I just have a few thoughts… and I promise I’ll keep this short.

Judge Dredd

Judgment is a strange thing, although most people probably do not think so or even second guess “justice” and “judgment” at all. In fact, most people live their entire lives engulfed in a “legal system” because that is all they know. Growing up in America, we are very familiar with courts, judges, judgments and verdicts. You are either guilty or you are innocent. There is right and there is wrong, and you either broke the law or you did not. There is very little middle ground, good and evil are very black and white – and you have evildoers and good people. Lines are drawn, stereotypes and archetypes are created, and we live in that world view. We try and get rid of the bad people… the people who might harm us or others, the dangerous, the broken, the misunderstood.

Occasionally there is discussion about why laws are broken, why people make bad decisions or why they are bad people and what might have effected/caused this. Usually though, this is only the case for mentally unstable people or children/teenagers who we assume do not have the capacity to make sound judgments, therefor it is their parents fault for their actions or they are a product of their surroundings (poverty, ignorance/non-educated, abuse, etc). But perhaps, I would argue, we do not do this enough… make excuses that is. Maybe we are all a little mentally unstable – depends on who you ask, I suppose.

I would argue that for any and all actions, good or bad, committed by humans, there is a reason why they decided (if they even had the ability to decide, which is a whole nother post altogether) to do that action, and if we had infinite knowledge, as God does, we could pinpoint exactly the reason why someone did something, acted in such and such a way, or gave in to their emotions/passions/temptations, and there would be justification – wouldn’t there?

Think of it this way…I would argue that what some people think is good, could actually be bad. What appears moral to a majority, may actually be destructive/evil/bad in God’s perfectly wise/all knowing eyes… how can we know?

The Box Model

I was once taught that we live in a box, and all we know is this box. It is our world view. Every experience we have had in our life is a part of this box, or inside of this box, and we understand the world around us through this lens, or through these experiences, or inside of this box. This is my box: I am a white, male who has lived in California and Oregon, who has been to a few countries but not all, who only speaks one language, who has read a few books, who has listened to a very small percentage of all the music that has ever existed, who is heterosexual, married, and has two girls, who has allergies but has never needed glasses… you see where I am going? If you step back far enough, I have a very limited understanding of the world and all that is in it – in other words, I have no idea what is is like to be a teenage girl in china, living in poverty in the country-side, who only has a mother because her father died at an early age. I can barely even imagine what that would be like, and when I try to imagine it – I have to admit even in my imagination I am piecing together things I know – so my imagination falls short of what it is actually like to live in china, speak chinese, be a female, etc. On the other hand, I have a limited understanding of what it is like to be my wife, someone who I share a lot of similarities with, but who – if you looked at our lives thus far, have gone through very different experiences and are learning that we look at the same things very differently for that very reason.

I say all this to raise the question…. how can I judge what I don’t understand? How can I understand what I have not experienced in some way? How can I really know who is guilty, and why?

Will there be a judgment day?

I fully believe in a judgment day, that we will all stand before God, and he will be judge. But in the presence of an all-knowing God, who sees all and understands all then God will judge us perfectly, and what I believe, is that in perfect judgment, there is perfect justification. Perhaps justification is the wrong word. I like, perfect understanding, more. Because when you understand WHY someone did something, or what may have caused them to act in such a way, there is more room for forgiveness. If you stand back far enough, you will see that we are sheep, we are tiny little beings who live so large and think we know so much, but what we don’t understand is how much we don’t understand, and we start to think we can blame people for their actions – when in reality, we are ALL sinners, we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, we are ALL in the same boat, we all don’t understand what we do or why we do it (as Jesus so graciously pointed out on the cross – “forgive them, for the know not what they do”) and one day we will see that God has saved us all… God is saving us all… God is understanding our shortcomings, our evilness, our selfishness, our greed and our lust, our addictions and inabilities… God can be blamed for all those things, I mean, he made us, right? I mean, that is the story of Jesus, is it not? He took upon himself, the sins of us all…he took the blame. He’s big enough for that, he get’s it, he sees the big picture, the grand scheme. The whole free will thing… in order to be free, we had to be able to choose… but choice is a bit of an illusion, because although in each decision we can decide whether to go left or go right or not go anywhere at all… our decision is influenced in invisible, hidden, unknowable ways we will never see or comprehend, but in which God fully sees the strings attached to each decision and is able to judge based on the merit of those strings, based on our experiences and the cards that have been dealt to us.

