Truth and Judging

So the Pharisees said to Him, "You are testifying about Yourself; Your testimony is not true." Jesus answered and said to them, "Even if I testify about Myself, My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. You judge according to the flesh; I am not judging anyone." (John 8:13-15)

The Pharisees thought they had found another trap in which to catch Jesus in His own words.

If I alone testify about Myself, My testimony is not true. (John 5:31) Since their awareness of the Father was pretty much non-existent, they could not sense the testimony from Him corroborating the testimony of Jesus. They were so tuned to the wrong spirit that the testimony of God's Spirit could not register in their minds and hearts and all they could see was what they could perceive in the flesh.

Jesus also notes here that He is not judging anyone. He goes on to talk about what would happen even if He did judge, but it is important to perceive His use of this word and not allow our usual assumptions about judging to interfere with what He is seeking to convey to us. He was not saying that He never judged, He was simply saying that in that conversation He was not judging them though it appears that they must have been feeling judged.

If they were feeling judged it was likely because judgment is simply what occurs whenever light comes close and begins to expose what we don't want exposed inside of us. Jesus was not imposing judgment on them at this time, but if they were feeling judged it was because their own hearts were condemning them. Whenever we continue to increase our resistance against God as He tries to share more truth and light with us, our feelings of guilt and condemnation and judgment equally will increase. But this is not because God is imposing those feelings on us but is simply the natural results of our resistance.

The psychological and physical description of what is occurring in the brain when we feel guilt is rather interesting and informative. Basically guilt is when the left and the right sides of the brain cannot come into agreement about something. What we might call the head and the heart are feeling tension and conflict with each other over some issue, and that resulting tension is what we have labeled as guilt. It is a God-designed part of our makeup to warn us of danger just as our nervous system serves to alert us of problems by producing pain when some part of our anatomy is having serious problems.

God does not impose physical pain on us to punish us when we touch a hot stove, our body is already set up to take care of that alerting signal to our brain. In the same way, our conscience is provided to create guilt inside our brains whenever we are suffering malfunction in our spiritual life. Of course our conscience can also have problems of its own and needs to be educated and transformed along with the rest of our mental makeup, but it is the part of us designed by God to nudge us and prick us and cause us trouble when we are moving outside of our intended harmony with God.

When we suffer pain, whether it be physical or spiritual or emotional, we have choices of what to do in response to that pain. When we move into blaming someone else for our pain while refusing to accept responsibility for our dysfunction and our part of causing the pain, then we live in denial and deception which is what our fallen natures often lead us to do. Living in the blame game and refusing to humble ourselves and turn to God for correction and realignment is to induce pain of all sorts that will only increase as we continue to malfunction and resist the truth.

These Pharisees were exhibiting just such symptoms. Instead of accepting Jesus' words and allowing them to have their intended effect of correcting their skewed ideas about God and about religion, these men sought to resist every statement of Jesus and then tried to pin the responsibility of all their inner pain and resentment on making Him out to be the problem. They repeatedly tried to discredit Him, to blame Him, to make Him out as the one out of harmony with God while they viewed their own teachings and beliefs and rules as valid standards of measurement. Thus it was really they who were really trying to judge God, not the other way around.