Let me begin by sharing with you one of the “God moments” I’ve experienced in my life.

 This was from quite a few years ago. For context, I can’t tell this story without confessing that I had let someone down in a way that was hurtful to them. They had legitimately needed compassion from me and I had been frankly too self-absorbed to recognize and respond to that need.

When the reality of this came to my attention, it was upsetting to me. I could see the pain this person had gone through and my role in that. And I have this strong morality of doing right by others that I had not at all lived up to. I was filled with feelings of guilt and shame, as well as anger towards myself.       

When my daily prayer time came around, I was dreading it, avoiding it, I didn’t want to pray and didn’t know how. I was stewing in those feelings of guilt and shame and anger. And finally I just fell to my knees in agony and cried out to God: “I’m sorry! I’m so, so sorry!”

Then immediately – actually more than immediately, before the words had even passed my lips – I was hit with a wave of love. This wave of love rushed through me and surrounded me and embraced me and swept away all that guilt and shame and anger. I was cleansed of it.

The message I received was, “Don’t apologize to Me. Apologize to yourself.”  

This message wasn’t in words, it was a feeling, but definitely a feeling where I was being addressed by a Power outside of myself, it was an invitation into a tremendous ocean of Mercy:

“Give yourself the Mercy that I have already give to you.”

This was an astonishing and surprising gift. I felt blindsided by Divine Love. I’d never experienced anything like it, was not expecting it.

I feel like I got a taste of the universal embrace of God’s unconditional Love for all of us, simply as we are, as broken and beautiful beings who can care for each other and can hurt each other. What I experienced was that feelings of damning condemnation are not from God, but from ourselves and our limited and deluded perspectives. So, my feelings of guilt and shame were me adding insult to injury. And actually they were a way for me to stay further self-absorbed rather than opening with the heart of compassion. So, yes, I did need to apologize to myself rather than to God.

Now, did this mean that I didn’t need to apologize to the person whom I had let down?

Not at all.

I left this experience very clear about being accountable to them. A touch of Divine Mercy actually made a moral reconciliation more possible. Because it helped me to not be defensive or dismissive and dodge my responsibility, on the one hand, or over-dramatic and self-absorbed in wallowing in my guilt, on the other hand. God helped my heart to be more compassionate and mature in coming to terms with this person and what happened and the harm done. It helped keep it all honest and in proportion.

Jesus taught, “Be as compassionate as your Creator is. Don’t pass judgment, and you won’t be judged. Don’t condemn and you won’t be condemned. Forgive, and you’ll be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you, in full measure, overflowing. For the standard you apply will be the standard applied to you.” – Luke 6:36-38

In my experience, I can testify that what Jesus teaches about God is true:

God’s true nature is indeed compassionate towards us. That broke in on me when I was not expecting it. I was starting to grovel before a god of judgment only to discover the true God of Mercy.

This is a truth that can set us free.

Several people have shared with me beautifully about the tremendous liberation that comes when you experience relief from being judgmental towards oneself or others. May people have shared the relief that comes in discovering faith communities that are more merciful than judgmental.

This is a truth that is easily forgotten.

Even though I was given the experience I shared with you, to be honest, I still struggle with being judgmental towards myself and others. Spiritual growth is a process. This is also why we need holy mercy that embraces us as we are, rather than judging us against a standard of perfection. This is also why we need each other, community. We’re all in this together. We need to keep returning to the liberation truth of the Gospel, to let our lives be embraced and reshaped by God’s mercy. 

This is a truth that is easily misused.

“Judge not lest ye be judged” is not an excuse for bad behavior. It is not a bypass for injustice.

In my experience it does the opposite: it helps us to not be afraid to be accountable and to hold others accountable for the consequences of our choices and actions. Mercy gives us the maturity to be upright when it comes to moral failings.

I’ll say it again: “Judge not lest ye be judged” is not an excuse for bad behavior. It is not a bypass for injustice.

Jesus clearly didn’t use it that way. He was very skillful in holding people to account for how we treat the least of these, for how we are compassionate as our creator is, or not.

There an important difference between sound judgment and judgmental judgment. Sound judgment is about discerning whether things are safe or dangerous, right or wrong, trustworthy or untrustworthy. We need sound judgment for our physical survival, and for our mental and moral and social survival.

We can exercise sound judgment without the cutting edge of judgmental judgment.

Judgmental judgment is about damning condemning, it’s about making absolute statements about someone’s essential value as a person, usually in ways that makes oneself out to be superior. They’re scum. They don’t deserve the same rights as we do. They should suffer in ways we shouldn’t. And so forth.

We can make sound judgments about other people – and we need to – without damning them to hell, without treating them in ways we would not like to be treated.

If someone has violated trust and abused power, for example, we have a responsibility to not entrust them with more power. We can do that without tarring and feathering them.

Now, unfortunately, there seems to be a double standard in how Christians deploy Jesus’ teaching to “Judge not lest ye be judged.”

This is what I have observed in my lifetime among Christians. And I’m not alone.

There is too often a double standard in when someone gets told to “Judge not” and when they are allowed to go around judging and condemning and damning to their hearts’ content. From what I have observed it has to do with power.

Too often “Judge not” is used to protect people in power from being accountable for the consequences of their actions. But when someone who does not have much power is suffering under the heel of demeaning and dehumanizing condemnations, it’s unlikely you’ll hear the loudest voices pleading mercy.

Can I say this without being a judgmental hypocrite?

Dishing out harsh judgment is a form of suffering. Trying to dodge accountability is a form of suffering. The sweet Mercy that God offered to me is an experience I sincerely wish for everyone to have.

So please, whoever you are, where ever you are on life’s journey, may you know the truth of God’s Mercy, and may you let that Mercy set you free.