Judgement & Gossip

It’s a Cruel World

The Church is not a place of perfection – not even close. When there are so many splits and schisms, when there are so many different interpretations of God’s Word, when there is so much intolerance for the views and feelings of others, how can we even begin to expect to win souls to Christianity? Yet in all of this, the church in general has two besetting sins – and those two beget a third.

Firstly judgementalism is the bane of any pastors life – and many pastors are judgemental themselves. One great human trait is our propensity for putting things in compartments. We like to know where everything belongs – everything in order and order in everything. The problem starts when we very first meet someone and we form ‘first impressions’. Did you know that, in business, a salesman is judged in the first seven SECONDS of his first meeting? Amazing isn’t it? We decide in just seven second whether or not we like this person, and whether or not we want to ‘buy’ anything from them. So it is in churches. Whenever a newcomer arrives, whoever meets them forms an opinion and a judgement, and mentally compartmentalises the new one.

Oh the psychology in all of this is just amazing. We consciously or sub-consciously judge everything and everyone who comes across our path and that judgement decides everything about the treatment we mete out to the person concerned. Such judgementalism in the church causes strife, grumbling, fierce battles and even splits and schisms. There can be no justice when people have already formed their judgements. This is why God’s Word says in Matthew 7:1-5 “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

I, for one, do not wish to bring judgement upon myself in this way. Yet I still judge, even when I try really hard not to, and my own mission statement is to ‘minister in mercy and not judgement – even though judgement may be deserved’. The main trouble I see with judgement in the church is that there is so little love in it; so little mercy; so little forgiveness. Just harsh judgement and condemnation.

Secondly, we have the terrible sin of gossip, which in itself, is a mixture of judgementalism, pride, arrogance, and jealousy. Gossip has ruined more careers, more ministries, more marriages, and more churches than we can possibly imagine. James 3:5-10 says this “Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind. But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so.”

You would think, would you not, that judgementalism and gossip were enough to sink the church where she stands? Yet there is another begotten sin that hangs like a millstone around the neck of the church. That is the lack of love and concern for each other that flies in the face of Jesus instruction to “love your neighbour as yourself.”

Need I say any more? Brothers and sisters, I beg you to stop judging, to have nothing to do with gossip, and to just love one another – warts and all – just as Jesus commanded us to do. Then perhaps we will present a better future to a cruel cruel world where judgement and gossip are the building blocks and where the capstone is self. We need to build on building blocks of love, on forgiveness, and have Jesus as our capstone.