Anyone with a Facebook account has probably seen the following quote at some point, most likely in meme form, along with a tagline from the poster that reads, “YES!”, or “Exactly!”, or “Why can’t Christians get this?”:
Buddha wasn’t a Buddhist. Jesus wasn’t a Christian. Mohammad wasn’t a Muslim. They were teachers who taught love. Love was their religion.
It’s a nice sentiment, but quotes like these tend to grind my gears pretty hard, and not because of their over-simplification of religion, or their often abrasive logical fallacies (the word Muslim translates to “one who submits to God”; if Mohammad weren’t a Muslim, he’d be an infidel of his own religion).
What kills me with this quote, and all others like it, is the use — or rather abuse — of the word love.
As Christians, we get it thrown in our face all the time. Whenever we speak out against sin, we’re quickly reminded that Jesus was all about love and acceptance, and once said not to judge people, and that’s pretty much it. The rest of the Gospels are apparently just filler material.
I won’t argue that Jesus was indeed all about love, and I take to heart his command, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” (Matthew 7:1) Nevertheless, the context of love in the quote above has very little to do with the love that Christ brought to this world.
What we have instead is the secular notion of love, an incoherent label that embraces uncritical acceptance, endorsement, and even celebration of another person’s sins. “Love”, in this sense, is bound by the flesh and determined by the feelings of the individual. This couldn’t be further from what Jesus taught.
So, in the words of 90’s Eurodance sensation Haddaway: what is love?
We all know that there are different types of love. We love our spouse in a different way than we love our children, which in turn is a different way than we love our siblings. However, all these types share one common, binding factor; that is, to love someone means to will good for them.
Good, in this sense, is the objective good that flows from God, His will, and His word. In other words, to love someone means to will the good of God in that person’s life. Your love for another is rooted in the desire for them to become close to God, and to share in salvation through Christ and His Church.
We can see this love all throughout the Gospels, on full display by none other than Jesus himself. When He came to establish the New Covenant, He brought with him the message that God loves all of us; despite our sins, salvation is for everyone, including the prostitute, the Samaritan, the murderer, the thief, the tax collector, and the adulterer (John 3:16). The only criterion for us to reap the benefits of this love is to turn from sin and follow Him (Matthew 16:24; cf. Romans 13:12-14). See, true love calls for a transformation. It encourages us to rise to something greater.
We do not judge others when we love them; we judge because we become blinded by pride. We judge because we forget that we too are sinners (Romans 3:23), and desperately need the love of others to help us on the path to salvation. Judgment seeks to create a barrier between a person and God. Love seeks to guide someone to God.
When Christ saved the adulterous woman from being stoned to death, he did not say to her, “I love you, so feel free to keep cheating on your husband.” Instead he told her, “Go, and do not sin again.” (John 8:11)
Of course, this is not the case in the secular notion of love. To call someone away from sin is to judge them or to “hate” them. There is no room for Christ’s love here. With secular love, personal feelings, opinions, and desires are the highest morality, the only true good. The self becomes god, and I cannot think of a single thing that stands more in opposition to Christ than this.
So, as we enter into the season of Advent, and wait anxiously for the celebration of Christ’s arrival to this world, let us take the time to discern the love that Christ has for us, the very same love that bore him to the Blessed Virgin Mary, which calls us away from sin and the desires of the flesh, and leads us to eternal life.
21 thoughts on “Love and Judgment”
Pingback: Pastoral Sharings: "Third Sunday of Advent" | St. John
Pingback: The Holy Eucharist, Great Cartoon Explains - BigPulpit.com
Haha MuhamMad was a teacher of love which is why he ordered an army of Arabs to attack & destroy an enemy tribe. Muhammad loves infidels which is why he asks his followers to conquer them & kill them if necessary. Don’t you see? The Islamic State (ISIS) is all about spreading love with beheadings. The Islamic Republic of Iran is also all about love with nuclear bombs against infidels & Jews. Boko Haram & the Muslim Brotherhood are all about love by attacking innocent Christians & kidnapping/raping women & girls. (Sarcasm off.) Man, people who want others to think all religions are the same are so dangerously ignorant & wrong. They’re just making it easier for bloody Islam to gain more converts. Islam is a religion which wreaks havoc everywhere- India & Indonesia to Yemen & Africa, etc. Islam hates Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikkhs, Yasedi, & others.
I think you nailed it on defining Christian love and how it differs from secular love is certain cases. The problem people have with being judged by Christians is that they use a different measuring stick on which to base their judgements. It is like measuring in inches, feet, yards and miles when the rest of the world goes by the metric system.
If you are going to judge someone, use the standards of the society in which the act is committed, not your religious morality and scruples.
When you go to an NFL game on a Sunday, you don’t “judge” the people for not keeping holy the Lord’s day because society in this country accepts football on Sundays. Some of society however might not accept that an employer won’t give an Orthodox Jew Saturday off or a Christian fundementalist Sunday off. Now you can judge and decide what you think should be the general societal rule.
