Posts Tagged ‘judging’

Good fish and bad fish, black and white thinking

July 29, 2023

Pentecost 9 – 2023
Matthew 13:44-58
Marian Free

In the name of God, Earth-Maker, Pain-Pearer, Life-Giver. Amen.

Anya Cook is an American woman living in Florida. In the past twelve months, she was well into a much-wanted pregnancy when her waters broke. She presented to hospital only to be told that under the state’s new abortion law, she could not be offered medical assistance to deliver the baby. She was sent home. The following day, when she was at a hair salon, Anya miscarried in the salon bathroom. As a consequence, she had to undergo life-saving surgery. Another woman, Amanda Zurawksi, was diagnosed with Pre-term, pre-labour rupture of membranes when she was almost 18 weeks pregnant. Like Anya, she was refused an induction – her health was not considered to be seriously at risk until she became septic – only then were the doctors willing to intervene.

These are only two of the stories coming out of the United States since the Supreme Court handed control of abortion laws back to the states . Doctors in states where abortion has been made illegal are in an invidious situation. Abortion is allowed when the life of the mother is in danger. The question is, how imminent must death be and can that be determined within six weeks of falling pregnant – assuming a woman knows she is pregnant? As Dr Lisa Harris (an obstretrics-gynacaelogist and professor at the University of Michigan) puts it: “There are many conditions that people have that when they become pregnant, they’re OK in early pregnancy, but as pregnancy progresses, it puts enormous stress on all of the body’s organ systems – the heart, the lungs, the kidneys. So they may be fine right now – there’s no life-threatening emergency now – but three or four or five months from now, they may have life-threatening consequences.”

Penalties for those conducting abortions range from 4 years imprisonment to 99 years. Specialists are leaving those states where they feel that they cannot fulfill their oath to “do no harm” and it is reported that enrolments to study obstetrics and gynaecology have dropped by 5% nationally and more in states in which abortion is illegal. The health of pregnant women has been seriously compromised.

The awful decisions that doctors are being forced to make and the extraordinary health risks that some women are facing are a consequence of the sort of black and white thinking that says: “all abortions are evil,” and the certainty that many people have that they and their world view are incontrovertibly right.

Many of those who hold rigid views of right and wrong are Christians, who can back up their views with passages from scripture – including the parable which concludes Matthew’s series of parables today. The parable of the net seems to be clear – there are good and bad fish and the bad fish (the evil) will be sorted out and thrown into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. It is no wonder that on reading this that there are those who are anxious to be clear as to what is right and what is wrong, so afraid are they of the consequences of being found to be bad.

This parable has always troubled me. In chapter 13, Matthew has gathered into one place the parables he intends to include in the gospel. Here are parables about indiscriminate sowing, about a tolerance for weeds, about a kingdom that grows unseen and that is worth more than anything in the world and finally a parable about fishing. it is only this last that concludes with a commentary that is both judgemental and punitive .

Unfortunately, all too often we take the parable out of context. The parable of the wheat and weeds has already demonstrated that the lines between good and bad are blurred (see last week’s post) and the story of Jacob which has been the focus of our Old Testament readings for several weeks is retold without judgment or a belief in condemnation. Jacob is both deceitful and deceived and yet it is Jacob whom God choses to name “Israel,” and it is Jacob’s sons who become the twelve tribes of Israel.

To refresh your memory – Jacob convinces his brother Esau to give up his birthright for a bowl of lentils then, encouraged by his mother, he deceives his father into giving him the deathbed blessing that belonged to Esau. Jacob flees to his uncle to escape the wrath of his brother. There he himself is deceived when his uncle gives him the older daughter in marriage, when it was the younger with whom he was in love. Finally, Jacob returns home. Miraculously all is forgiven, Esau makes way for Jacob and Jacob becomes Israel – the one from whom a nation was formed that exists even to this day.

The Old Testament is filled with such contradictions – Moses was a murderer, David an adulterer, Job was an avoider and a sulker – and yet they and others are not thrown into a fiery furnace but are used by God and held in high esteem in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Perhaps this is the reason that Jesus is so reluctant to judge, to draw clear lines between good and bad, why he was not afraid to associate with tax collectors, prostitutes and sinners and why he says things like: “Judge not so that you will not be judged”, “first take the log from your own eye”, and “let the one without sin cast the first stone.”

God, it seems, is able to see the good as well as the bad and to hold them in tension (as was demonstrated in the parable of the wheat and the weeds). God sees in us both the good and the bad and loves us regardless. God understands the circumstances in which we might do things that otherwise we might not do (admit that legalising abortion is essential for the health of a mother). God uses that which is good in us yet is not blind to our shortcomings. There will be a reckoning, a time when we are shriven of all that belongs in the kingdom, but until then God will let the wheat grow with the weeds and the good and bad fish will swim together.

