Hey folks, it’s been a while since I last posted because we
were traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Now that I’m back I wanted to address something that, as we spend time
with others in the close quarters of the holiday gatherings we may all want to remember:
be tolerant.
All too often we find ourselves in the mixed company of
people who have lives or have made choices that we actively disagree with. Perhaps they’ve made relationship choices
that prove consistently destructive, perhaps they’ve turned to substance abuse,
and perhaps they’ve resorted to a kind of “Peter Pan syndrome” where they
refuse to advance their life beyond a certain point, they won’t (from our
perspective, grow up).
Judging other people is very easy to do, because we judge
based on our perspective of the situation, based on our choices, our lives, and
our responses, but that’s also dangerous for our hearts.
I’ve used this example in conversations in the past, but I
think it takes precedence here: working in law enforcement whether you’ve done
it one day or done it a decade, you run into people who are not happy to see
you. I’ve had multiple co-workers voice
the same complaint, that people they contact have a bad attitude. I have to remind them that, before they
contact police something bad has to happen to them. I’ve never had a situation where someone pops
their head into my office just to say “Everything’s fine, having a great day!” No, we meet people on their bad days,
sometimes the worst day of their life.
When we sit in judgement of other people’s choices, are we
taking into account what they themselves are going through? Think back to your last really bad day, did
you show grace under fire? Did you fail
to be charming when life, the universe, and everything seemed to turn on you at
once? Were you a Job or a Jonah when
things didn’t go your way?
I want us take a quick jaunt to John 8:2-12. This is where the Pharisees drag a woman
caught in adultery to Jesus. They cite
that Mosaic law, the law passed down to the Israelites by Moses, states that
this woman should be stoned unto death. This
was a set up for Jesus, either he would rebuke Moses’ law (which was the word
of God) or he would condone the death of this woman. Jesus handled the situation like he normally
does, by spinning it back onto the Pharisees asking them if their slates are
clean. He points out that only one without
sin can truly sit in judgement of another person.
Let’s go to the woman right quick, because rarely is she
talked about in the scenario and that’s a shame because in many ways she’s the
stand in for us. She’s us with our
problems, she’s us with our faults and our lapses in judgement and our
self-destructive behavior, and our substance abuse and our Peter Pan
syndromes. She was forcibly dragged from
wherever she was and brought before the Son of God with the very real possibility
of being bludgeoned to death with large rocks looming over her by a crowd that
clearly did not care for her welfare, who only wanted to prove a point at her
expense.
If you are starting to feel empathy towards this woman,
good. That means you are a good hearted
person, that on some level you understand.
If we can extend that empathy to a woman who lived 2000+
years ago, can’t we extend it to the person sitting less than ten feet from us
whom we might have known two minutes or all our lives?
Part of the problem we have when it comes to dealing with
people who we view as needing to get their lives together is that we, as a
society, have lost the meanings of two very important words: tolerate and
accept.
To tolerate is to “allow the existence, occurrence, or
practice of (something that one does not necessarily like or agree with)
without interference.”
To accept is to “believe or come to recognize (an opinion,
explanation, etc.) as valid or correct.”
See there is a difference in the two concepts. When we tolerate someone else’s life choice,
we don’t have to accept them, we don’t have to view them as correct, but we
still shouldn’t judge because we don’t know what’s going on with them.
So what do we do then?
We can’t accept the choices others have made, but we can’t judge them
because we don’t know what’s going on with them. Let’s flip back to “why are you judging?”
You judge because you don’t agree with it. In the vast majority of cases we are prone to
judge because we love that person, because we feel that person can be better
than the situation that they are in. Let’s
face it, you don’t spend a lot of time thinking and feeling about a topic that
you don’t care about, so if you are so wrapped up in what this person is doing,
then it’s because you feel you have a vested interest in their life. You have a vested interest but approaching
with a judgmental attitude can cause that person to withdraw into the very
lifestyle you are trying to get them out of.
What did Christ do?
Christ understood. By law, yes
the woman could have been judged and sentenced to immediate and painful death,
but that’s not what he lets happen. He
gets the accusors to leave her alone first, then he waits, he loves, and he
forgives. Christ is the Son of God,
there is nothing in this woman’s life that he doesn’t know. He looks at her and sees every step that led
her into her situation, and knows every wrong things she’s ever done, and he
forgives her. These are some of the same
sins He’s later going to die on the cross for, but he forgives her.
That is love, my friends.
That is forgiveness. Our brothers
and sisters in humanity have to deal with a lot. Hearts are broken, lives are torn apart, and
sometimes at the end of the day, when they are sitting there glaring at the
mirror they can’t forgive themselves for all that they think they’ve done. Forgive them.
Forgive them in your own heart, and approach them as you should, as a
fellow human being, and give them compassion.
You can tolerate their decisions without accepting them, but by showing
them compassion and love you offer them hope and grace. Through this, you shine a little bit of God’s
love into their world, and that little bit can go a very long way.
Thanks for reading and happy holidays.
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