What does "Do Not Judge" mean?

Every now and then, a fad or trend will sweep through society, usually accompanied by catchy sayings brilliantly phrased for maximum impact.  This happens in the church as well as out of the church, with both people in the church and out of the church telling the church what it should do.

All of us who have been around for a few years know the whole "Do not judge" mentality flying around America right now.  I googled "Do Not Judge" and an assortment of cool-looking memes popped up, all with really profound-sounding statements about judging people, not judging people, judging people who judge people because they aren't supposed to judge people, and therefore are worthy of judgment, and so on and so forth.

The trendiest saying is, "Don't judge me because I sin differently than you do."  Have you heard that one?

What if that sounded great, but was completely wrong?

What if the Bible actually told us to judge a certain group of people?

In the church at Corinth, they had some problems.  Major problems.  Apparently one guy in the church thought it would be okay to have sex with his father's wife, and I guess the church didn't really see a problem with it.  I guess they were into that whole "Do Not Judge" stuff.  Anyway, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5:9-13-

"I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world.  But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.

What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?  God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you."

Interesting.

God says that the group of people we are to judge are people who call themselves Christians.  Why would that group of people be fair game for judgements?

Answer:  because people who claim Christ as Lord and Savior have submitted to His will, His way and have voluntarily moved their lives under the authority of Scripture.  Therefore, when a Christian is doing something completely contrary to the Word of God, we are to call that behavior "bad."  NO!  Are you serious?  Call someone's behavior "bad?"  Isn't that the cardinal sin in America?

Yes, it is, and that's why America is going to hell in a handbasket.  God's church has bought into the "do not judge" mantra of this day and age and has allowed immorality and godlessness to run rampant in the church.

Some examples:
1) Christian couples are very likely co-habitiating before marriage; no different than their non-Christian peers.  And don't even ask if Christians wait until marriage to have sexual relations.  Are we any different than the non-Christian next door?  Yet, does anyone "judge" that behavior and call the Christian couple to a higher standard?  Not likely.

2) Profanity and swearing, as well as using the Lord's name in vain, are rampant among Christians.  Does anyone "judge" that behavior?  Not likely.

3) Sunday worship is viewed as an option instead of essential.  Does anyone "judge" that behavior and call church members to a higher standard?

4) Basic issues of integrity are lacking in all areas of society- is there anyone who can keep a secret?  Not gossip?  Deal honestly with finances?  All of these need to be "judged" in the church so that Christian people, who have claimed Christ as Lord and Savior, will live to a higher standard.

5) Do Christians visit hospitals, prisons, and truly sacrifice to care for the orphan and the widow?  Do they truly care about the poor?  Yet, is there anyone calling the average church person to that standard?

As a coach and as a parent, I have learned one true and universal thing:  people will rise to the level you expect of them.  If you expect a student to get "C's," he will get C's.  If you expect a half-hearted effort, you will get a half-hearted effort.  If you expect excellence, you will get excellence.  This isn't rocket science.  It is also true in the church.

The whole "do not judge" thing probably started out with good intentions, but what has happened is that any kind of Godly standard or accountability (and we all need accountability) has been erased from the church under the guise of "not judging."  We literally have pastors who are afraid to confront the sin of their church members because the church members will get angry and leave, feeling "judged" as if that were a terrible thing in the church.

Well, pastor, if the only way a person will stay in your church is that he is allowed to continue in his sin, he probably doesn't understand what it means to be part of a church.

Notice also what Paul says in the last part- we should look at believers and unbelievers differently.  "What business is it of mine," says Paul, "to judge those outside the church?" The Bible tells us not to judge unbelievers, because they have not voluntarily claimed Christ as Lord and Savior and therefore aren't living by Biblical authority.  Leave them alone, Paul says.  God will handle them.

We, however, in the church, are called to judge each other.  Yes, that's what it says.  We are to examine actions and lovingly call people to Biblical accountability.  We are also supposed to ACCEPT Biblical accountability.  Don't be the kind of person who can dish it out but can't take it.

