NILS VON KALM writes about the call for Christians to follow the model of Jesus Christ and extend love instead of judgement to others – no matter their failings…
Most people will say they believe in the equality of all people. As Christians we believe it too. Whether someone calls themselves Christian or not, we are all made in the image of God and are therefore equal.
The tendency for a lot of us though is to divide the world into good people and bad people. Gandhi was a good person; Hitler was a bad person. We make these judgments based on how people live their lives, or on something they have done, whether good or bad.
We are all made in the image of God and therefore equal, no matter our past, says Nils von Kalm. PICTURE: Ben Turnbull/Unsplash
Dividing the world into good people and bad people is what Richard Rohr calls “first half of life thinking”. When we think this way, life is black and white and our default position is to moralise.
In the past year, we’ve read allegations that people like L’Arche founder Jean Vanier and Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias abused their power by taking advantage of vulnerable people in the most horrendous ways. Does this mean those who commit such acts are bad people? Are they good people who did bad things? Do the terrible things they did negate the immense good they did?
“Looking at the life of Jesus, we see the ultimate example of how we are to see people. He never condemned people for their sin like others in society did. In fact, that was the exact reason that those who were referred to as sinners flocked to Him.”
If we believe everyone is equal, we also have to believe that we are just as capable of the same terrible deeds others are alleged to have committed. We are all cut from the same cloth. We have no right ever to judge others as worse than ourselves. That doesn’t mean cruel actions shouldn’t be exposed; they should be, so we can all learn something about human frailty and to protect other vulnerable people in future.
Looking at the life of Jesus, we see the ultimate example of how we are to see people. He never condemned people for their sin like others in society did. In fact, that was the exact reason that those who were referred to as sinners flocked to Him.
What Jesus condemned instead was blatant hypocrisy. He condemned the Pharisees for their judgmentalism, for seeing themselves as morally superior to those ‘sinners’. One of the shortest, yet clearest, examples of this is in Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18. The Pharisee smugly thanks God that he is not like that miserable tax collector over there. Yet the tax collector desperately asks God for mercy for his sinfulness. According to Jesus, it was the tax collector who went home right before God and not the upright Pharisee.
Many Christians, in response, will then point to Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount in which He intensifies the moral norms and says that even being angry is akin to murder, and that looking at a woman with lust is the same as doing the deed with her. Reading these words, we might even condemn ourselves and wonder if Jesus is condemning us for when we so often fail in our angry or lustful thoughts. How do we deal with that? So many of us respond with shame or project that shame onto others.
But what if Jesus meant these words in a more positive way? If we believe that Jesus never condemns or shames anyone, then why did He seem to make it easier for us to fail the moral test?
As was His pattern, Jesus’ intent with these words was to point out to the tax collectors and other ‘sinners’ that they were, in fact, no worse than the Pharisees, despite the latter group’s consistent condemnation of them. Just because you might have committed adultery or even murder, and the Pharisees might not have, doesn’t make them better than you. We tend to condemn the sins of others that we don’t commit ourselves.
By saying that anger is akin to murder and lustful thoughts are akin to adultery, Jesus was reinforcing the fact that all people do that and therefore all are equal. He was saying that, in God’s eyes, the ‘sinners’ are no worse than the Pharisees. And that actually makes the Pharisees’ judgmentalism all the more worthy of condemnation. And it is where much of the behaviour of today’s church is equally worthy of the same condemnation.
Moralising is never the way of Jesus. We are to confront the issue and never the person. Shame never made anyone change. It is God’s kindness that leads to change (Romans 2:4), and Jesus shows that beautifully in the way He loved the ones who the Pharisees condemned – and who subsequently flocked to Him.
UK author and researcher, Johann Hari, says that when we hear about abhorrent behaviour by people, the question we need to ask is not, “what’s wrong with you?”, but “what happened to you?”. That doesn’t condone the behaviour, but it does explain it and is much more likely to lead to sustained and lasting change.
We see this in different prison systems around the world. A 2018 comparison of prison conditions in the US and Sweden showed that, “a lot of prisons in the US are overcrowded and built around the penal model with armed guards, concrete walls, cells with bars, vandal-resistant metal furniture, and little to no personal privacy. Such inhumane environments have been shown to negatively affect the well-being of both the inmates and the guards…One may argue that such living conditions may send a message to the inmates about how they are expected to behave. In Sweden, there is a tremendous focus on naturalising the prison experience and making sure the prisoners live in a healthy environment in order to better help the inmates change their lives and decrease institutionalism. Inmates may plan a grocery budget, cook their own food, wear their own clothes, and vote from inside the prison.”
“If we really believe all people are equal, made in the image of God, we will see more clearly that we can never judge anyone as worse than us, no matter what they have done. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).”
It is no coincidence then that research also shows that, according to the comparison, recidivism rates in the US are double that in Sweden. Who is being soft on crime?
If we really believe all people are equal, made in the image of God, we will see more clearly that we can never judge anyone as worse than us, no matter what they have done. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).
Much of the church has been terribly misguided about what living the Christian life means. It is not about moralising; it is about living how Jesus lived, embracing the ones who others judge, loving them back to life and in the process drawing them to the God who has always delighted in them. God, give us the love to be known more for that than for being judgmental and moralistic.
