August 26
Scripture focus: I wrote you in my earlier letter that you shouldn't make yourselves at home among the sexually promiscuous. I didn't mean that you should have nothing at all to do with outsiders of that sort. Or with crooks, whether blue or white-collar. Or with spiritual phonies, for that matter. You'd have to leave the world entirely to do that! But I am saying that you shouldn't act as if everything is just fine when a friend who claims to be a Christian is promiscuous or crooked, is flip with God or rude to friends, gets drunk or becomes greedy and predatory. You can't just go along with this, treating it as acceptable behavior. I'm not responsible for what the outsiders do, but don't we have some responsibility for those within our community of believers? God decides on the outsiders, but we need to decide when our brothers and sisters are out of line and, if necessary, clean house. 1 Corinthians 5:9-13
In yesterday's devotional we learned about the fuzzy boundaries of compliant people. We discovered that the inability to say no to the bad often keeps us from recognizing evil. Today's scripture focus helps clarify the difference between recognizing evil and becoming a harsh, critical, judgmental person.
As God provides us with information about what it means to love him and others, we develop a repertoire of boundaries. I've learned that God cares about my sexual expression, he doesn't want me to steal, he wants me to tell the truth about myself, etc. He also tells me not to judge lest I be judged.
Without healthy boundaries, our desire to be spiritual and nonjudgmental might cause us to slip from one extreme to another – moving from judger to a one who has no judgment whatsoever.
There's a distinction made between being judgmental and using good judgment.
1 Corinthians reminds us that we are to choose wisely who we let into our "hut." We cannot ignore when someone claiming to be a believer acts in ways that are incongruent with that stated belief – especially when we discover that the person behaving this way is us!
Healthy boundaries demand that we clean house – making sure that our feelings, attitudes, and behaviors are congruent with one another. This will take up plenty of our time and energy, and probably won't leave us with the luxury of judging others.
Recommended reading: 1 Chronicles 7-9
2 comments:
I am finding that all the unhealthy judgemental parenting I absorbed as a child by being compliant are now starting to be seen for what they were - just plain wrong! I am in the process of speaking out and not allowing myself to absorb them when my mom speaks to me in those "less than" ways. But I also use it as an opportunity to come back with healthy statements that reflect how I might feel about things now. The hard part is not doing it in a judgemental way because I realize her generation absorbed bad things from the generation before. I hope to begin to break the generational "less than" mold in my family....without being judgemental.
"1 Corinthians reminds us that we are to choose wisely who we let into our "hut." We cannot ignore when someone claiming to be a believer acts in ways that are incongruent with that stated belief – especially when we discover that the person behaving this way is us!"
a lifetime ago, when i knew that the way i acted out my sexuality was seriously out of whack, i purchased and read "false intimacy" by dr. schaumberg, a christian psychologist. i recently dug it out again, and began to read all the passages i had underlined in my first reading.
at the end of the book i had written "are we going to continue to demand that He change the unlovable ones around us, or are we going to finally love the unlovable ones around us exactly as they are-which is how He loved us and began to change us." back then i thought that a large portion of those around me were the unlovable ones, that i was definitely not one of 'those' because i 'knew the truth' and therefore felt 'justified' in my rage, cursing, threatening, hammering and bludgeoning and lashing out at people with my bible. for pete's sake [smile], they needed to change. i refused to see that my whole life was 'incongruent' with my 'belief' that i was a christian. He has used so many in the north star hut to draw me out of darkness and into a growing sense of peace; to love me as i was, and help me to become a work in progress. Jesus is ALIVE!
A.'Nanny' Mouse
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