How many times have we heard someone say, "I left that church- they are so judgmental!"  Every time I hear that, I wonder where the problem was- was the church too judgmental, or was the person living a life of sin that got called what it was, and the person didn't want to hear it?

I understand that churches can take this too far.  There can be churches that are so concerned with accountability and "rightness" that it lapses into legalism, and the end result of that is a Pharisee.  We definitely don't want that.  However, I think the pendulum has swung too far to the "do not judge" side that we won't even call evil evil anymore.

When a church will no longer make judgements on good and evil, based on God's word, that church is ripe for destruction.  When a Christian will no longer make judgements on good and evil, that Christian is ripe for destruction.  We are not called to remain passive and weak on issues of good and evil.  Many passive and weak Christians use the "do not judge" as the trump card for having to confront evil, confront sin, and make hard changes in their own lives.

I call for a balance- make judgments on good and evil, and do it lovingly.  It is not loving to allow a Christian brother or sister to remain in sin.  It is not loving to allow a Christian brother or sister to enjoy the things that sent Jesus to the cross.  It is loving to care enough for them, and enough for God, to call evil evil and good good.

Love, therefore, is at the heart of Christian judgement.  Love, not anger, or self-righteousness, or anything else, must be the motivation for judgement in the church.  If it is not, the church will lapse into legalism.  Let your attitude as the one judging and the one being judged be the right one- always seeking to live a holier life, a better life, a life more in step with God and His Word.

America, as a pond, is all fished out

I am going to be controversial today.

*Disclaimer: I want you all to know that I am proposing something new, not making absolute statements.  I am proposing a new direction for the church, and I am not saying that every church should follow this path, nor am I saying that indigenous work here in America is all for naught.  

When we planted Catalyst six years ago, one of the stats that we threw around as a justification for our new church plant was the fact that America is the largest mission field in the Western Hemisphere and the third largest in the world behind China and India.  There are more unchurched people in America (as a total number, not as a percentage) than all but two countries in this world.

This statistic is usually followed by calls for more church planting, more campuses from larger churches, etc.  For good reason.  Many times, when we plant churches or expand larger churches into multi-site venues, we do reach unchurched people and connect them to the Body of Christ.

However, no one ever asks why.  Why do we have 100 million unchurched people in this nation?

Is it a lack of churches?

Probably not.

At least in this area of the country, you have to purposefully avoid the church to be away from it.  The availability and accessibility to a church is not the problem.  If someone wanted to know about Jesus, just in my county, he or she would have 82 places to choose from that could be reached inside twenty minutes.

Even in places like New England and the Western states, outside of the Bible Belt, you could be at one of several churches inside thirty minutes if you wanted to be part of a church.  

No, the problem isn't a lack of churches.

Here's the bombshell:

If a person here in America doesn't know about Jesus, it's because the numerous Christians they work with, interact with, play sports with, etc haven't been faithful to the Great Commission.

Yes.  I said it.

I will also say this:  many of the 100 million unchurched people in America have heard about Christ and have rejected Him.  Many of them grew up in the church, or had a grandma that went to church, or whatever, and the problem isn't that they don't know.  The problem is that they DO know and have rejected.

So Dave, why are you talking about this?

I am calling pastors, leaders, and church people away from the knee-jerk "solutions" that are always proposed to this problem- develop a new ministry, plant another church in the community, build another building in a more visible location going into debt millions of dollars.

Really, does your community need another multi-million dollar church building in it?  

I am proposing an entirely new mindset.  America is church-saturated.  Churches, or at least church buildings, cost money.  I say we make two major changes:

        1) It does't cost anything for a Christian to disciple another person.  Emphasize to the people in your church that discipleship is the job of the Christian, not just of the pastor.  Quit thinking that another church or a bigger church or another ministry is the key to reaching the 100 million unchurched in our nation.  Go make a disciple.

        2) Expand your church's ministry to areas where, unlike America, there ARE no churches.  Invest in church planting and missionaries where there is a church every hundred miles or so.  India, Pakistan, North Korea- the list goes on.  Take the resources that you would have placed here in America, which is already over-saturated with churches, and send them out to the countries of the world where the vast majority of non-Christian people are.  

