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Thursday, Feb. 19, 2004 - 8:30 a.m. Gulp! EE-judging Open wide! Big bite! Two new adventures plus one maybe. Found some great picture classes thanks to Mr. F. I am halfway thru the Scanning lessons at HP's Scanning is still vague, but I hop it will get better as I finish this course. Bite 2 is a one week intensive course I am starting this morning on Blackboard, on the campus web site. It is available for syllabi, lessons, worksheets, announcements from each teacher who uses it, and other such helps. I have already used it to get details on assignments that gave me an edge on what to study for im Comm1. I am 2 days behind so I shall have to catch up. The possible bite is a job offer I received at the local campus. They are setting up a new testing room for Compass and class tests and have 3 four hour shifts to man. They would like me to consider the 7am to 11am shift. It is not very labour intensive and I might have time for homework if no one comes in at certain times. I would have to ID testers, hand out test sheets, do some basic data entry on the computer and oversee the testing area from a closed off cubicle with one glass wall with window. The job is probably just being a proctor. Doesn't pay much, perhaps $25 a morning before taxes, but I can't earn much more than that without starting to lose UI/TAA benefits. The offer is not a sure one yet, they have to get the funding, but the gal in charge of this campus office said she wanted me specifically. I can't imagine why, I am not used to being the one on the short list. The job would delay me about 15 minutes from PE, prevent me from going to morning Peer meetings,( which Job Service is thinking of ending anyway, still having edited lists and turning them in.) and just in general, tying up my mornings. Sob, whine. Here I am, Father, 'in the way', push me where You want me to go. You know how bad I lead, so a big push may be necessary. I have decided to copy some of EE's entries here. They disappear the next day, and some are so good. I am sure they are all in her books, and I could find them since I have all her books but there are 15 or 20 to sort through, and the ones I want to keep handy will be right here. I'd better put the topic in the title bar. But everybody's being so judgmental! And you're another one,'' she complained. "Since you have chosen to be my judge, you can never be my friend." For months Lisa had been watching Joan's behavior, which seemed to her to be very wrong. She had prayed about mentioning it. When she felt at last that she could no longer keep silent she approached her dear friend in the spirit of Galatians 6:1. Even if a man should be detected in some sin, my brothers, the spiritual ones among you should quietly set him back on the right path, not with any feeling of superiority but being yourselves on guard against temptation. Carry each other's burdens and so live out the law of Christ. Joan, in response, was bitter, angry, and hurt. The wrong, she insisted, was Lisa's. Lisa was being "judgmental." The right, she felt, was on her side, for neither Lisa nor anyone else knew "the whole story." The only verse about judgment in the Bible which anyone seems to have heard of these days is "Judge not." There the discussion usually ends. It is tacitly assumed that negative judgments are forbidden. That positive judgments would also come under the interdict escapes the notice of those who assume it is a sin to judge. One morning long before dawn I sat staring out onto a starlit sea, thinking of Joan and Lisa's story and of what Christian judgment ought to be. My thoughts ran like this: If one does right and is judged to be right, he will be neither angry nor hurt. He may, if he is humble, be pleased (is it not right to be glad that right is done?) but he will not be proud. If one who is proud does wrong and is judged to be wrong he will be both angry and hurt. If one who is proud does right and is judged to be wrong he also will be both angry and hurt. If one who is truly humble does wrong and is judged to be wrong, he will not resent it but will in gratitude and humility, no matter what it costs him, heed the judgment and repent. If one who is truly humble does right and is judged to be wrong he will not give the judgment a second thought. It is his Father's glory that matters to him, not his own. He will "rejoice and be exceeding glad," knowing for one thing that a great reward will be his, and, for another, that he thus enters in a measure into the suffering of Christ--"when he suffered he made no threats of revenge. He simply committed his cause to the One who judges fairly." Joan was outraged that her close friend should judge her, thus disqualifying herself, Joan felt, from ever again being her friend. She failed to see that one as close as Lisa ought in fact to be the first to rebuke her, since she loves her and will be the first to notice that she needs to be rebuked. Joan, however, was sure that if Lisa could have seen the whole picture as God sees it she would have judged differently: because what she was doing was right, both God and Lisa would see it to be right. That kind of "judgment" Joan would not have minded, nor would the word judgmental have entered her head. Perceptive or discerning are words which perhaps would have come to her mind. Joan was right, of course, that Lisa did not see the whole picture. No one but God ever sees it, for only to him are all hearts open, all desires known. We mortals often fail to see right as right, wrong as wrong. We look on the outward appearance. It is all we have access to. We therefore know only in part. In the meantime we are given the book of standards by which to judge our own actions and those of others. "By their fruits" we know them. If we were not to judge at all we would have to expunge from our Christian vocabulary the word is, for whatever follows that word is a judgment: Jack is a fine yachtsman, Mrs. Smith is a cook, Harold is a bum. It depends on how one sees Jack, Mrs. Smith, and Harold. Jesus told us to love our enemies. How are we to know who they are without judging? He spoke of dogs, swine, hypocrites, liars, as well as of friends, followers, rich men, the great and the small, the humble and the proud, "he who hears you and he who rejects you," old and new wineskins, the things of the world and the things of the Kingdom. To make any sense at all of his teachings requires, among other things, the God-given faculty of judgment, which includes discrimination. The current popular notion that judging others is in itself a sin leads to such inappropriate maxims as ''I'm O.K. and you're O.K." It encourages a conspiracy of moral indifference which says "If you never tell me that anything I'm doing is wrong, I'll never tell you that anything you're doing is wrong." "Judge not that ye be not judged" has come to mean that if you never call anything sin nobody can ever call you a sinner. You do your thing and let me do mine and let's accept everybody and never mind what they're up to. There is a serious misunderstanding here. The Bible is plain that we have no business trying to straighten out those who are not yet Christians. That's God's business. Alexander the coppersmith did Paul "much evil," and was "an obstinate opponent" of Paul's teaching. That description is a straightforward judgment, but Paul did not consider it his duty to deal with that man. "The Lord will reward him for what he did." ''But surely it is your business to judge those who are inside the church," he wrote to the Christians at Corinth, and commanded them to expel a certain immoral individual from the church: Clear out every bit of the old yeast....Don't mix with the immoral. I didn't mean, of course, that you were to have no contact at all with the immoral of this world, nor with any cheats or thieves or idolaters--for that would mean going out of the world altogether! But in this letter I tell you not to associate with any professing Christian who is known to be an impure man or a swindler, an idolater, a man with a foul tongue, a drunkard, or a thief. My instruction is: Don't even eat with such a man. That's pretty clear. And pretty hard to obey. I have seldom heard of its being obeyed in this country, but a missionary named Herbert Elliot tells me that he has seen it obeyed many times in the little Peruvian churches he visits in remote regions of the Andes and the jungle, where Christians simply believe the Word and put it into practice. In the majority of cases, he tells me, this measure has led to repentance, reconciliation, restoration, and healing. The key to the matter of judgment is meekness. Childlikeness might be just as good a word. Meekness is one of the fruits of the Spirit. No one who does not humble himself and become like a little child is going to get into the Kingdom. We can never set ourselves up as judges, for we ourselves are sinners and inclined to be tempted exactly as those we judge are tempted. But if we are truly meek (caring not at all for self-image or reputation) we shall speak the truth as we see it (how else can a human being speak it?). We shall speak it in love, recognizing our own sinful capabilities and never-ending need for grace, as well as the limitations of our understanding. If we are to do the will of God in this matter, as in all other matters, we must do it by faith, taking the risk of being at times mistaken. We may misjudge, but let us be at least honest and charitable. We ourselves may be misjudged. Let us be charitable then, too, and accept it in humility as our Lord did. "When He was reviled, He reviled not in return." I said we cannot set ourselves up as judges. It is God who sets us this task, who commands us Christians to judge other Christians. It is not pride that causes us to judge. It is pride that causes us to judge as though we ourselves are not bound by the same standards or tempted by the same sins. It was those who were trying to remove "specks" from a brother's eye when they themselves had "logs" in their own eyes to whom Jesus said "Judge not.'' "You fraud!" he said to them. "Take the plank out of your own eye first, and then you can see clearly enough to remove your brother's speck of dust." The dust must indeed be removed, not tolerated or ignored or called by a polite name. But it must be removed by somebody who can see--that is, the humble, the childlike, the pure, the meek. If any of us are inclined to excuse ourselves from the responsibility to judge, pleading that we do not belong in that lovely company, let us not forget that it is those of that company and only those who are of any use in the Kingdom, in fact, who will even enter it. We must take our stand with them beneath the cross of Jesus, where, as the hymn writer says: ...my eyes at times can see The very dying form of One Who suffered there for me. And from my smitten heart, with tears, Two wonders I confess: The wonders of His glorious love, And my own worthlessness. 
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