But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. 1 Corinthians 11:31
Every morning, as I left our old house to go to the gym, I hit the stoplight just in front of McDonalds. As I saw the cars going through the drive-through at 5:45AM, I always became a little judgmental. I’m on my way to work out and you’re stuffing yourself with a McFatty Breakfast Sandwich. In that moment, I felt superior about my life choices, and I condescended to those whom I felt weren’t making healthy life choices. Never mind that I knew nothing about those people and never mind that 15 hours later, I’d probably be in the kitchen, stuffing myself with chocolate chips and peanut butter. In that moment, I was going to the gym and thus, I had the right to be judgmental.
Most of us are really good at recognizing the poor choices of those around us. Most of us however are terribly deficient at applying that same discernment to our own lives. When someone around us is making poor decisions, we’re all over it. We may or may not say something, but we can see it. When it’s us making the poor decisions though, we justify it so much that we remain blind to our own destructive behavior. It’s different when I do it. I have my reasons.
In today’s passage, Paul chastised the Corinthians for how they ate when they came together for the Lord’s Supper. They were supposed to look to Christ, remembering his sacrificial death, but instead, they looked to their own appetites. In doing so, they sinned and thus, exposed themselves to God’s painful discipline. Paul said that if they would just choose to be introspective, judging themselves, they could easily avoid such misery.
This is the McDonalds lesson for me. When I sit there at the stop light, judging those in the drive-through, I must turn that judgment towards myself. I must realize that not only do I make similar unhealthy life choices, but in judging, I’m also hypocritical, condescending, and prideful.
We do have the ability to identify self-destructive behavior. We’re good at seeing it in others. If we want to follow Christ and abandon our own self-inflicted failures, we must turn that discernment inward, judging ourselves. In doing so, Paul says we will save ourselves a tremendous amount of misery.
Authors Note: We’ve been experiencing significant hacks of the blog. It has unfortunately, become an unreliable platform for now. I have published on Facebook the last few days, which I realize leaves a lot of readers out. i’m sorry for that, but I’ve not even been able to access the blog site to get a message out to you. Once again, we will hopefully be able to fix it, but if it is unfixable, then the blog and app will have to go away eventually. I will try to get the email list figured out so that if I do go to posting only on Facebook, that I can still email the daily post. Thanks for your patience. Please pray that we can get the blog site fixed!