1 of 3 | Part 1 Judge Yourself & Let No One Judge You | Part 2 Judge No One & Judge Others | Part 3 Judge God
This is the first part of a series. The intention is for two more to follow, and I suspect I’ll have audio by that time. I started a post titled “May the Lord Judge Between Me and You,” but could not rein it in. I think I’ve whittled it down to three long posts, but it’s hardly exhaustive and I’m continually pondering. So much more could be said, and hopefully it just becomes fodder for all the conversationalists and contemplatives on my list. I mostly draw from Romans 14 and Colossians 2:16-23.
Never, never, never
When I was first married, a teenage girl told me she would never go forward for prayer. Everyone in the church would judge her because she needed prayer. She believed they’d be more judgmental about why she went forward than happy that she did.
When I was newly pregnant with my second, I invited a gay man who I worked with to visit my church. (I was pretty ignorant about the topic.) He was emphatic that people would never want him to enter the building.
When Sovereign Ground was in the early stages, a believer who used to be a (strip-tease) dancer told me she didn’t feel comfortable in church. She could never let anyone know her history.
I never understood these situations. Even with all my wonky beliefs, I’d somehow reconciled the notion that all sins are forgiven and we’re fully accepted. Otherwise, I did not see any use for Christianity. I still don’t. I do not have many things about my faith that I learned well the first time, but reconciled to God unashamed was one of them. I’m not sure my faith would have survived had I not seen God as my safe place.
Now that I’m older, I’ve learned more about personality types. Some people—especially those with a precise concept of right and wrong—feel judgement more keenly. Whether or not it’s there.
Although let’s be honest. Other’s judgement is there more often than not. Because it would be idiotic to never judge the right and wrong of something, or not to use our judgement.
Judgy in church
If you can see the Old Testament as a story of God’s enduring love and pursuit of mankind, and the gospels as that reconciliation to God, then most of the rest of the New Testament is how humans are to live together as disjointed people groups and sinful cultures melded in harmony.
Romans 14 talks about one issue preventing our community from coming together: the weaker and stronger judging each other. Just as 1 Peter 3:7 specifically commands husbands to honor their wives as a co-heir made in the image of God, but who live in a weaker package, (either generally less muscle mass, or ability to protect herself in the first century.) I think Romans is also calling attention to the strength differences between all co-heirs who come in different packages. To be gentle with that difference, whether the weakness is mental, physical, financial, or spiritual. A stronger or weaker faith.
In the example in Romans 14, some people couldn’t eat meat because of their conscience. Some had no conflict in their hearts when they ate it. Let not the one who eats despise or hold in contempt the one who abstains, and if you don’t eat it, don’t pass judgment on the one who does. God has welcomed him.
We are to welcome that weaker person—and not quarrel over opinions, reasonings, or disputing matters. Maybe this is saying some matters are disputable, and some are not—but don’t argue over the disputable ones. But if this includes “doubtful things and opinions” like some versions translate—how does that not include most of the Bible?
Can you hear the established denominations cringing? “Not divide over theology!? But how will I know if I’m on the straightest and narrowest way unless I’ve broken relationship over doctrine?”
I don’t know if I can answer that. I guess you’ll have to work out your faith in equal measures of fear and trembling, and unwavering faith.
Back to the vegan barbecue. Because we don’t eat meat sacrificed to idols, it might be possible to skip over the point of Romans 14.
Colossians chapter 2:16-23 gives other examples; instead of meat, it mentions holidays. Let no one judge you according to new moons and Sabbath festivals.
If we ignore the genocides, wars, and famines around the world and try to lay that right on top of 2026 west coast America, our division over holidays is more like avoidance of southerners who ruin sweet potatoes with marshmallows on Thanksgiving. (Maybe we have stronger dissension over Halloween in different faith flavors.) But it’s hard to imagine public humiliation, severing of family, loss of work or exile from the community over Sabbath observance, like the first guy who picked up sticks and was stoned by the community.
Let’s imagine some ways “stronger and weaker faith” plays out in other things we consume besides food. We disagree on ways to entertain and self-soothe. Books and movies with violence, or with sex? Since our personal threshold for titillation can vary and be altered, should you read fiction or watch movies at all?
I remember my fat pastor patting his stomach and ordaining Baptist potlucks while condemning playing cards.
Here’s my favorite way to highlight how Romans 14:3 plays out in modern fellowships:
The church who is deliberate to post on their website that marriage can be only between a man and a woman, and reads statements on Sunday morning clarifying a historical-biblical stance on sexual purity to visitors—you know, just so everyone is sure where they stand—but then hosts ongoing weekly men’s Bible studies for those poor guys who struggle with pornography. One flavor of sexual struggle must be vocally renounced, and the other can be embraced weekly as a men’s group. An identity they can “affirm” and hetero-bond over. (Meaning: no hugging, fist bumps only.)
