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
Also published on Huffpost
