Imagine overhearing the following conversation in the bus queue... ‘Wow - that’s a whole load of things you’ve got wrong. You say you’re friends and family are giving you a hard time judging and stuff? What you need to do is get to church because they accept anyone there without any judgment...’
Does the church have a cast-iron reputation for not judging people? For showing mercy and making everyone welcome, whatever they have done? I think not. One of the best known verses quoted by those outside the church is ‘judge not lest you be judged’. Could that be because that is what people think and experience religious people do?
This is a very sad indictment for the followers of Jesus. When a woman caught in the act of wrongdoing, an irrefutable moment of guilt, Jesus does not judge her but sends her home with the words ‘neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more’. He has mercy and calls his followers to have the same attitude.
