Sunday, December 31, 2000

Bad Fruit




James 4:11-12 (NLT)
Don't speak evil against each other, dear brothers and sisters. If you criticize and judge each other, then you are criticizing and judging God's law. But your job is to obey the law, not to judge whether it applies to you. [12] God alone, who gave the law, is the Judge. He alone has the power to save or to destroy. So what right do you have to judge your neighbor?

- Greg Boyd argues that this kind of judging is represented in the book of Genesis by that infamous tree of the knowlwdge of good and evil, from which Eve and Adam ate. It is from our propensity to judge, rather than love, that our separation from God and others arises.

He goes on to argue that the church today is mainly known for judgmentalism rather than the love of Christ, and in this we reveal our ongoing, human preference for the fruit of the wrong tree.