Selective on the sin you endorse and normalize to the point of fostering it.
Don’t let me judge you.
The person who consumes media is disgusted by the one who shops, calling their excessive consumerism “holy capitalism.” One who is disciplined and rigid in their eating can hardly look at one who tries to soothe their brain with sugar. The sugar addict shames the alcohol drinker. Forget trying to peer around our plank. We not only justify our own stuff, we hang a flag on it. (#nospicebooks = #readlikeme )
Can you party like a first-century Greek? Or is it a church-level-up to forgo drink and dance like the Puritans did? In some respects, it would be easier if we were given a manual that says you can drink 6 fluid ounces of 12% wine that you paid taxes on each Tuesday, after 5 pm, if you are wearing blue.
But the Bible doesn’t lay out every detail. It gives the heart of God’s desire for us to live in community through the example of meat sacrificed to idols—but we are to navigate the unwritten—letting no one judge us.
Rejecting judgement
Religious and apostates alike snap their fingers and tell you to sit at a different table. So Colossians 2:18 warns against letting others disqualify you. People who are puffed up without reason in their sensual mind. Even people who make a living peddling Christian wares. Like well-paid celebrity pastors who sell us their reproducible methods for godliness.
We practice rejecting other’s disqualification by not letting them place rules on us. Keep going in Colossians 2, verse 23 says about rules, “These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.”
Hebrews 13:9 says it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not regulations—and here it specifically highlights regulations about food. Don’t get carried away, though, with any strange teachings that don’t benefit the ones who observe them.
Especially rules that do not promote oneness with God and others. (Like whether or not full immersion is required, or professing that the call of God is irrefutable.) And especially rules that look churchy on the outside—but have no value changing the core, the flesh. For example: girls must wear dresses to church. Men must shave facial hair. Don’t drink Diet Coke. I can assure you as a product of private school—making girls wear nylons, and forbidding aerosol hair spray did not change anyone’s heart about anything.
I take that back. It hardened my heart.
Fully convinced
Here is the clincher. Romans 14:5 says one chooses one day to honor, but another chooses a different day… each one should be “fully convinced in his own mind.”
Move down to verses 22-23 “The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.”
Whatever you believe about the details is usually better to keep between yourself, God, and sometimes the intimate relationships you walk life with. You don’t need to tell everyone whether the tax collector at your table has signed the Nicene Creed or not.
And if you’re fully convinced, you are blessed.
James 4:17 it says “He knows the right thing to do yet and does not do it, to him it is sin.” How fascinating—and how weighty—that God has put the accountability and the burden on each of us individually to seek him. Judge yourself.
This always gets me. I think we do know when we are sinning, even if we find a way to biblically justify it. I know from myself and others that humans are creative in justifying anything. One way I can suspect that something is wrong for me, even if I can justify it for myself—is if it makes me cranky when others do it. Example: texting and driving. Yes, I know texting is against the law, so it isn’t actually a gray area. But I only do it when it is appropriately safe. And that asshole is risking my life.
Judge for yourself both the doctrines that divide us and the ancillary details of how you live out your Christian life in your community and culture. It isn’t license to go against things clearly defined in scripture like, “don’t cuss or chew or hang with girls who do.”
For those who aren’t sure, that isn’t in the Bible, which is why we should search the scriptures for the difference between those good practices and non-negotiables. It probably will not be some rhyme you grew up with. But searching scripture for the heart and context (not specific words) will start to reveal God even if it doesn’t set up standards that apply on Tuesdays, after 3 pm when you’re wearing blue.
There is another result of not laying out all the details in a comprehensive rule book. We foster intimacy with God when we come to him for our specific details. Not having a rule about blue cultivates wisdom when we step beyond “to do or not to do” situations and look at every situation critically and compassionately.
Continuously searching the Bible also diminishes the tendency to look up one verse and “claim it as gospel” or use an incomplete sentence as a two-edged sword to cut others down. The Bible is often uses specific examples like meat sacrificed to idols, or wearing a hair covering that no longer apply, but still illuminate a heart-matter in mankind.
The specifics don’t need to be regulated by others. Whatever you do, do it for God in his name. Sincerity in Colossians 3:17 probably opens up lots of things we haven’t been doing, and shuts down all kinds of things we’ve justified.
How to judge yourself
In our natural state, we suck at judging ourselves. Self-reflection can swing from unhealthy deprecation to comparison elevation—where it’s easy to find some shocking glimpses of humanity to elevate ourselves.
As I said in the post Take Luck, you can think you are measuring correctly until you use a scale. Paul said he wouldn’t have known he should not covet unless the Bible had told him not to. Use the Bible to look inside, to uncover your heart.
But to a cursory glance, it also seems like the Bible contradicts itself when it is actually just keeping us from extremes. Counteracting an overcorrection. Preventing us from taking something too far. Examples: Do not judge … but judge a tree by its fruit, trade your burden with Christ … but take up your cross (burden) daily, and do not do your works before others … but show your works so others glorify God.”
