Repentance & Judgement

Reprinted from February 2018.

The clergy, you know, can say some uncommonly foolish things. (I plead guilty). So I will not name the dignitary who, some years ago, opined at a clergy gathering that confession of sin made people judgmental. Though a murmur of reverent assent ran through the room, I refrained from asking the dignitary if giving things away also made people selfish. Some butterflies you don’t break on the wheel.

What makes people judgmental and ready to accuse and condemn others? Let me set aside one activity of judgment, which is the task of moral discernment, the discrimination of right from wrong, truth from falsehood, and so on, which is necessary and inescapable. (You can’t say this kind of judgment is wrong without yourself making the judgment you condemn.)

The self-righteous judgmentalism that Scripture condemns – the readiness to accuse and condemn others with harshness of censure rather than the corrective charity of a brother or sister in Christ – is rather different. It is a response to an uneasy awareness of our own guilt, which we project onto others, in a futile attempt to escape the condemnation we fear. In condemning others, we feel better about ourselves. The more underlying unaddressed guilt and fear we have, the harsher and blind we are in judging others.

Confessing and acknowledging one’s sin, therefore, is a much more constructive response to guilt and fear – because it is a humble, honest, and hopeful acknowledgement of the truth about ourselves. In humility and honesty, we seek (by the help of the Holy Spirit) to see ourselves as God sees us, “unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid”. We submit ourselves to the judgment of God’s holy will and commandments, without self-justification or self-exculpation. The hope is this, that not from ourselves, but from the Judge himself, and based upon the goodness of his nature and the promises of his grace, we may confidently expect mercy, forgiveness and his Holy Spirit – the forgiveness that sets us free from guilt and fear, the Holy Spirit that heals and makes whole (holy) our diseased and fallen nature. If the Judge himself has declared and pronounced the absolution of our sins, then we are forgiven, whether we feel it or not. In humility and hope, we must accept his word and not fall back into guilt and fear. Rather, delivered from guilt and fear by his word of mercy, we are to serve him in gratitude and love.

If this is what we have done, and if that is what we have received, then it will be impossible for us to look at our neighbours with a judgmental eye or censorious spirit. One may go even further: it is only if we have confessed our sins, and only if we know the power of his forgiveness and Holy Spirit, only then can we look at our neighbours without a judgmental eye or censorious spirit. We shall see their faults and failings, to be sure, but not because we want to see them, or are secretly gratified to discover their shortcomings, or delight in censuring them. We shall regard them as fellow-sufferers of the same disease, who need the same remedies we ourselves have received.

We approach the confession of sin, not as an exercise in guilt-mongering or blame-shifting, but as an exercise of humility, honesty, and hope. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”