I don’t know anybody, except by the truth; I don’t know anybody except what God’s Light reveals to me.
I have watched as saints whom I thought were courageous in the Lord exposed as very uncourageous when they were asked by Jesus to believe what he says and stand for it. I have seen them, precious sons and daughters of God, flee like frightened little children flee from gentle Jesus to hide behind the clichés and traditions that men had taught them, and they would not come back out. Then I understood that Jesus was showing me how he saw them, and how he had seen them all along. I then surrendered my high opinion of them (which had been based on what I saw and heard without the Light), and I trusted his judgment of them instead.
I also put away my sword when dealing with them, for Jesus had now shown me that they had no weapons with which to fight the word of God, and they were not my enemies. They were afraid of the truth, and of whoever spoke it, because Christianity had made them distrust and fear it. And I knew that if God was ever going to use me to coax them into His light, I would have to have a tender heart toward them (even the mean ones) like God’s heart. Love alone – God’s comforting and healing love – will alone rescue them, and if I don’t have that for God’s little children, I am useless to Him.
The curtain behind which God’s frightened little children hide is the curtain of appearance. Sometimes, they appear to be wise in the things of God. (Many of God’s little children have grey hair; they have been little children for a long, long time.) They may occupy exalted positions with impressive-sounding titles, given to them by a Christian institution. And they may hide by putting on an act of righteous indignation against those who tell them the truth; indeed, under that spirit, they may say and do some very hurtful things to God’s true servants. But God still loves them because He sees them as they really are. Do we?
Jesus warned us to trust him and not to judge by what we can see and hear. Because of long-standing religious traditions which had developed in Israel, the sinless Son of God and his followers appeared to be really bad. And because of those same traditions, many of the leaders among God’s people who were evil appeared to be good because they hid their hearts behind the revered traditions. Only with light from God could anyone see who was truly good and who was not.
Pray for that light! With it shining in our hearts, we can see as God sees, and love as God loves. And by the light of His truth, we may at last escape the bondage of making our own judgments based on what we see and hear and “judge righteous judgment” at last.
jdc