Judgement

The axe is lying at the root of the trees.

Imagine a friend coming to you in a bad way. She tells you she was overly ambitious in the size of the house she bought. The mortgage payments were too high, which caused problems in her relationship, and now the family is split up and the house had to be sold quickly on the cheap. And you chip in as she reaches for her handkerchief, “Well let me stop you right there. This all seems to stem from pride, vanity and greed. You’ve really made this problem for yourself.” Or perhaps another friend phones in tears, saying she’s been arrested. She had a couple of drinks at the office Christmas party and on her way home drove into her neighbour’s wall. And you say, “Let me stop you right there. It’s really stupid to drink and drive and you absolutely deserve what you got. The axe is lying at the root of the trees.”

We might think these things, but we don’t normally say them – unless you’re that person whose commitment to truth is stronger than our British commitment to niceness.

But, I do mean niceness, not love or even kindness, it’s niceness that mostly keeps us sympathetic – The British fear of being seen as judgmental or arrogant, or lacking empathy, and also not wanting to get too involved. Easier just to say “oooh sorry, that’s terrible.” Deep down, or actually – just beneath the surface – we are judgemental. That’s why the British are such furious gossips. We strive for empathy and niceness face to face, and reserve judgement and Schadenfreude for coffee with a different friend. “You’ll never believe what Maureen did!”

This is enabled by a two-tier contradictory view of judgement that most of us hold. On the one hand we prefer not to judge: “there but for the grace of God go I”, we whisper piously as we step over the person on the street. And “Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner” (It sounds even more magnanimous in badly pronounced French) “To understand all, is to forgive all” – And we can come up with biological, economic, sociological, psychological justification for everything – “Of course he’s in prison – do you know where he grew up?” “Of course she was unfaithful, do you know what happened to her mother?” “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!” And other clichés. And when you read the abundance of books on evolutionary-social-psychology, they explain at length with plenty of data – why you and others behave the way you do. you might think that there is no such thing as a person – That you don’t make choices – It’s all just selfish genes and conditioning – that we are running through our pre-destined lives as fore-ordained by deterministic Science, like the terrifying God of Calvinism.

But, at the same time, we do judge. I hear from Oberon a lot about ‘red choices’ in classes. And hopefully we’re not just manipulating children to do the right thing, but to understand the consequences of their actions – We want them to choose for themselves to make good decisions. We want them to develop character. A friend remarked to me recently how we spend years and years trying to control our children, complaining that they’re willful and difficult; then spend the rest of their lives telling them to be themselves. As a compromise, I’ve decided to start telling other people’s children to be themselves.

But we also judge other adults. Especially on their driving, and their choice of vehicle. On their Christmas decorations. On whether they voted for Brexit. If they don’t recycle. On which bishops laughed at Justin Welby’s last speech in the House of Lords. We are judgemental – and we believe that people are answerable for their decisions. In the Church of England, heads do roll.

I think part of our problem with challenging our friend’s bad decisions is a very British fear of hypocrisy. We’re rightly aware of our failings and would be all the more ashamed to be called out on something we’d condemned in someone else. If anything we feel quite relieved when our friends do immoral things because we can feel superior in our liberal and gracious tolerance, while looking forward to a greater moral latitude if we find ourselves compromised later on. But if the continual scandals around safeguarding and abuse of power demonstrate anything, it is that the hypocrisy lies more often in not calling out wrong behaviour. Our laissez-faire support of questionable behaviour colludes with it; We are helping to justify it, excuse it; Our refusal to condemn behaviour is a way of reinforcing it. And, especially if we gossip about it elsewhere, it’s a much worse form of hypocrisy.

What we find in figures like John the Baptist and Jesus, is a deep well of understanding, of reasonableness, of kindness, of love, which meets the people they encounter in an abrupt reality-check. When pressed for advice, even the wild-man John the Baptist is surprisingly banal – Give your spare coat to someone who needs it; Share your food if someone is hungry.And don’t take advantage of people. It’s not apocalyptic terror or ascetic immolation.

Jesus famously exonerates the woman caught in adultery. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. Has no one condemned you? Neither do I. It’s so radical for its time it’s astonishing that it made it into the Gospel. Though perhaps it indicates another kind of hypocrisy, where the woman is more sinned against than sinning.

But John the Baptist does call people out – Just because Abraham is your ancestor – That is not enough. Perhaps we might say today, just because you have been brought up as Christians – That is not enough. Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Jesus endlessly calls out the hypocrisy of the entitled – Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand – and it’s not for those you expect.

The key word is repentance. Don’t think of it as being sorry. Or feeling sorry. Think of it, first of all, as that abrupt reality-check. The one where you look at yourself and think, I can’t believe I did that. Who even am I? The one where you look at your life and think – Something is really missing from this. I think I might have missed the point. It’s the moment in which you concede that something must change. Something’s gotta give.

And that, coincidentally, is the moment at which humans get interesting. It’s the moment in which life gets interesting. Because we do have our natural slant on the world, we are pressured into thinking in certain ways by the people around us, we develop a certain way of being in the world that is resistant to change; we are creatures of habit. But every person here has the ability in this moment to change. To stop doing the thing that you in this moment know is poisoning your peace of mind. To give £1000 to our Christmas parcel collection (or some other charity); To reconsider where your career has taken you and where you want to be, To stop shouting at your children when you’re frustrated; To challenge your friend when they go wrong and be honest.

It is hard to reinvent ourselves, to change even a small thing, but it is within our God given freedom. We are not the slaves of mechanistic forces. You have in your God-given soul the power to change. You are more than your genes and the statistical matrix that thinks with the right algorithm it can get you to click on this, or buy that. Repentance is freedom; It is this God-given ability to face reality. It’s striking that at the end of today’s Gospel John speaks of ‘the chaff being burned with unquenchable fire’, immediately followed by ‘with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.’ Freedom is good news – even when it follows a painful realisation; judgement. But freedom means change and that is difficult. Difficult, but possible in every single moment you are conscious.

So before the gentle swing of Christmas kicks in, before your questioning mind is dulled by Michael Buble, mulled wine and one too many mince pies; Ask yourself what is the freedom that I want for Christmas? Where is the sin that will lead me to repentance? When will I get this reality check? Is it in the drunk tank or sat with my mother-in-law? How can I be more honest with myself and with my friends?

The card to play against hypocrisy is honesty. Dead-stop-in-your-tracks honesty. In honesty we will find the power to change, to repent, to know that the Lord is near, and so to rejoice. The axe is lying at the root of the trees. Repentance is liberation. Amen.