ARE WE SELF-CONDEMNED?

An angry skeptic brought this charge against the God of the Bible:

·       A god who damns forever would have done us all a much greater service and shown real love if He had NOT started this eternal nightmare in the first place by forcing His abomination of a will on people who were not seeking it and would NOT have joined up if they knew such an sentence was the outcome--if the tradeoff for his decision is their damnation…No one twisted his arm to say "let there be light"… So every lost person is ultimately his responsibility and his fault…If the God of the bible really does damn people forever, I want nothing to do with Him. He is a monster--and I wouldn't want to spend two minutes around Him.

But what if, instead, we are self-condemned, perhaps condemned by our own standards, the very standards we use to condemn others? Jesus taught this:

·       For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. (Matthew 7:2; ESV)

Therefore, we cannot blame God for judging if we too do the same. Besides, the very standards that we use to judge will judge us. It is noteworthy that our skeptic is also judging. Paul echoed the same teaching:

·       Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. (Romans 2:1)

Complaining about God’s judgment of us, while we judge in the same way, is hypocritical. However, it seems that God is still judging us, right? Well…perhaps not. Jesus enigmatically taught:

·       If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. (John 12:47-48)

How does the word judge? For one thing, created in the likeness of God, He has written His word on our hearts (Romans 2:15-16). Therefore, we know right from wrong and we judge according to this imprinted law.

The skeptic claims that he never asked to be created or judged. Therefore, God has no right to judge him. This is like saying, “The credit card company sent me their credit card, and now they want to bring charges against me for using it.”

However, we have a choice to use the credit card or not. Likewise, we have a choice to judge or not. However, when we judge, we have consented to God’s program, and must make the required payments.

However, the skeptic will continue, “The payment that God requires is just too severe!” But is it? Perhaps it is we and the implanted word that condemn. It seems that this is what Jesus is teaching:

·       For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment [or “condemnation”]: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. (John 3:17-20)

Jesus repeatedly denies that He will condemn, but yet those who do not believe are “condemned already.” But how? They are self-condemned. How have they condemned themselves? They have chosen the darkness and rejected God’s light – our only source of hope. As Adam and Eve hid in the darkness from God after they had sinned, so too do we. We have chosen exclusion from His Kingdom.

Does this apply to eternity? Seemingly! If Jesus doesn’t condemn, then it seems that we – the implanted word causing us guilt, shame, and flight – will be doing the condemning. If we cannot tolerate His light here, we will not tolerate it in the next world, where it is even more intense. Notice how the skeptic condemned himself:

·       If the God of the bible really does damn people forever, I want nothing to do with Him. He is a monster--and I wouldn't want to spend two minutes around Him.

The skeptic had charged God with creating an “eternal nightmare.” However, if the skeptic is truly concerned about this, he need only confess his sins and turn to the One who can change his nightmare into a glorious reality.

JUDGE OR JUDGE NOT

Judging is unavoidable. We judge our children; a teacher judges her students; the employer judges her subordinate; a spouse raises critical issues against her husband; the church disciplines its members; we even judge when we vote.

Against the assertion of some, Jesus did a lot of judging Himself. However, Jesus insisted that judging has to be done with great care. For one thing, we first have to judge ourselves before we are in any condition to judge another:

·       “Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log [blindness and self-deception] out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck [the smaller sin] out of your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:4-5; ESV)

Paul taught the same thing but in a different manner:

·       Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. For each will have to bear his own load. (Galatians 6:1-5)

Paul made it clear that, sometimes, judging or correcting is necessary. However, not everyone is in a “spiritual” state where they can judge. We have to be gentle! Where does this come from? From examining ourselves! What do we find? That we are “nothing” without Christ and His forgiveness.

When we examine ourselves, any basis for pride is eliminated. We find that we stand only by the grace of Christ. How do we acquire this necessary self-awareness? Through the Bible’s requirement that we love: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

When we attempt to love others by bearing their burdens, we discover that we fall far short of Christ’s calling. This is why Paul wrote: “But let each one test his own work.” When we do examine ourselves with an un-blinded eye, we are humbled by our failures.  However, our failures can reinforce our understanding of the mercy of Christ.

Notice that Paul didn’t write that we come to this self-awareness by comparing ourselves with others. This might just breed arrogance and pride. Instead, Paul wrote: “But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in [comparison with] his neighbor.”

This is not an acknowledgement that any of us have a reason to boast. Instead, boasting is our human tendency. We want to feel good about ourselves, even superior to others, and so we look for occasions to boast by comparing ourselves to others. We, therefore, tell ourselves, “I’d never do what he did. I’m better than that.”

Instead, we have to measure ourselves against an absolute standard – Christ Himself. This standard takes the air out of our sails, as it is intended to do. We see our spiritual failures, and this humbles us.

Does this mean that we are not “spiritual” and that we cannot judge? Of course not! We are required to judge. However, it does mean that only those who have been humbled by the truth and continue to confess their sins can judge. It is these believers who can judge humbly, gently, patiently, and redemptively.

But can we judge with confidence and boldness? Yes, we can! How? We know that we are in the light and, consequently, are judging by the light of God. We also know that our corrections or judgments are not of our own invention but come from Him.

Therefore, when someone accuses you of judging, you can respond, “My judgment is now my own. It is my Lord’s.”

You might also turn the table and rhetorically ask, “Well, aren’t you judging me?”

THE NARROWING OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN

Maximizing our humanity requires us to use all of our faculties, integrating sensual awareness and experience with rationality and wisdom. This means that we cannot reject any of our faculties. If we reject our eyes, we will stumble. If we reject our ears, we will not be able to socialize. If we reject our minds, we will not be able to make wise decisions.

However, rejecting rationality and, with it, moral certainty, mindlessness has become acceptable. The evidence of this is all around us. Mindfulness training requires us to close down our minds and only to observe without making moral judgments.

I just read an appealing advertisement for a new meetup group:

·       "From the time we’re just out of diapers we’re charged by our parents, our peers, our lovers, ourselves, with the task of maintaining certainty, and if we don’t feel certainty, of manufacturing it. Tonight’s going to be different—tonight we’ll ask all who come to drop the certainty and gather around a comfortable white sofa with a glass of wine and a sense of curiosity. What brings you joy? What keeps you up at night? How’s your heart? What do you love, and what would you like to be different? What do you want to share, or hear from your brothers?"

Understandably, wisdom and certainty are demanding, while experience and feelings are just what they are (or however we want to interpret them), and, without making judgments about them, they are all acceptable.

Admittedly, this might prove comfortable for the short run. More importantly, this trend reflects a narrowing and a dangerous cultural trend. We feel uncomfortable about judgment, more specifically, about being criticized. Even more, we cannot endure criticism. It attacks the very basis who we are as people - our value and personhood.

In fact, we feel so threatened by criticism, many have gone so far as to deny freewill. After all, if we lack freewill, we couldn't have done otherwise and, therefore, bear no guilt.

Ironically, to defend ourselves against criticism and guilt, we demean who we are as humans. Consequently, we see ourselves as wet machines – not very edifying.

Well, if we are merely machines that cannot do otherwise, why then should we try to oppose our desires to steal and cheat? The only rationale that then remains to oppose our selfish instincts is the fear of getting caught, but fear alone is often not enough. Consequently, lying, stealing, and cheating have become so prevalent that no one trusts our institutions. Can we survive such cynicism?

What is the answer? How are we to bear our moral failures and accept criticism? Simply through confidence that when we confess our sins and failures to our Savior, He forgives and cleanses us completely! And when we come to live according to His opinions, we gradually lose our fear of the opinions and criticisms of others. Instead of people-pleasers, we are liberated to become God-pleaser. It's beats being a wet machine.

Jesus, Repentance, and Homosexuality

Can any biblical case be made in favor of homosexual sex? Editor-in-Chief of World Magazine, Marvin Olasky, writes:

• I appreciate the honesty of Emory University professor Luke Timothy Johnson, who teaches courses on the New Testament and acknowledges that he and liberal seminary colleagues “do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good… we are fully aware of the weight of scriptural evidence pointing away from our position, yet place our trust in the power of the living God to reveal as powerfully through personal experience and testimony as through written texts. (World, July 11, 2015, 24) 

I too appreciate their honesty. However, I doubt that their case can be made through “personal experience and testimony.” For one thing, it seems apparent that children raised by same-sex couples do not do as well as those raised by biological parents. In a brief filed against SSM in the US Supreme Court, the American College of Pediatricians wrote:

• Despite being certified by almost all major social science scholarly associations—indeed, in part because of this—the alleged scientific consensus that having two parents of the same sex is innocuous for child well-being is almost wholly without basis. All but a handful of the studies cited in support draw on small, non-random samples which cannot be extrapolated to the same-sex population at large. This limitation is repeatedly acknowledged in scientific meetings and journals, but ignored when asserted as settled findings in public or judicial advocacy. 

