No Judgement

So…. Let's address this controversial topic of discussion. So many times, people are offended by others because they felt judged. That term is used among friends, family, people in the church, and the list goes on. Sometimes the feeling of being "judged" is appropriate and at times inaccurately applied. Did the person have an opinion or was the person being judgmental? If you analyze the words closely, their definitions are different. Judgment is the ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions. However, being judgmental means having or displaying an excessively critical point of view.

I’ve found that I and others were offended and felt a person was being judgmental when they did not agree with my actions or behavior. Having an opinion and not agreeing with me does not mean a person was being judgmental but we have applied this term so often and created an environment that people have to agree with us or they are against us in which we describe them as being judgmental.

My pastor performed a series titled, “In My Defense”, where he walked us through the lives of biblical characters that we Christians have judged. He used Samson in one of his sermons and it was quite interesting to look at his life through a different lens. In case you are unaware of the story, Samson was a Nazarite from birth whose purpose was to begin freeing the children of Israel from the oppression of the Philistines. He was to never cut his hair for his hair was the symbol of his strength and his covenant to God. Samson had an eye for foreign women which ultimately lead to him revealing the secret of his strength to his lover Delilah, his hair being cut which then stripped him of his superhuman strength. He was then blinded and forced to grind grain in a mill at Gaza where his hair began to grow back. He was later taken to the Philistine’s temple to Dagon where he asked the Lord to grant him the power to destroy his enemies in which he pushed and broke the two pillars he stood between causing the temple to collapse killing himself and all that were inside.

This biblical character has definitely been judged by his choices; however, he came to a state of repentance which God heard, and as his hair grew, his strength was also being restored. He destroyed more of Israel’s enemies in his death than he did during his life. When I consider my life and the choices that I’ve made and how I’ve been “judged” and felt thrown away, I look at God’s forgiveness and elevation even when others felt I was undeserving. The “undeserving” part is where people were judgmental. They didn’t have to agree with my behaviors and the judgement of my bad behavior was okay, but when I became a heathen and “going to hell” was where they were being judgmental, and there lies the problem.

Despite what people think, God knows our choices and why we are in the places we are in or made the choices we made. Those choices are part of our distinct journeys. Love doesn’t call us to be judgmental and it’s not our place to be judgmental. There’s no place for this type of judgment when “We are all defendants.” ~ Ebony Dixon. We all have our struggles, weaknesses, and times of bad choices but that doesn’t mean that we have no purpose. Those choices are all part of the journey. I will challenge you to believe that there’s no judgment, those choices are what will ultimately bring you to your seat of purpose.