It seems to me that the harder things get in our culture, the more prone we fallen humans are to make judgments about all kinds of things. Perhaps the corrosion and undoing of our systems, at least in the Western culture, is revealing how little control we have over our lives; and being creatures who desperately need to be in control, we are angered by the fact that we aren't in control. And our anger expresses itself in judgment of whoever and whatever we think might be getting in the way. In present days, this is manifesting itself in the political arena in a dramatic way.
There is a place for correct judging but life-giving judgment is only possible in Jesus. The Scripture says prophetically of Him: "He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth..." (Isaiah 11:3,4)
Jesus said of Himself more than once when speaking of His dependence on the Father: "I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me." (John 5:30)
We can expect that those who are not in Jesus will engage in destructive judgments. My concern is for the people of God because we can be easily sucked into the spirit of the age if we are not alert and awake. We can quickly descend from our place of spiritual authority in Jesus into making judgments about political leaders merely by "what our eyes see and what our ears hear". When we do this, we lose our ability to speak prophetically into situations because we are now participating in the unfruitful ways of the world and are no longer "set apart" as those who are to manifest the values of a Kingdom that are utterly different from those of this world's kingdoms.
In order to judge and discern in a life-giving way, we must be in continual dependence on the Lord and alert to the spirit of the age. We must live out of the Tree of Life as our Source, rather than the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. At times the external fruit or action coming from these two trees can be so similar that they are easily confused, but at the heart, they are radically different.
Next week I'll share a little more on this theme. God bless you with His grace and peace in the Lord Jesus!
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