Sunday, July 10, 2011

John 7:1-24; Superficial Judgments

"Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.” How hard this is in so many areas of life. Often, I fear we don't even realize how superficial are our judgments.

On our campus many students struggle with faith and community. What I most commonly hear is a rejection of what is deemed conservativism; actually I think it is a rejection of whatever one grew up with. Among the middle-age crowd I hear the search for "the best" taking over when in reality "the best" is often another word for "what I enjoy the most".

Is it proper judgment to condemn a group for expressing themselves in a way that is respectful of their heritage and consistent with their understanding of scripture? Is it correct judgment to ignore history in order to find a more exciting experience? Conversely, is it correct judgment to turn a deaf ear to social trends and generational differences in order to simply avoid making a hard decision?

Probably most of us are like the average Jew in this reading, i.e., we do nothing because of our fear. Sometimes it is fear of offending someone or fear of a loss of being accepted, but in many cases we let fear rather than good judgment direct our lives. Ironically we think that not making waves is "the Christian thing to do". So why is it that Jesus was labeled a trouble-maker rather than a peace-maker? And why did he call all of us to make proper judgments if his highest value was simply keeping the status quo?

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