Yes.  I have a feeling that God would have us use our resources in places where the vast amount of non-Christian people are.  That isn't the United States.  94% of the world's population lives outside our borders.  If we start thinking with a Kingdom mindset, shouldn't 94% of our resources go outside of America?  

Would God allocate 90% of His resources to a country where people can't walk without tripping over a church?  That's what most churches do- most churches are doing well if they send 10% of their income to missions, let alone missions overseas.  To spend 90% of resources to reach already-reached people is not a good Kingdom strategy.

Are there needs here?  Yes.  Remember my disclaimer above.

I am close to saying that America, as a pond, is all fished out.  We have 400,000 churches here in America, so, in a manner of speaking, we have one pond with 400,000 fishermen on the shore.  The fish are either already caught or just aren't taking the bait.

However, there are over 150 other ponds with huge numbers of fish that have only one or two fishermen on the shores.  They are reeling in catches right and left.  You would think that some of those 400,000 fishermen would go over where the pond isn't fished out.  Yet, most of what I see is that instead of going to other ponds, the fishermen are staying at the one pond and developing newer, hipper techniques, spending millions of dollars on new equipment, trying new strategies, etc to catch a few more.  The ones who can't afford all the glitz and glam, instead of going to the ponds that aren't fished out, either get jealous or simply quit.  I guess going to another pond to fish would just be too hard.

What if churches started seriously thinking about fishing in other ponds and, instead of posting attendance and offering records, posted how many church plants, missionaries, and ministries they started in other countries?

What if churches began measuring success by the amount of influence they have all over the world instead of just in one building?

What if Christians, when people ask how big their church is, answered, "We're in about twenty different countries?"

What would it look like if a church of 200 people, instead of concentrating on "growing" (95% of church growth in America is simply people who are already Christians leaving one church and going to another, honestly, so most of what is considered "growth" isn't growth at all) instead put it as their focus to have worldwide influence in countries where churches, if there at all, are extremely few and far between?

Maybe it's time to re-think what we see as success in the church.

If we start to think of America as a pond with over 400,000 fishermen around it, with the fish already caught or just not taking the bait, while at the same time thinking of the other countries of the world as huge, gigantic ponds full of fish with barely a fisherman to be seen anywhere, I think we would begin to see God's world as He sees it.

Is there ministry that needs to be done here?  Absolutely.  But we have enough churches.  We need the Christians in those churches to be faithful in making disciples, reaching their neighbors and doing ministry in their communities. That doesn't cost anything and requires no new buildings or ministries.

We need buildings and ministries in areas where there are no buildings and ministries.  That ain't America.

Begin praying today for God to open doors to His mission field, where He so accurately observed, "The fields are ripe for harvest!  The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few."

It's no coincidence

I was mowing the grass yesterday evening.  Well, when I say "grass" I am being generous.  I'm not what you would call a yard guy.  There is a yard guy at the end of my street.  He makes everyone else look very bad- not a weed, especially no dandelions, to be seen in his yard.

My yard, however, is a mixture of Bermuda, Fescue, Bluegrass, crab grass, dandelions, clover, and some other unidentifiable weed that is taking over.

As I was mowing yesterday, the thought occurred to me that God has created soil, and by His design, that soil is ready to produce.  It is no respecter of seeds.  It shows no favoritism to beautiful, nice grass over horrific, yard-condemning dandelions.  It is completely neutral.  It sits there, primed and ready, waiting for a seed.  Any seed, good or bad, will germinate and produce.

It's no coincidence, therefore, that Jesus used soil as a metaphor for our hearts.

Just like soil, our hearts are not respecters of ideas, passions, and beliefs.  Our hearts sit there, primed and ready, waiting for influences.  Waiting for ideas.  Waiting for beliefs.  When any one of those things finds its way into our hearts, it grows.

I wonder if my heart looks a lot like my yard.  A mixture of thrown-together chaos- a product of both the good and the bad that I've allowed into my heart.

