Jumpstarting Judgment

A Christian summer camp counselor I knew once reported having one of the most successful weeks ever. He proclaimed, with understandable delight, that each of the twelve boys in his cabin had given their lives to Jesus. They wanted to be Christians. They wanted to live for and with Jesus from that point on and into all eternity.

The rest of the camp staff was ecstatic--at first. But that didn't last long. Because the next week, camp supervisors were inundated with phone calls from concerned parents. Apparently, many of the young boys who had been in that converted cabin were having nightmares that were directly related to their week at camp. They would toss and turn as they dreamt--not about the boogie man or some other camp fire legend they had learned while chomping on s'mores--but about the torments of hell and the torture that would be inflicted upon them for all eternity if they didn't get their acts together and give their lives to Jesus.

As the phone calls rolled in and the story was pieced together, the mass conversion of Cabin 14 suddenly was a lot less exciting and a lot more disturbing.

I doubt that any of us would feel comfortable using the evangelism tactic of that camp counselor--scaring people out of hell and into heaven. But what's troubling about the text we looked at last week (Matt 5:21ff) is that Jesus appears to do that very thing. He lets his listeners know--in no uncertain terms--that if they don't clean up their lives, their future is not very bright. So what are we to make of this?

Well, there are several thoughts we ought to keep in mind. First: there is the obvious difference between the speaker: between Jesus (perfect) and us (not-so-much). Second, there is a distinction that must be made between the audiences: Jesus speaks to people (adults) who are presumed to be a part of the community of faith while in evangelism we (or at least that camp counselor) are talking to those who are presumed to be outside of the community of faith. That distinction is not insignificant.

That being said, something else that those of us in the community of faith might consider is the nature of judgement. We tend to think of judgment (I think) largely in negative terms. We think about a finger wagging God ready to give us what we deserve and eager to crush us with his almighty thumb. But that's not quite the full picture of biblical judgment.

When God "judges" his people in scripture, it is not merely retributive. It is also restorative. God not only punishes, he also disciplines. Consider, for example, the exile of the people Israel. The point is not merely to send them away from the promise land to suffer in the labor camps of the Babylonians. The point is to purify them--to burn away all the garbage that stands in between them, God, and their neighbors. The point is to help them live the kind of "shalom-filled" lives of wholeness for which they were created. Or as Thomas Long puts it in his commentary on Matthew. 5:

"In the biblical sense, judgment is God’s exercise of good judgment, repairing all that is harmful to humanity. Judgment is God’s repairing of the broken creation. Judgement is God’s scalpel carefully removing the malignant tissue that threatens life. Judgment is God’s burning away of all that is cruel and spirit killing in order that we may breath the air of compassion. Judgment is good news; it is God setting things right.”

From this perspective, we can think of Christ's call to be reconciled with our neighbors as a way to "jump start judgment." Because when we're seeking to be reconciled with a brother or sister--when we confess to the ways we've hurt people, when we try to restore our relationship with them, when we do our best to remove the garbage that separates us from God and each other--we're not waiting for Jesus to return to set things right and cut away the "malignant tissue that threatens life", but we're trying to do it ourselves. And in that way, we're "jump starting judgment."

So just a reminder (or if you weren't in church Sunday morning, a challenge): Jesus calls us to do our best to set right the wrongs that linger between us. And he calls us to do it now. Don't wait for God to do it. Don't wait for Kingdom come to do it. But through the power of the Spirit, take the initiative and do it today.