Let’s say that I get up in front of a room full of people at church or a Christian retreat or wherever. And I say, “What’s going on with Christians nowadays? We are failing to show Christ’s love to others, to extend grace to those who are different than us. We are gossipy, critical, and judgmental towards each other. We are more concerned with how others are living than with how we are living, seeing the speck in their eye instead of the plank in ours. We fail to do the good that we know we should do. Our marriages and families are falling apart because we are putting ourselves first and have the wrong priorities and cannot keep our vows. We are compromising the Truth of the Gospel to please people. We barely even know what the Bible really says because we are failing to abide in it. We are seeking pleasure instead of righteousness and God’s kingdom. We are building up our treasures on earth and seeking our own happiness, just like everyone else. And in the process, we are growing weak, lazy, lukewarm, and sleepy. And this shit has got to stop!”
Now, what do you think would be going through most people’s minds at that point? What do you think would be the topic of conversation later when they all got together to discuss what I said? Come on, admit it . . . you know exactly what they would think because it’s the same thing you thought:
“I can’t believe she just said the word ‘shit’ in church!”
I think there would be more focus on that four-letter word than on the discouraging condition of the average Christian life nowadays. (I recently read a comment on a blog where someone criticized the writer for using the word “dang.” And it wasn’t even written “dang.” It was written as “d*ng.” They completely ignored what the post was about and zeroed in on that word.) I think there would be more Christians finger-pointing at me and shaking their head in disapproval for that one word than there would be those who let their hearts be convicted about their own shortcomings before the Lord. After all, if we focus on what others are doing wrong, it’s easy to ignore what we are doing wrong. If we point out the speck in other people’s eyes then maybe no one will notice the plank in ours. If we major in the minors, we can look “righteous and holy” while ignoring the bigger things.
And I think the problem is four-fold:
1. We major in the minors and make mountains out of molehills.
2. We tend to focus on others instead of focusing on ourselves.
3. We tend to focus on our outsides instead of on our insides. We clean up our outsides (polishing them up really nice with “proper” behavior and speech) instead of focusing on our heart’s condition. As long as we look good on the outside, we think we are okay.
4. And we expect other people to clean up their outsides too. Yet we fail to see or care about what’s really going on in their hearts. We judge them by their appearance, their speech, their sins, their “sins,” and the annoying, little things that we don’t like about them . . . instead of looking at their heart and their pain and their humanness and the person deep inside that Jesus loved and died for. We accept them when they are shiny and polished like we are, but we shun them when they are too human and real and raw and flawed.
We are more concerned with how others are walking and talking than with how we are. And we are more concerned with their outside behavior than we are with their heart, with loving the inside person and helping them find healing in Christ. (Can we say “Pharisee”?)
If they polish themselves up on the outside, then we accept them and we will sit by them in church. But if they are rough around the edges or struggle with sin or are broken inside, we don’t get too close because we don’t want to look like we condone their “fallen-ness.” (And we don’t want them to get our nice, white “Pharisee robes” dirty.)
So we keep our distance, and we wag our fingers, shake our heads, and cluck our tongues at them. After all, it’s the “godly” thing to do, right? To point out other people’s sins and shortcomings, to keep our distance from their fallen-ness, and to show how godly we are by comparison.
It’s sad, but I think it’s all-too-easy to fail to really see people. It’s easy to focus on their outsides instead of their hearts, to pass judgment on them instead of giving grace, to act as though we really know what they are going through and how they should be acting, and to live like we have some right to scold them.
For one reason or other, some of us forget that we are “one of them.” That we are human - fellow strugglers who are in need of daily grace and forgiveness, just as much as they are.
Some of us forget that God looks past all of the outside stuff and looks into our hearts. He looks past all the annoying, dirty smudges on the outside and sees the hurting hearts deep inside. (Oh, how I wish we were better at doing that with other people!) He doesn’t judge a person by what’s on the outside. He sees their hearts. And He reaches out to their hearts, reaching right past all the irritating, annoying outside stuff. And He is forgiving and gracious about all that outside stuff (of other people and ourselves), probably more so than we are.
And for us “holier-than-thou” types, we forget that He looks past the impressive, polished surface and the “Pharisee robe.” And He sees a heart that is in need of help, grace, mercy, and understanding, too. He sees our ugly heart attitudes instead of our shiny, glamorous outsides. He sees the doubts and fears and negative self-thoughts that we try so hard to hide. The ones that make us work so hard at polishing up our outside and that make us point fingers at others to make ourselves feel better. He sees the very unpolished, real, raw inside and the fact that we have no right to point a finger at anyone else.
Let’s not judge others for their messy outsides while acting like we are somehow “better” because we polished up ours.
Instead, let’s regularly search our hearts and get ourselves right with God, being concerned with the how we look on the inside – our hearts, our motives, our priorities, our heart attitudes – instead of being concerned with how impressive we think we look on the outside.
And let’s not judge others for their messy outsides while ignoring their hearts. Let’s care about their pain, their struggles, their fears. Let's see their humanness and brokenness and neediness ... and let's remember that we are no better than they are. Let’s live Christ to them, reaching out to them and loving them with the unconditional love that Christ has so lavishly poured out on all of us. Let’s have some grace and understanding and compassion, instead of acting like we have some right to condemn and criticize and scold.
We need to see past the rough exteriors and into their hearts, to see the person that Christ loves so much and died for. And we need to remember that we are all on level ground at the foot of the cross. None of us deserves God’s grace or forgiveness, no matter how “high and mighty” we feel or how polished we are on the outside. We all look alike on the inside. We all have fears and doubts and pain. We all need love, forgiveness, grace, mercy, understanding, and a helping hand.
I remember a lesson that my mom shared once about what happens when we judge someone based on the outside, instead of being more concerned with the inside.
At the time, she was our youth leader (basically, the youth pastor). And one day before youth group, one of the new-ish teens was smoking outside the youth building. And my mom went out to confront him. She scolded him and told him that he could not be here if he was going to smoke. She made it more about what he did than about who he was and how God saw him. She made it more about his behavior than his heart, more about his flaws than his soul. But she thought she was doing the right thing, the godly thing, confronting him about his shortcomings and ungodly behavior.
He came looking for hope, for help. But what he got was condemnation and humiliation.
And do you know what happened?
He left. And he never came back.
