: Thursday, October 23, 2003 :

 
Listening to:The Beatles - Beatles For Sale

Thurday morning. 11:52am. Just got home from a meeting
with Larry. As usual, I am encouraged and enlightened.
I asked him to comment on my "relational style" and he
didn't say anything precise but he opened up this
whole new aspect of me...

Are you ready?

J-U-D-G-E-M-E-N-T-A-L-I-S-M!

This *totally* makes sense, watch. Although I might
not appear to be super judgemental on the outside, at
heart, I am quite a harsh judge.
When someone preaches, I analyse everything and I
judge. I can judge it to be good just as I can judge
it to be bad, but I am still judging.
When someone is leading worship, I analyse everything
-how is this person leading this song, what's their
attitude like, what's their understanding of God, how
well do they play their instrument, blah blah blah
blah blah. I'm judging.
Same for people leading discussions and small groups.
Same for people in relationship with me (although I am
not sure how this works, I haven't looked at it yet).

The thing is, this judgementalism completely backfires
on me. Because the measure with which I measure
others, is the same measure, DOUBLED, that I apply to
myself! If my speaking isn't perfect, I'm not
satisfied. If my worship leading is off, I'm not happy
with myself. And the list goes on.

One step further would be to look at *what* I'm
judging in order to find things I'm trying to
self-protect myself from. Much work to be done. Much
still to learn about grace - about me extending grace,
and about me receiving grace.

Grace is, in a sense, about humility. And humility is,
in a sense, letting go of all these stupid judging
measures. It is learning to stop being self-apologetic
about things (like saying "I'm sorry this isn't well
prepared", or "I'm sorry I'm not making perfect
sense", etc). It is about trusting that God will use
something imperfect, something that fails every
judgement test. Humility is about accepting a
compliment. Humility is NOT saying we're bad at
something we're good at. Sometimes, it is way more
difficult to just say "thank you" to a compliment than
to say "no, that was trash, give God the glory". There
is so much to learn about humility...
rambled on byThais 12:30 PM