Black and white thinking puts us in the place of God. We need to liberate ourselves from such narrow thinking, open ourselves to the possibility that not everything is as it seems, and finally not take judgment into our own hands, but leave it to God who alone sees everything as it really is.

 

I found this image on Facebook it was too perfect not to use, I apologise that I could not identify the source. Please let me know who created it so I can acknowledge them. (I have contacted the person who posted it.)

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Who gets to judge?

November 22, 2014

Christ the King

Matthew 25:31-46

Marian Free

 

In the name of God who is known and served in various and many ways. Amen.

I’d like to begin with two stories that reflect a particular faith perspective and way of interpreting scripture. Some twenty years ago I attended a funeral of someone who had been the former treasurer in the parish and was respected and loved by all. His nephew who had spent many of the previous years as a missionary conducted the funeral. During the sermon the nephew said something that took me completely by surprise, but which was welcomed by many of those in attendance. What he said was: “At this point in the service, I often have the difficult task of telling the family that the deceased person hasn’t made it.” By this I think he meant that this is what he would say if the deceased had been an unbeliever. To this day I hope that he was using poetic licence and that he wouldn’t really have used those words. That if that statement represented his theology, that he might have had the discussion with the family before the funeral and as a result might have refused a Christian funeral or better still, that he might have reminded himself that it is God’s place to judge not his.

The second story relates to a conversation with a Parish Administrator whom I’ll call Sarah. Sarah arrived at work one morning in a very distressed state. The previous night she had watched a documentary about teenage homelessness. One of those interviewed was a young girl who was living on the streets to avoid a situation of abuse that included sexual abuse. In order to eat, she prostituted herself and in order to dull the pain of her past and her present she took drugs. In the process this girl was damaging her health and reducing her life expectancy. Sarah’s question was: “If the girl doesn’t come to faith before she dies, will she go to hell – hasn’t she suffered enough?” I suspect that Sarah hadn’t thought much about the issue of judgement until then. As a result of what she had been taught, she thought, presumably based on John 14:6, that only those who accepted Jesus were eligible for eternal salvation. Confronted with the reality of this young girl’s plight, Sarah was questioning her certainty about this position, but she had no tools to help her to find an answer. Her compassion for the girl was competing with her belief that only those who believe in Jesus go to heaven.

Today’s gospel suggests the solution to Sarah’s dilemma and a point of view that the nephew of the deceased may have overlooked. Most of us hear the parable of the sheep and the goats as an account of the judgement of believers, of God separating Christian from Christian on the basis of good works. Yet the text doesn’t say this at all.

In terms to the two scenarios above a number of things are worth noting. First of all, in this account, none of those who are gathered before the king are believers. They are all non-believers – some of whom receive eternal life and others of whom who are cast into everlasting punishment. The idea of a separate judgement for those who are non-Jews has an Old Testament precedent and the concept that those who are not Jews can still know God is consistent with Paul’s argument at the beginning of Romans. What is being described here is not a separation between those who believe and those who do not.

A second point is related. If those who have been assembled are not believers, then faith in Jesus or lack of faith is not the criterion according to which they are being judged. This leads to a third point. According to this narrative, the criterion on which one is judged relates to what one has done or not done to the “least of these” – whoever they are. Good works are not sufficient. It is the beneficiaries of those who deeds which is the pertinent issue.

When Matthew uses the expression “the least of these” elsewhere, he is referring to Christians – whether they are missionaries or disciples. For example, earlier in the gospel, Jesus is reported as saying: “whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.” The argument then is that those who do not believe in Jesus will be raised to eternal life if they provide relief to Christians who are thirsty, hungry or in prison even if they do not realise that that is what they are doing. For those who do not believe, genuine compassion for and consideration of others – without any thought of reward – is the key to a good outcome at the judgement. If a person acts generously they may well be generous to a disciple of Christ without recognising that that is what they are doing. (You will notice that those who are commended by the king, are as surprised as those who are condemned. They were not acting out of self-interest, but out of genuine concern for the suffering of another.)

Fast-forward two thousand years – if this is not a story about doing “good works” what does it mean for us today? In the light of the two stories with which I began, may I suggest that the parable is a warning for us not to be too hasty to judge others or to presume to know the mind of God. In the light of the parables that precede this one, it is better that we ensure that we are prepared to face the judge than to become absorbed in worrying about the fate of others.

We will all come before the judgement seat – Christian and non-Christian. Let us not make the mistake of presuming ahead of time, that we are in a position to predict the outcome.

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