Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Lent & Easter
by Ron Rolheiser, OMI

“Who is wise enough to understand these things?
Who is intelligent enough to know them?
Straight are the paths of the Lord,
the just walk in them,
but sinners stumble in them”.

(HOSEA 14:10)

If the Gospel of John is to be believed – and it is – Jesus judges no one. God judges no one.

That needs to be put into context. It doesn’t mean there aren’t any moral judgments and that our actions are indifferent to moral scrutiny. There is judgment, except it doesn’t work the way it is fantasized inside the popular mind. According to what Jesus is quoted as saying in John’s Gospel, judgment works this way: God’s light, God’s truth, and God’s spirit come into the world. We then judge ourselves according to how we live in the face of them: God’s light has come into the world, but we can choose to live in darkness. That’s our decision, our judgment. God’s truth has been revealed, but we can choose to live in falsehood, in lies. That’s our decision, our judgment to make.

So then, this is how judgment happens: God’s spirit (charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness, and chastity) has been revealed. We can choose to live inside the virtues of that spirit, or we can choose to live instead inside their opposites (self-indulgence, sexual vice, rivalry, antagonism, bad temper, quarrels, drunkenness, and factionalism).
 

One choice leads to a life with God, the other leads away from God. And that choice is ours to make. It doesn’t come from the outside. We judge ourselves. God judges no one. God doesn’t need to” (28).