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judgment, judgment day Entries in judgment day (2)
Judgment Day
Thursday, August 13, 2015 at 11:21AM 
The only people looking forward to Judgment Day are the crazy people, right? Perhaps it depends on how well you know the Judge. Our popular notions of Judgment Day—and God’s judgment—are filled with apocalyptic trembling: floods, earthquakes, fire and brimstone. God’s coming back, and he’s angry! Jesus, too: he came to seek and save the lost, but that was the first time—watch out for his second time around. It doesn't quite add up, does it?
It has not always been so, nor is it even so everywhere today. The oppressed cry out for deliverance because the Day of Judgment brings the Deliverer. In C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the creatures of Narnia comfort themselves with the chant,
Wrong will become right, when Aslan comes in sight.
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.
Nor did Lewis create this hope. He got it from the Old Testament prophets, who eagerly awaited “the great and terrible day of the Lord.” Even the religious folk in Jesus’ day yearned for the deliverance of God, even if it was for the wrong reasons.
And what about you? Is the return of Jesus an event to be feared, celebrated, or both? And most importantly: why do you feel the way you do? Since I asked you, I should probably share my biases with you up front. I have at least three:
There is a Judge, and there is justice. Our modern values resist these very ideas. We see the guilty go free. We watch the poor suffer. Westerners decry a CEO’s lavish compensation as “unfair” even while we ourselves live like first world kings, oblivious toward third world realities. We are daily tempted toward cynicism and hopelessness. People of faith should know better. Abraham, the father faith, argued with God asking, “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Abraham cried mercy over Sodom and Gomorrah, because he trusted in the God’s judgment. Human history has a destination, and at the end of the road there sits a Judge.
I trust the Judge. Our workaday images of courtrooms and judges are cluttered with foolish legal distinctions, human drama, and corruption. The Great Judge is nothing like our childish games. In that day, when God puts on the robes of judgment, our opinions of law and justice will be seen for the pale imitations of small minds that they are. There’s no getting around it, the Creator of the Universe is the Great Judge of all humanity, and all human history. He not only has the right and the power to be judge, he has the knowledge and wisdom as well.
Mercy triumphs over judgment. I trust the Judge because the only Person in the universe with a true right to judge is the same One who also longs to say, "Well done, Good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Master." What’s more, it’s within my reach to be like Him and show mercy. When we display humility, kindness, and mercy, we reflect God’s image. The Judge loves mercy; it’s his default position. If the Old Testament could be said to have a mantra, it might be “His loving kindness endures forever.” The very Hebrew word for loving kindness, chesed, has been rendered as love, faithful love, loving kindness, mercy, grace, and compassion. Why choose? I think chesed can mean all of them at once.
These are my biases. And convinced as I am that God is deeply, powerfully good, I yet shudder at the notion of my personal moments before the Judge, and the great and terrible day of the Lord, whenever it may come.
Aslan will indeed set things right; yet it will shake the very foundations of our fallen world. I look forward to judgment as I might look forward to serious surgery: a necessary goodness that still causes me to tremble. In the end, all I can do is trust the Great Physician.
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Love Justice? Love Judgment.
Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 12:09AM 
There are dozens of lawyers in my house at any given moment. You can find most of them in my living room. Whenever I turn on the TV the house suddenly fills with quick-witted sharp-talkers. There’s a crusty old gal who has her legal office in a shoe store; there are earnest, slender young prosecutors who apparently have twin degrees in law and fashion. There’s some old guy named Matlock who must be a hundred years old, but I’m convinced I’ll be dead and buried before his career on cable TV comes to an end.
We don’t even have to pay actors any more. When a high-profile case like Casey Anthony’s comes along, millions of us stop what we’re doing to hear the judgment. That day, in the middle of the afternoon, more than 5 million people tuned into the HLN network to watch. Who even knew there was a HLN network? Another million computers streamed the verdict live via CNN’s website.
Face it: we love lawyers, and we love courtrooms. Important things happen. Books are opened, charges are read, juries are seated. We love the struggle, we love the lies and intrigue, and most of all we love the moment of judgment. The verdict is read, the judgment is given, the gavel comes down and bang! the bad guy is forced to wear ugly orange clothes for the rest of his life, or the good guy is set free, into the embrace of his weeping family.
Judgment Day is great entertainment. One day the sky itself will become a big-screen TV and the ultimate court will be called to session. The people of the world will stand amazed and attentive, because justice will finally be done. And everyone loves justice.
Here is a paradox--everyone is in favor of justice, but few of us are in favor of judgment.
Who could be against justice? We want to see corporate greed called into account. We want to know that evil despots will be tracked down, pulled from their bunkers and made to stand in the light. We want hungry children to be fed; we want sick people to have medicine; we want anything that can be made right to be made right if it is in anyone’s power. And then we stub our toe, because we begin to realize: there is no justice apart from judgment. Someone must bring the gavel down.
Who loves Judgment Day? Those who need a judge to set things right. The poor of the earth are powerless in the face of overwhelming strength. Or greed. Or even intellect--we instinctively know it’s not right for the smart to deceive the slow of wit.
Who cries for justice? The scripture says that the blood of the slain cries out from the ground. A hungry child may not know the right word, but it cries for justice every time it holds out an empty bowl. The Psalms tell us that creation itself will sing and dance at the sound of justice:
Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them;
Let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.
Let all creation rejoice before the LORD, for he comes,
He comes to judge the earth.” (Psalm 96: 12-13)
Even the one who said, “Let him who is without sin throw the first stone” looked forward to the justice of God. Just days before his death, Jesus told a story where wretched people came to a wretched end. He explained his parable by saying, “God’s kingdom is going to be taken away from you and given to a nation that will produce the goods. Anyone who falls on his stone will be smashed to pieces, and anyone it falls on will be crushed.” (Matthew 21: 43-44)
Justice and judgment provide twin challenges for the heart of every student of Jesus.
The first challenge is to connect justice to the judge. God’s friend Abraham asked, “Will not the Judge of the earth do right?” He pleaded for the lives of innocent people by bargaining with God. Along with Abraham, we are shocked to discover how few innocents there were. Although Abraham’s negotiation concluded with ten people, we see God’s heart when he rescued even fewer--the only righteous family in a city of thousands. This story gives us the courage to pray for justice, to pray often, and to trust the Judge will do right--even if we stop too soon.
The second challenge is to work for justice while leaving judgment to the Judge. We are called to share his heart--even some of his authority, but we must know the limits of our calling. Sometimes people who know what is right are the most dangerous among us. We mistake our knowledge for the will of God, and cross the line between representing him and taking action that belongs to him. We need to discover that the work of the cross was also a work of judgment, but the Judge of the earth took the judgment upon Himself. Do we have such a heart? We need to listen to an old man, known as “James the Just”, when he explained judgment will be merciless to the one who has shown no mercy, but mercy triumphs over judgment. (James 2:13)
Tonight I will watch the well-tailored and confident lawyers argue the law. I’ll marvel at their smarts and gimmicks. But I will also feel that faint shudder along my spine that reminds me we are only children, playing a game that will someday be very real, and very different.