Our Own Judgement

 We are blind and limited and fallible. I don't care how old or wise or experienced or "enlightened" you are, you are still blind and still limited. As someone who is still working through my own ideas of self-worth and earning love and acceptance, those sentences are just as much for me as for anyone. 

He has given us everything we need to live our life by so that we don't have to use our own understanding, and we have taken it as a suggestion, as a guideline that we get to change based on our feelings, using our own judgement. 

This new wave of Christianity that touts blind love and allowance (because it isn't just acceptance, it is allowance. Acceptance is the opposite of rejection. Jesus accepted. Allowance is the opposite of restraint. It is fleshy and self-serving. Paul warned us against it.) is just as damaging as the Christianity that touted exclusivity based on arbitrary earthly measures. 

We condemn legalism while remaining blind to the other side of the coin. 

Legalism is just one extreme on the scale of using our own judgements and feelings, apart from God. We use our best judgements and are usually so well intentioned, but it is still by our own judgement. Instead of evaluating how we feel about something, our first response should be "What does the Bible say about it?"

Christianity is not just a philosophy to keep us occupied with good things while we're here. It is not a worldview to better ourselves or be the best person we can be. It is not about feeling the most loving, feeling like we're measuring up by our own standards of goodness or kindness. It is not a feel good system of principles. It is not a self-help or self-betterment program. It is life and death in it's most literal sense. There is nothing metaphorical about it. 

God makes it very clear that He is the only one worthy to judge, and He has judged, and He made it available to us, He wrote it down so we didn't have to guess, yet we still look the other way and try to "reinterpret". 

We are so blind, and we use our own blindness as a yardstick and think we see. God help us.