So a few words might be rolling around in your mouth right now… let me tackle two things here: Predestination and Relativism.

PREDESTINATION

I don’t think this means things are predestined, or we don’t have any free will or choice. Hmm… no. There is a difference between planned and calculated. In other words, did God intend when he created the world for one day there to be a man named Hitler who would kill millions of God’s chosen people? No way. But in God’s chaotic / perfect yet flawed creation, there is the formula for things like that to happen… it can be calculated that it would happen, and so… I blame God. But I think God blames God too… hence, the story of Jesus, paying the price for all this sin stuff… taking it upon himself, and setting us free from the guilt and the judgment while at the same time showing us a better way to live then just in the perpetual cycle of sin, and all the while, he is forgiving, healing, restoring, renewing, saying “I understand.  My yoke (my way, my teachings) are easy.  Come and rest.  It’s ok.  We’re all fucked up.”

RELATIVISM

Is this all relativism? Sure… it’s all relative – if we witness a father hitting his child, is that wrong? evil? I think it is… no matter what the child has done, a father/parent should NEVER hit their child. But to some other people, they do not see it that way. They see this as a loving way to discipline their child, to show disapproval and consequence. In fact, in their “heart” (wherever that is) they may have perfectly justifiable love pushing them to do so… so who is right? Me or them? I think in the sense of “right” and “wrong” – I am right. In light of what I know, God is leading us to the “Kingdom of God” – a place of peace and forgiveness, where love trumps all forms of violence – so not hitting your child is how God wants us to live, in my opinion. But I still think that God would not judge this person any different then he would judge me – because the father that hits their child out of love, well that’s all he knows. in his box world, love = tough love. He would have a hard time seeing it any other way, if that’s what he learned from his father, and his friends, and his neighbors, and his countrymen.  And so, even if the father did it out of laziness, bitterness, frustration and anger… what if he knows no way out, no alternative?  Why if he’s a slave to his emotions, his anger – and he knows he’s wrong but he hits his child anyway?  What if he IS guilty?

What would be truly evil, is a God that knows EVERYTHING, sees EVERYTHING – every detail, every event, every word, every story – and yet judges a person anyway knowing that it’s not their fault, but based on events and “facts”, labels them guilty. Did the guy who killed his wife choose to pull the trigger? In most cases yes, and everything I am saying here does not take away from the fact that this IS evil, and wrong, and awful and terrible and all that… but, in the sense of judgment, heaven and hell and all that, I think you have to step back… keep stepping back… further… and look at how pathetic we all are?  We are all out of control… we are all one car accident away from losing control… we are so fragile… we are so broken.

I could be wrong…

I know that. I probably am. But this is where I am at and the conclusions I have come to.  It could be heresy… probably is.  Sorry.

Convince me otherwise. Do you have a different version of the story? I’d love to hear it. This is not a castle I have built and will defend it to the death… I am looking at fractals (again, look it up ^_^) and trying to understand what I see…how it all could be. I’m trying to paint a picture but I am not much of an artist, so add your strokes… fill in the gaps… help me see what I am missing. Seriously. If you disagree… I’d love to know why. If you’ve read this far, you obviously care about what I just said… so say something. Even if it’s just, “Jim, you’re wrong.” fine. I’d love to not live in a silent room with me shouting at the walls waiting for a response… help me out and fill this void.

Apology

Ok… in no way was that short, I apologize.  Thank you for reading.