No society is completely free to choose any behavior they desire. All actions have consequences, and some consequences are bad, and some are good. It is bad when a society withholds gratitude to their Creator and fails to honor Him in formal worship (although this has never stopped a Sunday afternoon football game, to my knowledge, and I am speaking of sports in the most Catholic of nations in medieval times). The consequence of that is you get a whole lot of little gods who take it into their heads to express their displeasure with their subjects with a semiautomatic rifle. It is bad when a society substitutes physical lust for marriage, because the birth rate always falls, as it is falling right now in this historic period of sex socialism. You may have bought the fake science of the sixties, that the earth has got to get rid of those pesky humans, but it does not bear demographic examination. No, Bill, everything has consequences, everything follows a plan, birds aren’t free of the chains of the skyways (old Bob Dylan observation) and neither are we. That freedom refrain is a lie.
“No society is completely free to choose any behavior they desire. All actions have consequences, and some consequences are bad, and some are good.”
Societies are shaped by natural selection. Actions that benefit society usually are accepted and incorporated while those that don’t aren’t. It’s all about consequences. Good consequences usually gives those actions a competitive edge over those that bring about bad consequence. At least so long as religious beliefs skew the results.
“No society is completely free to choose any behavior they desire. All actions have consequences, and some consequences are bad, and some are good.” Society does not choose anything, society is a fabrication…people choose and the result of choice is what we refer to as karma.
It’s off the point. Whether or not it’s individuals, which of course it is, or the aggregate result, which we call society and society’s “karma,” individual actions have effects on everybody, and some are very bad effects, and we have the obligation to control some of those behaviors. Completely innocent people (altho there aren’t so many of those) are often hurt by the actions of others.
The actions of any person in society have “bad effects” on others only to the extent that we individually allow those effects to enter our personal lives and space. Our duty as humans is to live a good and worthy life ourselves; we have no obligation or right to control “some” behaviors of others and having checked your blog I am aware of the behaviors you feel need control by white lily Catholics. The U.S. is not a religious state; it is government established by the will of the people.
I agree. Catholics have no right or obligation to control the lives of others. Living a good and worthy life ourselves should be our prime concern.
Control, absolutely not. However we do have an obligation and duty to evangelize and try to bring people to our side of the fence.
I would say that judging other people is not going to influence them to want to join you. It is the biggest turnoff and the number one reason why some people hate the Church.
” Good fences make good neighbors.” – Robert Frost
I like this post. I wish Pope Francis and Emeritus Benedict would both read it.
Because you think they’d like it, or because you think they need to?
Oh, bless your heart, I left you hanging, with that comment.Because they need to read it. Because I think since the Council our Holy Mother Church has been temporarily duped into using the modern definition of love–and of charity, a more formal term, especially and most dangerously, compared with Francis’ simple statements, in Benedict’s Caritas in Veritate, simply because it uses incredibly dense language to make the same (empty) point. It is reflected also in his ruling as Prefect, the only ‘paragraph’ left in place after the Synod, that Catholics were not permitted under pain of sin to discriminate against homosexuals, which of course has led to everything else, since you can’t even express even your dismay, let alone pass laws protecting Catholics right not to participate in sin (and protect homosexuals too from the eventual consequences of their folly), without discriminating. Almost the entire hierarchy of the Church apparently has got ‘welcoming’ (as at Christmas dinner) mixed up with allowing to receive Our Lord while in the state of sin. We’ve gotten mere manners mixed up with morals. This is the crux of it. No one seems to understand anymore that sin has effects, has consequences. Homosexual actions and all promiscuity is bad for your health. Contraception (and sterile sex in general) is bad for society (witness the disappeared ‘markets’). Lying is bad for business. All sin leads to personal consequences, too, not only after death but right away. Abortion causes breast cancer. If our moral teachings did not jive with natural law, we’d be up a creek–but they do, and it is kinder to tell a sinner the truth about it, but easier to flatter them, and somehow that’s gotten lost, even reversed. Your post tries to find it. I’m so grateful.
” Because I think since the Council our Holy Mother Church has been temporarily duped into using the modern definition of love–”
Don’t hold your breath Lily, thank God it’s here to stay.
Since our Church is not a democracy, the popularity of Low-intensity Catholicism is not the issue. Among theologians, the Synod was a pretty good reflection of their willingness to reject that smarmy conciliar definition of ‘welcoming.’ Very many have come around to understanding the linguistic trickery and actual political machinations associated with Vatican II, and Francis/Kasper stand to move the rest. I wonder what it is you like so much about the Council. Has it given you some perceived freedom to do something you would not have done? Surely it’s not the ‘fresh air.’ All that guitar music and evangelical hand waving is just so played.
Low intensity Catholicism is what gave you a 45 min mass in English
and decreed that even atheists can be saved. The ‘fresh air’ put a statue of Buddha on the altar at Assisi and ushered in an air of credibility for Catholicism that the next generation will use to relate their faith – cast their nets – to a world of theological diversity that now has the respect it deserves. Won’t be 200 years before some future pope moved by the Spirit takes purgatory by the horns and explains that reincarnation is
a more viable translation of the gospels. To paraphrase Eric.Sevareid “Better to trust ( a church that ) is frequently in error than the one who is never in doubt.
“Low intensity Catholicism is what gave you a 45 min mass in English
and decreed that even atheists can be saved.”
And that is a problem why?
Get a grip, Bill, White Lilly thinks so.