Most Often Abused Bible Verses #3

It’s one of the most coveted cards in the Monopoly game.  The “Get Out of Jail Free” card.  It’s very annoying to get stuck in jail, although if you are losing, it’s a nice break from having to deal with your opponents row of hotels.

No such card exists in real life.  There is no card that you can show that can get you out of jail, certainly not literally.  There also is no metaphorical “get out of jail free” card either.  By that, I mean ways to get out of trouble for the stupid things we do or say.  We try to invent them.  Most of the cards that we create start with the phrase, “I was just…”  “I was just tired,”  “I was just hungry,”  etc.

However, the biggest, most often used “get out of jail free” card that we try to use is found in the Bible.

The Verse:

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. ² For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

³ “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? ⁴ How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? ⁵ You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Matthew 7:1-5

What we think that it means:

There are a lot of different ways to describe what we mean when we quote this verse. You’re not the boss of me.  You can’t tell me what to do.  How dare you? Who do you think you are?

Basically, what we think this verse means is that no one can tell us what we are doing is wrong.  If someone tells you that what you are doing is sinful or wrong, then that is judging.  Bible says don’t judge.  Again, we play it like a “get out of jail free” card.  You do something wrong, someone calls you on it, play this card and you are out of trouble.

Why that is a bad interpretation:

First, there are multiple verses that say this it is our responsibility to confront or rebuke people’s sin.  I Timothy 5:20, James 5:19-20, Galatians 6:1, Matthew 18:15.  That’s just a few.  God is calling us to be involved in each other’s lives and help and confront each other when in sin.  It can’t mean that we can’t tell someone that what they are doing is wrong.

This leads to the second issue.  What does the word judge mean?  As always, words have a lot of different meanings.  The context determines the meaning.  Judge can mean determine right from wrong or it can mean determine someone’s value or it could mean to determine the consequence or punishment.  Just because something feels judgmental to you doesn’t mean that it falls into the category of this prohibition against judgment.  It depends on what judging means, and you have to look at the context.

Finally, it is self-refuting.  You are judging someone when you say they are judging you.

What this verse means:

When Jesus says don’t judge, what he says next is that the measure by which you judge someone will be used against you.  The word “measure” almost certainly is a reference to a scale that you would use to determine the value and weight of something that you were going to buy.  So what Jesus is prohibiting is determining someone’s value.  That’s not your role.  He says that if you do that, you will judged by that same measure.   This is by no means a prohibition against determining whether or not an action is sinful or telling us that we are not to be involved in correcting people or being corrected.

However, even though Matthew 7:1 is not a “get out of jail free card,” there also are no licenses in the Bible for you to be a jerk to somebody.

If you see someone in sin and determine because of that sin, that they are less valuable to God or are going to Hell, you should be careful, because you do not want that same measure applied to you.  Not only that, but this passage makes it clear that when you do that, you are a hypocrite.  He uses an outrageous and hilarious metaphor.  Someone is walking around with a log in their eye.  Then even though they are blinded by the log, they believe that they have the vision to point out a speck of dust in someone else’s eye.  That makes you both an idiot and hypocrite.

This is especially important to the church today in the way that we treat people with what I will call “unusual” sins.  Most guys struggle with porn, so that’s normal and understandable.  You get grace.  Being gay is unusual and therefore worse and worthy of condemnation.  Most Americans are greedy and terrible with money, that’s OK.  Homeless people though are lazy and unworthy of compassion.

We compartmentalize sin and determine some sins are worse than others because they are foreign to us or repulsive in some way.  Therefore, even though I am a sinner, those sinners deserve condemnation.  That is not a measure by which you want to be judged, so don’t judge.  In fact arrogant condemnation might be the log that you are carrying around with you that makes it where you can’t see the specks in another’s eye.

What we all need is someone who loves us to come to us gently and tell us what we are doing is hurting us and others.  We need those people to then help us get better.  I’ll do that for you and you can do it for me.  That is a measure of judgment that I will gladly live by.