So if you are still searching for inerrant prescriptive details, or trying to achieve sanctification through doctrinal precision—you should be careful using the Bible. Yes, I said be careful reading the Bible.
If you’re reading through in a year, you’re probably finishing Deuteronomy right now. I wonder how many of the Old Testament laws contributed to my childhood beliefs toward female virginity. If you take literal readings of Deuteronomy 24-25 outside of the context of ancient culture, you might think it is acceptable to God for a man to take a woman as booty after war, then grow tired of her, for men have more than one wife, and if any of his ladies fail to prove their virginity they should be stoned to death on their father’s doorstep. I don’t think female virginity (specifically) was as important to God as ignorant modern readings indicate. He was actually protecting women of the time from willy-nilly accusations and discarding. In an era where women can have a job outside of the home besides prostitution, laws about your rapist providing a future for you through marriage are unneeded. But the heart of protection over society’s vulnerable should remain.
And stop.
There is a religious OCD manifestation that spins condemnation. Scrupulosity can be focused outward where there is a fixated, obsessive compulsion to reiterate and argue morality. If someone has this, know that they have to close the loop to satisfy their brain. It doesn’t mean you have to stay and listen, but you do have to walk away unaffected.
It can fixate internally as well. Think of the person who wants to die because their something didn’t disappear through repetitive prayer. God answers many of my prayers, sometimes immediately, sometimes through years of laboring, but some struggles continue to prick me like a thorn. And some thorns, like bitterness, have deep, deep roots. We will not be completely rescued from this body of death until we are in the kingdom.
The weekly groups that talk about their struggle with pornography can be liberating because of the strange connection between shame and addiction. Yes, shame and secrecy give addiction a greater hold over you.
But talking about it constantly, affirming it as your personality or unique nature, and essentially fasting and praying over it nonstop, also embeds it into your persona. It becomes the only thing you think about.
Last Sunday the pastor preached on the Flood and said judgement never brings people to repentance. Only grace does. She said this because as soon as the earth was destroyed… Noah planted a vineyard, got drunk, and something dark happened in his tent…
So judgement cleansed the earth of violence, but they started sinning again right away.
It settled something I’ve been struggling with. On the mountain when Moses receives the 10 commandments, the Israelites make a golden calf and God becomes so angry he wants to start over. He wants to wipe them out and start over again, but this time with Moses. “Didn’t you already try that once with the flood, God?”
If you’re unnerved that my heart cries out in question to God like that—wait until we get to the post “Judge God.” But also know that Moses went right into it with God and said, “If you kill these people in the desert, then the other nations will judge you.” I think the point of that narrative is more about Moses than God truly wanting to start over again.
It is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace. It is grace that changes us. Not judgement.
Confession
Sometimes we need help, someone outside to confess to—but in the process of confession you have already done some of the internal work of weighing yourself.
Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster talks about the discipline of confession. He says in preparing for confession, there must be a “definite termination point on the self-examination process.”
Definite termination point. Otherwise, we can easily fall into a permanent habit of self-condemnation.
Why is that not discussed more, or taught in Sunday school? Maybe because we can be fooled into thinking that hating ourselves is not still self-obsession.
Confession can foster accountability. But I think a more valuable purpose is that even though judgement needs to be weighed internally, sometimes the sensation of forgiveness is experienced externally.
Which is why so many people inaccurately equate Christians’ rejection of them as God’s rejection.
What a loss to be so afraid that the hypocrites (humans) in church might judge you, that you cannot come to a place of vulnerability and openness! Because without honesty, there can be no confession, and without confession you remain in bondage to that fear of judgement. How will you heal in shame?
Of course, as I mentioned in the Praying Naked post, it’s right to use discretion and not be fully open in front of all people at all times.
Just as you have to make self-examination/judgment a discipline, make accepting forgiveness and walking in light a similar “conscious discipline.” You look at your sin. You accept that you are forgiven. You turn your back on both the sin and the condemnation.
Even if the sin keeps enticing. You move on from the judgement. Don’t delude yourself into thinking that you’re going to exact appropriate punishment by continuing to wallow in regret of your failure. Don’t think that abasement finishes the work of the cross.
I like the way Mary Demuth describes this in Love, Pray, Listen. She says “As I grow deeper in my relationship with Christ, I’m realizing how fruitless it is to be my own sin-monitor. Even the Holy Spirit, when he convicts, does so with hope; the Spirit does not remind us later of our past failures in an angry tone.” She goes on to describe that micromanaging herself into perfection or “self-introspective despair” is a deeper issue of faith….learning to be Spirit-led versus sanctifying herself.
Don’t let others judge you. Use accurate judgement when considering yourself. Stop. And then move forward.