Does not judging mean I have to tolerate abuse or evil behavior against me? The perps would like us to think so. Abusers try to pervert the whole “don’t judge” principle to their unholy advantage. So let’s get this sorted out and bring some balance here.

Judging, accountability, and our emotions are all totally independent things. Our society, and even the church, constantly gets these confused. You can forgive someone and hence not be judging them, while at the same time holding them accountable for their behavior, while at the same time still being very angry and hurt. If their behavior was criminal, you can prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law while completely forgiving them.

We should always hold abusers and criminals accountable for their behavior, for two main reasons:

• To protect others from being victimized like we were.
• So (hopefully) the person, when confronted with their sin, repents and turns to the Lord who sets them free from it, healing them from the pain in their lives that made them vulnerable to that sin and deception in the first place.

Working through our emotions over the matter is totally separate from whether we hold the other person accountable or not. If the sin against us was grievous, we may need to walk our emotions through the stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance). Get Christian counseling, inner healing, deliverance, probably all of the above, whatever help you need to work through it. It’s normal to need help to work through the emotions in a healthy way. An excellent plan is to work with both a Christian counselor and your Pastor.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending it never happened and or not holding the person accountable. It means releasing them from owing us anything for it. Because we realize they are not the evil they did to us. We can still set healthy boundaries as long as our heart is right – not to punish them but either to (1) keep ourselves safe, or (2) hold them accountable (for example, if we have an authority-to-subordinate relationship to them like parent-child or employer-employee).

Judging and forgiving are not activities centered in our emotions, but in our will. They have nothing to do with how we feel about the person who hurt us. They have everything to do with what we choose to believe about that person. They have everything to do with what we declare about that person.

So what do we declare about the person who wronged us? Are they the evil they did to us? That’s judging. Or can we declare that they are not the evil they did to us? That’s forgiveness. It really is that simple (but it’s not easy).

Mercy toward others triumphs over the judgement we deserve.

So what do you think about all this? Are you trying to sort out forgiveness versus accountability? It took me a while to sort this out in my own life, and I have to keep going back to it. We’d love to hear your story. If this resonates with you, or challenges you, please leave us a comment or shoot us an email (click the “Contact Us” button on the menu bar).

What does “don’t judge or you’ll be judged” mean? (Matthew 7:1) It means we will be judged in the same way that we judge others. This is an example of sowing and reaping that we talked about in the last post. And this is really cool, because we can set ourselves up for blessing (or the opposite – it’s our choice).

Judging and forgiving are complete opposites. When someone does evil against us, we are either doing one or the other. This relationship law goes far beyond the evil done to us. Because unfortunately, our judging often goes far beyond the evil done to us.

We judge things we don’t like, even though the person isn’t doing anything to us. We sometimes make our personal preferences into idols, and then our self-righteousness makes them doctrine to impose on others. At that point, we’ve become Pharisees, who made the Traditions of the Elders equal to the Law of Moses (Matthew 15:1-6).

Churches have split over the style of music or the color of the carpet. Ever condemn a style of music you didn’t like? If the words are sinful, then the words are certainly wrong, but not the style. The style, the instrumental music itself, is ok even if we don’t personally like it.

So if it’s something that doesn’t affect us, if it isn’t a black ‘n’ white contradiction to the Word of God, and if it isn’t self-destructive behavior, we’re better off dropping it. It’s probably just our personal preference. And we’ll receive the same grace from God we give the other person (or not).

Mercy triumphs over judgment.

We’d love to hear your story of mercy and judgement. Please leave a comment or shoot us an email.

Honor is the currency of the Kingdom of God. “Honor your father and mother … that it may go well with you” (Deuteronomy 5:16) goes way beyond honoring your father and mother. It applies to authority in every area of our life – our work, our school, our church, everything.

So how do you handle a difficult boss? A difficult professor? Honor them. The authorities in our life have been put there by God for our good, whether they realize it or not. God will bless us in that situation based on our own actions, not based on good the authority figure was at being an authority. God holds them accountable for that.

God will hold them accountable for whether or not they were a good authority figure. God will hold us accountable for whether we honored them or not – regardless of whether or not they were a good authority figure.

So if you have a difficult boss or teacher, ask the Holy Spirit how you can honor them (in a godly way) in which they will feel honored. That’s a prayer the Holy Spirit will always answer. Then if you make it your life-style to honor that authority figure by following the Holy Spirit’s prompting, God will make sure it goes well with you in that area of life, whether the difficult authority person does or not.

Have you tried this? Did it work for you? What was your experience? Please tell us in the comments. If you’d like to tell us about on on-going difficult situation, feel free to shoot us an email (click “Contact Us”). We’d love to hear from you and pray with you.

Believe it or not, relationships are like physics. There are certain laws God’s woven into the fabric of the universe, certain principles at work whether we realize it or not, whether we believe in them or not.

Gravity can be a tremendous blessing or a terrible curse. If you jump off your house, you’ll find it’s a curse that brings you pain and a sudden stop. But if used correctly, like an airplane does, it can be a tremendous blessing, allowing us to travel huge distances in relatively little time. And gravity is always operating, whether we decide to believe in it or not.

God’s laws of relationships are the same way. He set them up to bring us tremendous blessing, but if we attempt to disregard them, they will bring us terrible pain. Here are the four basic laws of relationships:

1) Honor your parents (Deuteronomy 5:16 and Ephesians 6:2). This one is so important, it made the Ten Commandments. The currency in the Kingdom of God is honoring. Basically, in whatever area you honor your parents in, it will go well with you. That’s a promise from God. And in whatever area you do not honor your parents in, it will not go well with you.

2) You reap what you sow (Galatians 6:7). Even the secular world has figured this one out. Ever heard the phrase, “what goes around, comes around”? You can get whatever you want from relationships. Give to the other what you want, and the byproduct is it’ll come back to you.

3) Don’t judge or you’ll be judged (Matthew 7:1). This is talking about judging people, not actions. We get into trouble when we judge another person instead of (or in addition to) their actions. The other person is not the evil they did to us.

4) We become what we judge (Romans 2:1). When we judge another person, we condemn ourselves to do the same thing. Ever say, “I’ll never be like my parents and do that.” Guess what happens? We find ourselves doing the exact same thing, because we judged them for doing it.

We’ll talk about each of these in more detail in the next several posts. But what do you think? Do you have any doubts about any of these? (#4 was originally hard for me to accept.) Or have you seen these in operation? Tell us in the comments. And if you think this post would help somebody else, please share it.