Before the Time

My father-in-law was an entrepreneur of sorts who earned his living by having his fingers in a variety of business activities. He owned a newsstand business in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida, had a wholesale distribution business which serviced small grocery stores and the like, owned some apartments and other rental properties, and seemed to always have a car or two for sale.

More importantly, he served as an elder at Central Christian Church in St. Petersburg, and was the kind of elder every preacher dreams about. Words like support, encourage, and confidant quickly come to mind. His preacher didn’t have to remind him that “the integration of faith into life and work and family” was essential to living out the Christian journey.

All that is set up to my thinking about one of this week’s Lectionary texts: 1 Corinthians 4:1-5. After a lengthy discussion at the beginning of this great epistle about divisiveness, Paul says (in 4:5) “Do not pronounce judgment before the time.” The tired routine that expressed itself in “I am of Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or Christ” needs to come to a screeching halt!

Among other reasons, Paul suggests that only God is qualified to pronouncement judgment. After all, only God knows the whole story of any situation (“He will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness”) and only God fully understands motives (“He will disclose the purposes of the heart”). It is such an easy journey to arrive at a place where we convince ourselves we know the whole story and we even understand a person’s motives. But we really never do.

On more than one occasion, I heard my father-in-law express concern about this very issue. A part of his distribution business – potato chips, chewing gum, and the like – involved deliveries in places that many of his fellow churchgoers would have judged to be inappropriate for an elder in the church to frequent. No one who knew him would have ever thought he went to those places to hang out at the bar, but what about those who didn’t know him that well who might see him walking out after having delivered a van load of chips?

While I appreciate the sensitivity he had to this issue, I also find it a little frustrating that so many believers are quick to assume the wrong thing. “He’s an elder in the church and he was there?” Our unwillingness to allow the gospel to transform us at every level means that we will almost always assume the worst. But we do that not knowing the full story and not understanding motives. To that Paul says, “Stop!”

Paul is so convinced that we should not go around making such judgments that he notes that he is not qualified to judge even himself. Apparently, God’s desire to share with us the work of His kingdom does not extend to making such judgments.

One of the lessons I see being lived out every day as I hang out with college students is that it is extraordinarily foolish to jump to conclusions and make judgments. So often, when I’ve learned more of the story (realizing I never know the whole story), I almost always end up amazed at how far a student has come rather than wanting to judge them unworthy.

If people who knew my father-in-law saw him walking out of any kind of business, they would never assume negative things about him. He wasn’t that kind of person. People who knew him well enough to “know his heart” would assume the best not the worst. But even then, Paul would still say, “Stop pronouncing judgment.”

That’s not bad advice for any of us!