Who Can Really Judge?

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(February 12, 2012 – Mike Nichols)

WHO CAN REALLY JUDGE?

Judgment—we all do it; we all do it every day; but somehow we expect that God shouldn’t. Doesn’t judgment go against God’s loving nature? Turn to the Bible and judgments by God are easy to find. In the first book Adam and Eve are judged. Their judgment [which includes mortality] is described plainly. The Bible is a record of God’s interventions into human history, including His unmistakable judgments. One difficulty in making sense of God’s judgment is that we extrapolate from these Biblical judgments, and press them on to other events, which the Bible does not mention, or allow us to do.

This extrapolation suggests that a judgment of God is obvious when people are hurt or killed. And thus we develop a cause and effect world view [e.g. if your trusted friend gossips (i.e. sins) they catch a cold (i.e. God’s judgment). If your other neighbour gives to a charity (i.e. not a sin), their roses bloom big (i.e. God’s reward). The Bible does NOT suggest such a directly related view of good & bad, cause & effect, obedience & reward, sin & judgment. If you look hard at life you will observe that this is not so. Laws of cause & effect do operate, but our interpretative extrapolations are unreliable.

Georgia Elma Harkness (1891 –1974) the first significant American female theologian and the first women to obtain full professorship in a U.S. theological seminary once said, “The tendency to turn human judgments into divine commands makes religion one of the most dangerous forces in the world.” Today let’s see what Romans 1-3:8 have to say about who can really judge. (Mike Nichols)

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