Beware of Criticizing Others

     From My Utmost for His Highest
Judge not, that you be not judged —Matthew 7

This Scripture is hard for us now, and likely always has been. There's something deep within us that just wants to separate and quantify the life of a person.

Years ago, my son was assigned to a sports team at random. Parents talked for weeks about which team their son joined. We were really excited to begin, but every time that we'd respond to the question, "Whose team is your son on," our reply would bring a drawn look and the response . . .

. . . "He's a yeller."

I thought that curious. He could write poetry or paint. Our coach could be a great runner or have saved a family from a fire. But on that field, his entire personhood was encapsulated in: "He's a yeller." No one thought that was funny when I shared it on that field, either.

Today, Chambers warns us against this with the caveat that, "There is always at least one more fact, which we know nothing about, in every person’s situation."

I want to take a detour while keeping the light firmly shining on ourselves and considering this excerpt from A Rooster Once Crowed:

I’ve mentioned this at the open of this section, but while there is a significant recording of time throughout Genesis—days and years are meticulously cataloged—it is curious to me that there is no mention of a timeframe between the creation of man and the Fall. We go straight from the creation of Eve and into the snake’s craftiness in the garden. Genesis Chapter 5 gives us some clues, but it appears that Adam (fully grown and with all his mental faculties) was likely an adult in the garden for at least 100 years. And, as we will see in a little bit, without death or deterioration of his body, Adam had tens of thousands of days (at least several lifetimes) to enjoy God’s presence, but also to break the one rule that he was not to break.

Adam was a human like you and like me, so I ask you: Would you have eaten the fruit from the one tree that God asked you to leave alone? I’d like to think that I wouldn’t; that I could enjoy the days in paradise with my mate and be content with meaningful work and the presence of God, walking with us in the garden. Still, I know that’s not how it would have happened. Without death or deterioration to slow me down, I might have lasted another day or ten days or ten thousand days but, at some point, I would have listened to the half-truths that the serpent spoke or I would have followed Eve’s lead. In a weak six minutes, I would have eaten the fruit.

I know this because I don’t live everyday grateful for the gifts I’ve been given. I often want what God knows I’m not supposed to have. I’ve been in situations where I was willing to gamble it all away on the hope that I wouldn’t get caught, and for what? Temporary pleasure.

Some of you are probably living with consequences of your own six-minute decisions or those of others. Maybe your father made one of those decisions or your grandfather did. Sometimes these choices are small and seemingly insignificant, but sometimes they literally change the course of the world for you or four or forty or forty thousand others. 

EXCERPTED FROM A Rooster Once Crowed: A Commentary on the Greatest Story Ever Told (without four linked Scripture provided in the book), Chapter 3-The Fall (pgs. 47-48). AVAILABLE FORMATS are linked at Full Porch Press.

When I look at sin in others, the Gospel tells me that I'm no different. In my neighborhood, there's sin and then there's sin. But to God, it's all sin. When I consider this, I have nothing yet to do but run into the name of the Lord.

I love you.

#thefall