Also, regarding the alleged “personal experience and testimony” in favor of SSM, we cannot ignore the horrid stats revealing that those who have adopted the gay lifestyle have attenuated lifespans, a greater incidence of depression, mental issues, substance abuse, domestic violence, and a range of STD’s.

Meanwhile, those who are less honest than Johnson try to justify SSM biblically. Walter Wink, professor of NT at Auburn states:

• The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is simply that the Bible has no sexual ethic. Instead, it exhibits a variety of sexual mores, some of which changed over the thousand-year span of biblical history. Mores are unreflective customs accepted by a given community… The Bible knows only a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in any given country, or culture, or period.

Well, what is the “love ethic?” I’m assuming that Wink refers to the two greatest commandments: loving the Lord and our neighbor as ourselves. But what does it mean to love God? To keep His commandments:

• Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him… If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. (John 14:21-24)

Do the commandments against homosexuality and other forms of sex represent a consistent warning (ethic) that transcends Israel? Yes! Let’s look at some in context:

• And you shall not lie sexually with your neighbor’s wife and so make yourself unclean with her. You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. And you shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it: it is perversion. (Leviticus 18:20-23)

The ethic against homosexuality did not only pertain to Israelite society. Rather, it is associated with other forbidden practices that go beyond cultural differences:

1. Offering children as a blood sacrifice to demons
2. Adultery
3. Bestiality 

God does not wink at these practices even within the other nations. Instead, He punishes them for these. Observe the next two verse:

• “Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.” (Leviticus 18:24-25)

Evidently, these concerns were important. Therefore, they appear again two chapters later:

• “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. If a man lies with his father’s wife, he has uncovered his father’s nakedness; both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. If a man lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely be put to death; they have committed perversion; their blood is upon them. If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. If a man takes a woman and her mother also, it is depravity; he and they shall be burned with fire, that there may be no depravity among you. If a man lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death, and you shall kill the animal. If a woman approaches any animal and lies with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. (Leviticus 20:10-16)

There is no reason to suspect that these commands were only relevant to the Old Testament culture. They are even repeated in the New. In fact, there is not a single verse in all of Scripture that gives even the slightest encouragement to homosexuality.

Meanwhile, Jack Bartlett Rogers, Presbyterian minister, seminary professor emeritus, and moderator of the 213th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), claims:

• When we interpret Scripture in a way that is hurtful to people, we can be sure that we are not glorifying God. (Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality, 62)

Rogers interprets this to mean that any words of correction, any encouragement to repent that might offend a gay person “does not glorify God.” However, this claim is so far from the words of Jesus that it hardly needs any refutation. Jesus’ words to His opponents  – the Sadducees and the Pharisees – were hardly models of political correctness and comfort. Instead, they were downright hurtful. Even His words to His disciples were critical and discouraging at best.

Rogers presses his point further, affirmatively citing the PCUSA report in the 1983 notes:

• “No interpretation of Scripture is correct that leads to or supports contempt for any individual or group of persons either within or outside of the church.” (62) 

Of course, Jesus was not motivated by contempt but love. However, Rogers invokes this principle as a warning against anyone who would suggest that active homosexuals need to repent. For Rogers, this represents contempt for the homosexual. (I guess it would also represent contempt for the adulterer or pedophile if they were called to repent.)

In contrast, Jesus’ love called people to repent:

• There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” Luke 13:1-5)

Was Jesus’ demand that they all repent a display of contempt, as Rogers suggests? After all, weren’t Jesus’ words “hurtful to people?” They certainly were! No one likes to be told that they are in sin and must change their lives around. However, according to Rogers’ definition, Jesus failed the love test. In fact, Jesus almost always failed Rogers’ love test. Here are His hurtful words to the Pharisees:

• Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.” (John 8:42-43)

How hurtful, degrading, and insulting! No wonder they crucified Him! However, Jesus deemed that this is just what these unrepentant needed to hear. Perhaps Rogers and his PCUSA need to re-examine the meaning of love from our Lord’s perspective.

Does Rogers and his PCUSA love Jesus? Perhaps not:

• “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.” (John 14:23-24)