And I choose obedience...

"Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of good heredity and a good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends. Can we be quite certain how we should have behaved if we had been saddled with the psychological outfit, and then with the bad upbringing, and then with the power of say, Himmler? That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. Most of a man's psychological makeup is probably due to his body: when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or worst of his material, will stand naked." -C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity

I believe that a simple fact of life is that we as humans have a strong tendency to lie, cheat, and steal to get our way; in other words: we are selfish beings. And the reality of it is that when you strip away psychological material, for example phobias, from our inner being, our basic morality can still be, and often is still tainted. Yet another reality is that we, beings of tainted morality ourselves, deem it appropriate to judge others according to our own view of a higher standard. Even when our higher standard is a standard that we tend to break ourselves.

As C.S. Lewis notes in the above quote from Mere Christianity, perhaps some of us have made so little use of good heredity and upbringing. Good heredity and upbringing, things that I do not necessarily think should be condemned, have become something they were never meant to be: pillars of judgment.  Myself, being blessed with good heredity and upbringing, have no right to use that as means for my own personal gain or as standards upon which I can judge others by; especially those who have not been given the same heredity or upbringing.

But still I judge. Still I am wicked. Still I put myself on that pedestal and I judge. But the fact of the matter is that while I am judging, I am also building up a psychological make-up made of skin and bones. I am building my own wall of pride and self-righteousness. One day I will stand before my King, psychological make-up gone, stripped naked, left feeble, and He, being righteous and just, will show me my sin. Yes I know full and well that Jesus my Savior has covered my sin with his own blood, shed on the cross, but that does not mean that my King with utter the humbling words I so desire to hear: "Well done, my good and faithful servant."

Obedience is the key for being a faithful servant of my Lord and my obedience to my King should be shown in the inner renewal of my mind. As Paul states it in Colossians 3:10, "Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your creator and become like him".  Putting on my new nature does not mean sitting back and judging from my pedestal. It means being proactive; it means taking steps to change my judgmental tendencies; it means more of Him, and less of me.

DBM