A few weeks ago, people were so afraid of the future. Today, I see something new as well. There is still fear for some but, for others, there seems to be a re-awakening hope. They hope that we are getting back to a more sustainable lifestyle. I believe that most know that we can never go back to what we were before.
A panic of this nature fundamentally changes us. It causes us to confront our mortality. It causes us to be fearful of others. Being left to ourselves without contact with others can cause anxiety and depression as well.
I know because I have gone through this for an extended period of time. It changes you. It turns you inside out and brings out both the best and the worst in you.
The same person who can go out and help their neighbors can look askance and worse at someone who goes to the grocery store without a face mask on. They don’t delve into the why but, instead, make judgements.
There are people who cannot afford a mask and have no idea how to make one. There are those who simply cannot wear masks for extended periods because of physical or emotional issues. Still, people will judge them based on what they think those people should be doing.
There is a move to judgement that is endemic to humankind. This type of panic sends that into hyperdrive. It is so much easier to judge others than it is to judge yourself. Not only that, you will easily accept your own excuses and, just as easily, discount those of other people. Where it is somewhat amusing and sad, at the same time, is when it is the exact same excuse. Still, yours is valid and others expressing the same are automatically invalid.
While humans accept our day to day judgements of others as normal, God does not. He takes an entirely different view. He tells us to check on our own failings before we start looking for faults in others.
Now, the Old Testament, especially Leviticus, is all about judgement. In this particular book of the Bible, God tells the children of Israel just how judgement should be meted out. There are some pretty stiff standards to be met and stiffer still punishments.
Those rules, laws and punishments were put in place to keep the national of Israel holy as God’s chosen race. They were chosen not because they were better but because they were the same as others.
However, God wanted this group of people set apart to be those who would carry his Word to the future and to be the people from whom his Salvation would be extended to the world.
Jesus, who was the Salvation of the world, changed our mission and what we were supposed to do. He is the one who told us to take the log from our eye before telling our neighbor about the speck in theirs.
Our virus panic hasn’t caused our judgements to happen, it has just made expressing them aloud somehow acceptable.
We have to stop doing this and find an even keel once again. We have to learn, once again, to live with our neighbors, friends and family and to do so without making judgements.
That isn’t to say that those who break the law should not have to pay society for their crimes. It means that others who have different ways of coping than our ways are not guilty of anything other than being different.
Be glad that God didn’t look at us and judge us as too broken to save. If he loved us in all our differences, how can we do other than to try to follow in his footsteps?
Romans 2:1-3
You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.
Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment?