Judgment

Don recapped that we are in the final stages of our consideration of the metaphor of the sheep and the shepherd – of our relationships with God and each other (via Matthew 25.)

It is a puzzling metaphor. Ostensibly, it is a simple judgment scene where good people end up in the Kingdom while bad people end up in a bad place. It strikes one as odd, though, that the judged – on both sides — seem to be surprised at the judgment. There seems to be some mystery to the judgment.

Intuitively, we seem to “know” we have in us a certain amount of both good and evil, but in this passage it’s a very clear-cut, binary distinction between Good and Evil, and either having one or having the other.

Is it possible that this is a metaphor about Ultimate Good and Ultimate Evil, rather than about individual people? David has asked that if that were so, why didn’t God just say so; and commented that punishment with a burning hell is (a) not consistent with the God of Jesus and (b) seems out of proportion to the crime of neglecting to care for one’s neighbor.

On the other hand, the passage itself hints at a connection to the Root of Evil – that something is being finished here that began at the foundation of the Earth. Last week David had thought Ultimate Evil was something much darker and more awful [than the sin of not caring for one’s neighbor.]

The idea of “burning up” is a difficult concept to embrace, but there are several references to it in the Bible, e.g. 1 Corinthians Ch. 3:12-16:

Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

But here the reference to burning up is in respect to “work,” not to people. Fire is a way of testing the quality of people’s work, and even if the work is of poor quality (and therefore succumbs to the flame) the person responsible for it will still be saved.

This also goes back to the idea that each person has some kind of God element within them – an inner light or fire; something that represents Goodness.

The Bible’s definition of Judgment is fairly explicit. In John 3:16-21…

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”

The idea that there is a judgment for those who seek darkness, but no judgment for those who seek light, begs the question: How much light must one seek to avoid judgment?

Matthew 13:24-43 has another judgment scene, in the story of the wheat and the tares:

Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went away. But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ And he said to them, ‘An enemy has done this!’ The slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?’ But he said, ‘No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”

…

Then He left the crowds and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.” And He said, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, and the field is the world; and as for the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels. So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.

In the story of the Garden of Eden, two lines are created: The seed of the serpent, and the seed of the woman. Tares are the sons of the Devil – the serpent. The seed of the woman propagates through the lineage of Seth all the way through to the Messiah himself. By the book of Revelation, we see the two lines as the Christ and the Antichrist.

In Genesis, the story of Noah and the Flood, the evil in the earth has become overwhelming, so god decides to do something about it. But Noah finds* Grace. The story ends with the appearance of a rainbow, as a sign (made of refracted light) that this evil shall never recur. There’s a rainbow also in Revelation, when God is seated upon the throne. So there is something about refracted light that bears upon this question of judgment.

So the questions for us are: What should we understand about the judgment? How does it relate to ourselves?

Harry thought we take these passages way out of their original context. The judgment scene was written for clannish agrarian people living in small villages. Jesus was trying to change a way of life. The references in Matthew 25 to hunger, thirst, sickness, etc., were matters of life and death to such people. If you didn’t help your neighbor, your neighbor would die. That’s not usually the case today. The government will step in, or the missionaries will dig a well for the drought-stricken remote African village. In the time of the Bible, if you were a stranger in a society, you were not entitled to anything. Society then was built around a religion that was exclusive – if you were outside it, you were a stranger, and not deserving of help. So we don’t get the full impact of this judgment story in today’s context. Jesus is asking people to be different.

Lloyd wondered how you apply this teaching, which is a timeless and universal lesson, to ourselves today? It must apply to us. We are sheep and goats, too. We face the same choices.

Harry thought we need to find parallels with today’s society. The bible transcends time – it was written for all ages, albeit with a contemporary context.

Jay thought that the more important perspective was about our relationship with God, which affects our view of judgment. That relationship develops over time, therefore our view of judgment also develops (changes) over time. We view our [biological] father’s judgment of ourselves differently when we are young children from when we are adults. To children, judgment is a simple matter of right and wrong – don’t lie, don’t steal, etc. But as adults, as the relationship matures, it’s about principles to live by – loving your fellow man, etc. That mature understanding simply is not accessible to the child. The bible speaks to us at all levels – at the level of people who need simple guides to behavior, and at the level of people who seek principles to live by. In the story of the wheat and the tares, the servants are too immature to distinguish evil from good; only God’s angels (the reapers) can do that. We are in greatest danger when we think we can discern the difference. So this parable ties in ultimate good and evil. But people who can’t see that have not reached a level of maturity to understand it. Being immature is not a bad thing – it’s just the way it is. A child is immature, by definition.

Lloyd liked the fact that God uses a variety of ways to get through to us the message of the judgment. Ultimately, even though we think we are the main focus of judgment, we are not. Judgment is about exonerating God. We are just pawns who happen to be affected by the choices we make.

Harry doesn’t think that God cares whether we know him or not; he only cares about how we live our lives, about how we treat our neighbors. The Palestinians are an ancient people who lived in Palestine long before the Jews. Their roots are deeper. The Zionist religion came along and claimed God gave them the right to take the land. There are Christians today who defend this. Jesus and Gandhi would not treat the Palestinians the way we do. We don’t give them water, we don’t give them food. We imprison them.

Don noted that the story of the Good Samaritan (in Luke) also is a judgment scene. A lawyer asks Jesus what he must do to achieve eternal life. In the parable, judgments take place on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, a metaphor for the road of life. There are people who have fallen on hard times. They could be you or me; or, we may be the person who walks by; or, we may sometimes be the Good Samaritan.  Jesus says you must love your neighbor as yourself. The man lying at the side of the road is your neighbor. We play all the roles in this road of life.

Alice thought that since there is some good and some bad inside all of us, perhaps the tares [in the parable of the wheat and the tares] are the bad in us, and the sower of the tares is Satan. He sowed them in something that was good: in Man as created by God in God’s own image. The bad in us was sown alongside the good things that God put in us. Satan did not create people – only God could do that. Satan’s only power was to sow seeds, not to create people. So he sowed bad traits – tares — in us, but he did not create us.

Don said this ties in with 1 Corinthians 3, where the works themselves are what are subject to the fire, rather than the person themselves.

Alice agreed that the deeds that we do – the tares — are what will be burnt out of us. Then we will be aglow in purity and love and will reflect God’s true original image in us. She added another thought: That as preachers, as churchgoers, etc., we try to clean up one another’s acts. Maybe, as Jesus said, we should leave it to God to deal with the tares in people. It’s not our job to clean up other people’s tares. We might cause more harm than good.

Harry thought Alice was onto something here. He recommended the movie “Lincoln” for the way it shows the real good and bad in people.

Lloyd thought there was obviously work that God had to do inside us – to purify us. The bible is filled with places that seek to make us whole. But we can’t ignore that there is a real division between those who will be saved and those who will be lost.

David said he still has an issue with the binary division of good and evil. The division works for Ultimate Good and Evil, perhaps, but in Matthew 25 the division is not so clear. What if you have food to spare but don’t stop to feed the suffering man because your are rushing home to see your dying child? The passage does not seem to acknowledge that there is a continuum of goodness and badness. This and similar passages seem to say you are either good or bad; there is no in-between. Alice’s theory helps explain the troubling notion of predestination which arises if you accept that humans are born either of the good seed of Woman or the bad seed of the Serpent. In Alice’s theory, the bad seed does not produce a person, it produces bad traits that can be attenuated inside us by the inner light. That theory allows us to address good and evil on the continuum that it really is. It allows that we can strive to be a little bit better every day. The God of Jesus is capable of judging each of us on the basis of the individual circumstances each of us is in – our dying child stops us from helping the poor man. So the part of Matthew 25 that says try to help your fellow man sounds right, but the part that threatens hell if you don’t does not sound as though it comes from God.

Don noted that sometimes we don’t have the resources to be able to help our fellow man; that we can’t be expected to be the good Samaritan under all circumstances. Sometimes we need a good Samaritan ourselves.

Jay agreed that it Good and Evil are not binary and that judgment is based on god’s understanding of every individual. But God does ask us to stretch – that’s what the Good Samaritan did. And the ability to stretch grows as we mature.

Lloyd thought that we tend to focus on the part of the passage that talks about what the bad people did not do. They did not feed, they didn’t clothe, they didn’t visit in prison, etc. But at the very heart of sin is selfishness, and it is what they did do – hoarding the Grace that God gave them – that is the real darkness.

Alice liked the part in John that talks about people preferring darkness to light.

Harry noted that darkness is easier to embrace than light.

Emma pointed out that Thanksgiving Day, is supposed to be a day of thankfulness. But instead of spending all our time on that task, we rush to the store instead and start shoving people aside to get what we want. We are selfish hypocrites.

Don: That is darkness. Perhaps that’s why we call it Black Friday!

Odessa (?) expressed her gratitude that this study group helps her become a better person. Don responded that it was mutual — by attending these meetings, we help one another.

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* Hebrew “matza” – finds, seeks, stumbles across, happens upon, meets, discovers, catches, locates, overtakes, or is handed.