I constantly study Scripture.  That's one of the things I actually do somewhat decently in this thing called the Christian life.  I've read through the entire Bible eleven times, and I'm working on my twelfth right now.  I would imagine that Scripture has taken root in my heart and is leading and guiding a lot of my beliefs and actions.  That would be the Fescue and Bermuda and Bluegrass- my desired produce.

However, I also spend far too much time filling my heart with nonsense.  Here is a sampling of what would probably be also growing in my heart:

1.  Outlandish one-sided talk radio bloviators who provide simplistic solutions to complex problems and, while doing a good job of antagonizing everyone, don't accomplish much.

2.  Movies which constantly undermine my Christian faith by glamorizing sin- couples living together outside of marriage, profaning God's name as a common curse word, drug use and drunkenness as normal, etc.

3.  TV shows where families, if together at all, are dysfunctional- men are indecisive buffoons always messing everything up,  women are hyena-screeching never-satisfied drama queens who argue and fight all the time, children are "wise" and draw laughs with their smart-aleck disrespect of the buffoon dads and drama queen moms.

Do I truly think that planting these seeds in my heart will have no effect on me?  Unfortunately, I can plainly see the results of the bad seeds in my yard.  They sprout ugly weeds immediately and crowd out the good seeds I am trying to grow.  The results of the bad seeds in my heart, however, are not as obvious.

Or are they?

Jesus said, "By their fruit you will recognize them."  Whatever has been planted in your heart- whatever you have ALLOWED to be planted in your heart (all the listings above were put there in my heart by MY choice) will be evident to everyone else.  What are your values?  Are they shaped by Scripture?

What are your views on marriage?  What are your views on tithing?  What are your views on gun control?  What are your views on government?  What are your views on liberty and freedom?  What are your views on family?  Honesty?  Education?

Are these values you hold based on the Word of God?  Or are they based on the opinions of this world?

How do you react when something bad happens?  Do you have peace in the midst of the craziness, or are you more like the people on TV who fly off the handle at everything?

What type of speech regularly comes out of your mouth?  Do I even need to explain?

Your answers to the above questions show what is growing in your heart.  What you have planted in your heart is growing and producing fruit.  Just like my yard is producing both grass and weeds, many of us have a mixture of good and bad planted in our hearts.

My yard is ugly.

Your heart, if planted with both good and bad, is ugly too.

What I realized last night is that I am responsible for the way my yard looks.  Those weeds were planted in my yard on my watch.  I was negligent in killing the weeds.  I was negligent in sowing good seed all over my yard.  Now, the fruit of my negligence is plain for all the world to see.

The same is true of your heart.  The evil in your heart was planted in your heart on your watch.  You were negligent in guarding your heart.  You were negligent in turning off the TV, you were negligent in staying off the internet, you were negligent in filling your heart with the good, and now, the fruit of your negligence is plain for the world to see.

It's time for some weed-killer.  It's also time for some grass seed.  Both for my yard and my heart.

It's really no coincidence that Jesus used soil as a metaphor for our hearts.  What is planted will grow, people.  Make sure you are planting the right things.  Just like weeds take over a yard, the evil will take over our hearts unless mercilessly uprooted and killed.

"Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life."  Proverbs 4:23

Bad news for a society that diminishes the sacred

I was driving home from an awesome Sunday morning at Catalyst.  It was Mother's Day, and I was fired up about celebrating my wife, who is an incredible mother of four, and my mom, who is miraculously still alive after putting up with me and my brother for 18 years.

All over Facebook and Twitter were references to mothers.  Different quotes extolling the virtue of mothers, thankful sons and daughters writing glowing tributes to their mothers on their pages and via tweets, tearful pictures of mothers long gone.  Yes, it was a deluge of thankfulness via social media on Mother's Day.

I was almost to my street when I looked to the right.  To my right was a soccer field.  Teams were playing.

You gotta be kidding me.

What kind of people agree to schedule a sporting event on Mother's Day?  This is supposed to be a sacred day- a day set aside where you get together with family to celebrate the woman who brought you into the world, who wiped your butt and changed your diapers, who provided for you when you were helpless and couldn't care for yourself.  This is a day to celebrate the sacrifices of the woman who nurtured you, cared for you, raised you, and sustained you through nine long months of pregnancy.  And you're playing sports on that day?

