’t label me, put yourself in my place and, most importantly, be my friend with no other motivations (p194).

As a post-script, Jud Wilhite quotes CS Lewis’ encouragement to give each other the same kind of slack we give ourselves (p198).  Enjoy and think:

"There is someone I love, even though I don’t approve of what he does. There is someone I accept, though some of his thoughts and actions revolt me. There is someone I forgive, though he hurts the people I love the most. That person is me."

Comments

[Robert Pooley]

Thought this was a good synopsis Dave... What do you think is the one take home that church leaders really need to hear in this?

[Dave]

Thanks. I hope you are feeling better.

For church leaders - and laypeople alike - the bottom line from me is "consider your audience." People are watching and listening closer than I realized.

Until I read this book, I didn't realize that the message of Jesus had become distinct from that of the church in the eyes of a lot of unchurched people...and I had some responsibility in changing that.