Thursday, June 8, 2017

When is the Judge a Killer?


Glorification of the Eucharist by Salimbeni

After consider the topic of God in the last post, it would be good to have a look at the word judgment which is so often linked with him. The image of the man with the long beard sitting on a throne watching and judging everything we do is a bizarre concept. It suggests that God is a giant stickybeak!

Take, for example, these words from the Gospel of Matthew which records Jesus saying:
You have heard that it was said to the men of old, 'You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.' Mt 5:21
Let’s ask what is being killed and who is judging? Sure, in the next verse Matthew’s report continues about being angry with your brother but the logic of my ideas about verse 21 applies also to the subsequent verses when we identify the brother as something within us.

The Fall of Icarus by Reubens
The specific Greek word used here for ‘kill’ is phoneuo which means to murder. Murder means to kill secretly when no one is aware of what we are doing. What happens within us secretly that no one is aware of? The forming of our opinions! All day long we decide what is good and bad mostly without being fully informed. Therefore, in our consciousness, with our thoughts, feelings and intentions, we secretly take the life from people and things that displease us. What is more, we think it is our right to do this while at the same time demanding that someone who physically kills another person is punished with a jail sentence or a death sentence.
So who is the judge? The judge is actually the killer. Judgment in Greek is krisis and means separating (analyzing) and then a decision. Yet how often do we separate out all the facts? Modern life is full of quick decisions. If we want to stop being the killer, the one who takes the life out of something, we must take the time to do the separating.

This Greek word krisis is similar to the English word crisis that means a critical moment or a turning point. In daily life it is our opportunity to be aware of all the fact before we make damaging statements, or act prematurely. This means we need to be much more aware of all the issues so that we stop, separate out all the facts, and put them back together differently before making decisions - then the judge is no longer the killer.

Also published on Huffpost