Ashley Madison and Josh Duggar: When Christians Fall

Allow me to be the next person to weigh in on Ashley Madison and Josh Duggar. In the early days of the original controversy, there were 3 types of thoughts.  1. Grace and forgiveness 2. Judgment and condemnation 3. Some kind of innovative 3rd way position.  In part 2 (hopefully of 2) of the controversy, all we have is #2.  People are taking this opportunity of his public failing of his wife to criticize and condemn a lifestyle that they always thought was a little weird but made good television.  We stand on a high horse and declare that he deserved it.  We “other” the discussion and distance ourselves from it and make ourselves feel better.  We make a conscious decision to do what we almost always do, which is to believe that we have nothing to learn from this.  “They” have these problems.  I don’t.

As always, we choose to not learn the right lessons.  We choose to speak loudly about the lessons that other people should learn.  We fail to do the hard but necessary work to ask what I need to learn from this.

(Disclaimers: It’s difficult to talk about this when they are local.  I’ve met them. I know people that legitimately know them.  They are real people where I live. Second, I believe that my condemnation of molestation and adultery are a matter of the public record. Nothing I say here should be considered “giving him a pass” or “normalizing” his sin.  However, I have no stone to throw, certainly not publicly. It’s not my place. Why I don’t is one of the points of this post.)

There are two things that have been on my heart as I have been processing all of the controversy surrounding Josh Duggar (3 if you count the sheer lack of compassion and understanding given to his wife and kids, but that’s a blog post for someone else.)  These issues have more to do with me and us than him.  The first issue that has been on my heart is that your sin will find you out.  You may believe that you are keeping it hidden, and you may be for a little while.  However, your sin will find you.  Maybe not today or tomorrow or even this year, but it always catches up with you.  This pattern has been repeated way too many times over the years.  Consider how many public Christians have fallen in tremendously awful ways over the years.  Someone rises to prominence but the whole time they are hiding some sin.  The pressure of their fame increases the pressure which makes the sin worse, which makes them try to hide it even more.  Then the light shines on it.  They are exposed and they fall.

For every “famous” Christian that this happens to, there are thousands of regular people following the same pattern.  It doesn’t show up in your Facebook feed, but it shows up in family courts all over the world, families being destroyed because of a secret sin.  We are no different.  If you have a sin that you are hiding, the light will find you.  God loves you too much to allow you to continue to destroy yourself in private.  He wants you to be free from sin.

So if this is you, make the decision to let someone know.  Ask someone for help.  Put a little light on it, before it happens to you.  Surround yourself with help.  Your sin will either find you or you can humbly take it to people.  Either way, when it comes to light, you are going to need people to come around you and help you and restore you.

This leads to the second thought. Be careful how you talk and act toward others.  When you see the sin of others, how do you respond? Do you respond with compassion and hope or anger and judgment?  In the often misunderstood and misused passage about judgment, Jesus says this:

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

So, the way that you judge is how you will be judged.  If I see someone in sin and I say, “That’s not good.  You should stop. How can I help you?” I can expect that is how someone will judge me when it is my turn.  If I angrily condemn people, I should expect to be angrily condemned when it is my turn.  Again, don’t be fooled.  Your turn is coming. When your sin is discovered, people will respond to you the way that you have responded to people.

Why has the response to Josh Duggar not been compassionate? It seems pretty clear that he has some deep rooted sexual issues that messed him up as a kid and continue to this day.  Why is there not a call for helping him deal with whatever these deep issues are?  The reason is that he never seemed to show the same compassion.  In his role with the Family Research Council, he said and behaved in ways that made many people feel strongly condemned.  He didn’t show compassion and grace.  When it was his turn, he put out public statements asking for compassion and grace, and very little was to be found.  He is reaping what he sowed.

When my time comes (and no I don’t have an Ashley Madison account and I have never cheated on my wife) and some sin of mine is exposed (I do sin though.  Both publicly and privately), I want the people who know me to love me and help restore me.  How can I be sure that will happen? By doing the same for people now.  Sin is real and destructive.  I do no one any favors by not calling sin what it is.  However, I also do no one a favor, including me, by raining down condemnation either.

So that is why I have no stone to throw.  It is why when stories like this (and worse) come into my office, I offer love, prayers and help. I don’t tell them what they did is ok, but I also don’t literally or figuratively throw stones.  Instead I try to offer the same compassion of Jesus who said “sin no more” and offered the love and help to people to make that command a reality.