We have become a society that diminishes the sacred.

Mother's Day is on a Sunday.

Sundays stopped being sacred long ago.

We decided as a society that six days a week weren't enough for sports.  So, we as a society agreed when the coaches and organizers started scheduling games on Sunday mornings.  Now, millions of Christians choose to take their children to sporting events on Sunday mornings, not being content with their children playing sports the other six days a week.

We decided as a society that six days a week weren't enough to shop.  So, we as a society decided that Sunday would be the day where we go to Wal-Mart and do all our shopping for the week.

We diminished the sacredness of Sunday.  It became a day to do whatever we want to do.  Check that.  That's a wrong statement.  It became a day where we agreed to do what others told us to do.

Sunday became a day where coaches told us what to do- show up for your soccer match.  Doesn't matter if you are a member of a church.  Doesn't matter if you believe that worship is important.  Doesn't matter that we've had six other days this week to play.  You be there on Sunday morning.  Sunday became a day where we made up for our laziness and over scheduling during the week.

We diminished the sacredness of Sunday.  So it naturally progresses that we would schedule sporting events on a sacred day devoted to celebrating mothers.

You can say, come on Dave, you're being a little extreme here.  I'm not, actually.

Have any of you noticed the onslaught of Satanism in the last few years?

Satanism?  You mean, worship of the devil and all that?

Yep.

In Oklahoma, Satanists are planning on erecting a statue of Satan next to a display of the Ten Commandments outside a courthouse. This would have been unthinkable even ten years ago.  Yet, a company in New York has agreed to build it and has released the drawings and plans of what it will look like.

At Harvard University, a student group (in the name of diversity, of course) planned a celebrate a Satanic ritual called the Black Mass.  This unashamed mockery and desecration of the Christian religion received a landslide of criticism and was cancelled at the last minute.  The Black Mass consists of upside-down crucifixes, substituting urine for wine, repeatedly stabbing a loaf of bread, mocking the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and in history has used naked people as altars for the elements, lapsing into orgies and sadomachism.

How did all this Satanism pop up all of a sudden?

Because nature abhors a vacuum, and when the sacred is diminished, the filth and perverse will move in.

By our lack of honoring the Sabbath, by our lack of regarding the sacred, by our lukewarmness in commitment to God, we have allowed the occult and the Satanic an open door to enter our society.  Satanism and the occult cannot thrive where the people of God are strong and committed.  However, that has not described the Body of Christ for a long time.

Here, America, we are reaping the fruit of our lukewarmness and our lackadaisical attitude towards the sacred.  Our disregard of the holy things, our disregard for the glory of God has come home to roost.  Our disregard for the glory of God and the urgency of His mission has not only affected the church- it has opened the door for Satanism to enter our society and be seen as a legitimate thing deserving recognition.

We criticize the Satanists for their Black Mass and their desecration and mockery of the Christian religion, but are we any better?

Is stabbing a loaf of bread and dipping it in a bowl of urine to mock the Eucharist worse than sleeping in on a Sunday morning or choosing a soccer game over worship?  At least the Satanist doesn't profess to love Jesus.  The Christian who professes love for Jesus but completely ignores everything He says- is that Christian any different?  Or is he in fact worse?

In Revelation 3, it would seem that Jesus would prefer the Black-Mass-recognizing-Satanist over the lukewarm Christian, because only one of the two people listed above got vomited out of Jesus' mouth.  Let me give you a hint- it wasn't the Satanist.

I think it's time that we as Americans, and Christians especially, take a look at how we have diminished the sacred.  Let's take a look at our lukewarm commitment to our faith and to our churches.  Do we really think that God would allow lukewarm commitment and the disregarding of His glory forever?

He is allowing the blaspheming hordes, the Satanists, the occult, into our country as a judgment on our own disregard for His glory.  He is allowing us to truly see what the absence of His presence looks like.  He is allowing us to see that we have too long taken for granted His love, His goodness, His grace, and His power in holding back the evil in this world.  Well, no more.  He is allowing the evil forces of this world to grab front-page headlines.  The Satanic forces have been empowered and have momentum, because the Christians have been far too lukewarm and dismissive of God and His glory.

