Judgment vs Judgmentalism

"For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?"
1 Corinthians 5:12 (ESV)

It's clear from this verse that Christians should stop trying to hold non-Christians to Christian standards. In the first place, it doesn't work, but more importantly we're told not to do it. But what isn't as clear in this verse is how we are to go about "judging" those inside the church? Let's explore that for a moment.

For that to happen, it's critical that we keep in mind that there is a practical and vital difference between judgment and judgmentalism. Making a judgment call about what is right and what is wrong is not the same thing as being judgmental towards someone. Have you noticed that we can't avoid using our faculty of discernment and making judgment calls in life? We do it everyday. Even claiming that someone is acting in a judgmental way is itself a judgment call. So, what’s the difference? How can we tell the difference between the weed of destructive judgmentalism and the flower of wise discernment? For the sake of space, let's start with just one of the key signs in today's post:
 
Our Attitude: Biblical correction and judgment looks at a person's actions with an attitude of compassion and with a desire to lift them up. Judgmentalism, on the other hand, looks at a person, or speaks about a person, with an attitude of condescension and with a desire to tear them down.

We might think of this like the difference between a helpful editor and a harmful critic. Here you have some piece of writing, and what does an editor do? An editor comes alongside of you, and often behind the scenes, helps you to see the typos that you didn’t see. They don't shame you. They correct you in a way that builds you up and builds up your work. But a harmful critic is someone who, without even getting the facts first, publicly denounces the author. They speak about the person and their work not to help them or build them up, but to publicly tear them down. It's been said that, "Every writer needs an editor." The same is true in life. We all need more editors in our lives and less critics.

In fact, part of loving people well and really helping people to grow involves correction. But is that even possible in our self-affirming, hypersensitive culture today? Here’s how one writer put it —“Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.”

If we're not careful, our modern cultural view of love and tolerance, which basically equates to moral neutrality and relativism, can pervade the church's way of thinking to a point that makes us resistant to any form of correction from our fellow brothers and sisters. And when this happens, when a church functions without the benefit of good editing, it can never put its best work forward. So, let's be tenderhearted in our correction of others and be openminded in receiving their correction of us, because the difference comes down to our attitude.