Prejudice and Judging

Now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions. (Romans 14:1)

For about the past week, every day I have been reading over and around this verse and chapter trying to get a sense of the context and the general gist of what Paul is trying to convey in this passage. It looks to me like many of these verses are in great danger of being misunderstood and misapplied if the context and main purpose of the text is overlooked, which seems to be often the case with many of these verses. So I want to be careful not to bring an agenda to my study and have it color the conclusions that I may find here as I often see others doing, because I want to hear clearly the messages that God has for me without any unnecessary interference.

One thing that seems very clear to me so far is that this chapter is very much about judging. And judging is certainly one of the most misunderstood words and concepts in the world that there is. As I mentioned before, I am currently unpacking a series of very insightful teachings by Jim Wilder and taking meticulous notes on them for my own study about this very issue. It has opened my eyes very much to the issue of true and counterfeit judgment and I feel that God has been leading me into this crucial study for a number of months now, long before I knew I would be studying this in Romans 14. What I am learning and being convicted of in this ongoing study is both very exciting and alarming as I begin to catch a glimpse of reality from God's perspective instead of the way I am used to seeing things through worldly perceptions. What I am learning is also crucial to having the right perspective especially in the intense times that we are about to experience as the history of this world comes to a climax.

One thing that comes to my thoughts this morning as I meditate on these verses is the word “prejudice”. Years ago I was startled to realize that the real meaning of this word is easily seen by simply taking it apart. It means to pre-judge. Now I suspect that in at least 99% of the applications in which it is used it is referring to the kind of judgment that is the counterfeit and not the true. And I believe that there is a very great deal more prejudice in all of our hearts than we can realize unless it is exposed by the light of the true Spirit of Judgment otherwise known as the Advocate. He is the agent that both brings the true kind of judgment into our hearts and is also the necessary empowerment for anyone on earth to be able to exercise the true type of judgment.

This means, however, that in essence all earthly judgment is tainted with prejudice. Prejudice implies imposing our own opinions, context, emotions and suppositions onto the actions and words of others and deciding what their motives are based on our own opinions. Prejudice is the same thing that Jesus was talking about when He commanded us to not judge others and what Paul is talking about in this chapter as well. False judgment fails to take into account that only God can read the heart and therefore only God has the ability to judge properly. There is much more along this line that needs to be understood but that I will have to unpack later.

This first verse of chapter 14 is really a summary for all the rest of the chapter. From this point on Paul tries to explain more explicitly what he means by this first statement of truth. Another important aspect that I see in this verse is the stark contrast between accepting a brother in the faith and prejudice which involves some degree or other the element of condemnation.

God, His Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit never engage in the false kind of judgment called condemnation. Jesus made that explicitly clear especially in the writings of John. Jesus declared that He did not come to condemn the world but to save it. He also pointed out that condemnation is something that happens naturally inside a person's heart when they are not in tune with the Spirit of God or aligned with the principles of reality as described in God's laws. Condemnation and counterfeit judgment are pretty much synonymous as far as I am able to tell from my study over the years.

But while I may think I am making great progress on avoiding condemnation of others, it is a poison that is extremely subtle and deceptive that can operate undetected like a computer virus until its ill effects suddenly become tragically exposed. It seems even more pernicious and repulsive when it shows up in the life of a professing believer in God, but unfortunately those are the people most targeted by Satan to indulge in that sort of thing. This is because Satan has such intense hatred of God that he wants to discredit His reputation by distorting the witness of those claiming to be His representatives on earth. In so doing he hopes to repel anyone and everyone from desiring to come closer to God who longs to restore and save them to intimacy with His own heart, not condemn them.

One of the prejudices that almost always shows up in the study of Romans 14 is the focus that is put on the external examples that Paul uses as illustrations for what he is trying to get across. Too many people get so fixated on the details of the examples and jump to conclusions that favor what they want to believe that they often miss the main point of this whole passage and end up indulging in the very thing Paul warns against here. I am very susceptible to the same weakness and I pray that God will guide me and cleanse my heart and mind of all prejudices so that I can be free to receive the real truths that will transform my life and align me with the truth as it is in Jesus about what God is like.

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