In Ezekiel 10, the nation of Israel had become so corrupt that the glory of God literally rose up out of the temple and departed.  One of my seminary professors called this "the saddest chapter in the entire Bible."  It was a time that God washed His hands of the nation, packed His bags and left.  What happened next, with the protection of Israel gone, was horrific- Israel and Judah were overrun with foreign invaders that captured their cities, ripped unborn babies from pregnant mothers, carted the people off into slavery and exile, burned crops, starved the people, etc.

Do we think we will escape a similar fate?

We look eerily similar to the nation of Israel right before the glory of God departed.  This alarming rise in Satanism and the occult, accompanied by the growing attempts at silencing Christians, threatening the faithful, may be the beginning of the end.  Israel faced judgment because they diminished the sacred and disregarded God's glory.  This is bad news for a society such as ours that is doing the exact same thing.

It only took two generations

One of the high points in the nation of Israel's history (in the Bible, that is) is the faithfulness of the people under the leadership of Joshua.  They took Jericho, by faith, and entered the promised land, faithfully obeying God in stark contrast to their ancestors who were a constant headache to Moses.

Just two generations later, however, we see that the situation has deteriorated rapidly.  In Judges, we see a man named Micah making an idol, setting it up in his house, and thinking that God would look upon him with favor as long as he had a Levite as priest.  We then see a man traveling to a town, being taken in for the night, and being threatened by a mob of angry men who want to have sex with him.  He sends out his concubine instead, and they rape and abuse her through the night until she dies.  This results in a civil war where tens of thousands of Israelites kill each other.

Two generations?  That's all it took for a faithful people to turn into this kind of cesspool of idolatry and immorality?

Yep.  Two generations.

That means that at least some of the people who saw God conquer Jericho and the faithfulness of the people were still alive when the nation changed.

The same is true in America.

I read a news article where a 25-year-old woman filmed herself having an abortion so that she could show that abortion could have a "positive outcome."  She even had the gall to say, "I don't feel like I'm a bad person."  Sorry, lady- you kill your own kid, you're a bad person.  I wonder if the outcome was "positive" for her unborn, vulnerable child who was counting on her mother to sustain and love, not to dismember and kill.

The man named Micah, before he made the idol, consecrated his silver to God and asked Him to bless it before he made the idol.  He had forgotten that just two generations ago, God had said, "You shall make no idols."  He had forgotten that idolatry was what had destroyed many of his ancestors in the episode with the Golden Calf.  He could seriously rationalize his actions as "good."  He would probably, with his hand on his household idol, say, "I don't feel like I'm a bad person."

Here in America, we are repeating history.

We are now the definition of a society that calls evil good and good evil.  Not only do we have abortion, which is bad enough; we now have women celebrating it, filming it, posting it proudly for all to see.  We have mothers celebrating the killing of their children, labeling it "positive" and referring to themselves as "good people" for committing murder.

This is the mark of a society that has come completely off its hinges, completely off its foundation, completely off its rocker.

This is the mark of a society without morals, without a knowledge of good and evil, without a clue as to what it is doing.

This is the mark of a society that thinks it is above accountability and above judgement.

History has shown us that societies that believe these things don't last very long.  When a society reaches this point, the decay from the inside has metastasized and has spread to all parts, weakening and destroying it like rotten wood.  When a society cannot see that mothers killing their children, and celebrating it, is evil, there is no hope for the society.

The only hope for the society that reaches this point is repentance.  I am calling America to repent, to change, to turn its heart back to God.  How evil can we get before we realize this is the only option?  God's word calls us to "humble ourselves and pray and seek His face and turn from our wicked ways" and He in turn will "hear from heaven and forgive our sin and heal our land." (2 Chronicles 7:14)

Pray for our nation.

Pray for this young woman.

Pray for the ones celebrating the murder of the most vulnerable and most innocent members of our society.

Pray for the doctors that make money off of killing these children.

Pray for a revival in America where we begin to value God's greatest gift to us- life.

Pray for our nation.