Just thinking

So I'm just thinking about things.

I think these posts are going to continue to be intermittent at best. I'm no daily blogger anymore.

I think when Jesus says "Do not judge," that's what he means.

Did you ever notice this? When Jesus challenges the church, church people like to pretend he's challenging everybody else.

Jesus says to church people, "Do not judge," and church people turn around and say, "Look at those people in the world, will you? Always judging, judging, but they don't want to admit it. They just won't listen to Jesus!"

In fact, I think that when church people start talking about "the world," it's pretty much a sure thing that  you're in for a whole raft of tired truisms intended to get everybody shaking their heads in agreement.

Jesus says that when you call someone a fool you've committed a sin worthy of hell. The idea here, I think, is to challenge our notion of what constitutes a truly serious sin. What we think is, if the recipient of that label really is a fool, he deserves the insult. We're just being honest, calling a spade a spade. But Jesus doesn't indicate exceptions to this rule. It even includes, I think, calling the president a fool . . . or any other choice insults you may be prone to hurling at our elected officials.

I think that any time we find ourselves trying to define exceptions to some plainly stated command of Jesus, looking for nuance, special cases, we're drifting away from the plainly challenging intent of the Jesus' words. He says, "Don't judge." We say, yes but . . .

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking.