Me Judging Me

Introspection:  a reflective looking inward : an examination of one's own thoughts and feelings

Part of the necessity of life is to examine one's own behavior.  We all recognize the personal benefit in this exercise.  Jesus required us to go a step further and examine our thought-life.  Judging one's own behavior and thought-life help us improve our lot in life.  What I wanted to consider is the benefit to society.  In the interest of solidarity, I'm sticking to behavioral concerns.  Let God judge the heart, we have to judge behavior.  Behavior is a result to a great extent, of our introspection.  We must constantly evaluate and modify our behavior according to our set of personal standards.  This introspection is motivated most often by those around us.  We feel the judgment of others and in many cases that judgment comes with consequences.  We might be rejected as a friend, we might be fired from our jobs, we might even be forced to deal with divorce proceedings.  In every relationship, we are required to examine our behavior and the standards which drives it. 

In a chat-room, a young woman related to me that she'd had an abortion years earlier and knew that God had forgiven her but she couldn't forgive herself.  She asked for my advice on what she should do.  Guilt is a special topic all on it's own.  Suffice it to say that true guilt is hard to overcome.  God makes known his heart by giving us a conscience and conscience is a terrible punisher.  I know guilt similar to the guilt demonstrated in that young woman's story.  I worked through it by counsel from a Christian brother.  He said to me, "If you were the only sinner on earth, Jesus would have hung on that cross for you alone.  If God considers you valuable enough to send His Son to die on a cross to save you and He has decided to forgive you, who are you to overrule His decision?  Do not consider your judgment concerning your guilt or worth more valid than God's judgment of your guilt or worth."  I don't know how unbelievers deal with this kind of guilt.  It's too overwhelming to work through without God to overrule my self disgust and self loathing.

Not everybody has guilt this deep.  In some ways this is good, in others this is bad.  On the one hand, we all know that we are imperfect and screw up on a regular basis.  This means we can identify with one another in our brokenness, so we aren't inclined to go around condemning one another for our little mistakes.  We express grace and patience toward one another with this attitude.  That grace only goes so far.  That is to say, it only goes as far as we can identify with another's brokenness.  Anything 'worse' than we can identify with and we are quick to condemn another.  So, our experience with guilt is the depth to which we naturally express grace and patience.  On the other hand, with grace and patience there is another danger.  That is, we can embrace our brokenness and celebrate something our conscience screams against.  Within our culture are entire subcultures built on this celebration of brokenness, be it homosexuality, gang violence, recreational drug use, dominant/submissive sexual relationships, racism, or just about any wrong you can name.  

This is why, in our brokenness we need an external guiding standard of behavior.  Society provides these standards through our laws and traditions.  I submit to you that our country was founded on the laws and traditions of the church as articulated in the New Testament of the Bible.  Since 1963, our courts have been used to whittle away at our dependence on the Bible for our standards.  With those standards out of the way, our traditions are crumbling away as well.  The result is not that we are moving away from religion.  Instead, people are turning to other venues of worship including communism which worships government and humanism which worships the most intelligent of people.  People may be intelligent without being wise.

These trends are destroying the hope of our continued existence as a nation.  I call on you to judge right from wrong and good from evil.  The first step in social recovery is personal introspection and modification of personal behavior.  The next step is to get involved anywhere you can to make a difference for our future, and for the well being of our children.  Consider again what happens without those traditions.  Guilt is a motivator in one of two ways.  Either the guilty will excuse their behavior and make a point of making that behavior obnoxious, even violently defending it and insisting society accept it as right and normal, so somebody will correct and guide them to moral certainty, or they self condemn and set to work attempting to make up for their wrongs never feeling as though they've done enough.  Either of those venues are deeply motivated sometimes going into the origins of their thought patterns.  So deep, the guilty could not explain or often even recognize their behavior as self destructive. 

My own behavior was among the first description of the guilty.  I chose to be an appeaser and people pleaser thinking others could make me feel worthy if they would just accept me on my merits.  Remember that guilt is self destructive.  No matter which venue you choose to assuage your guilt, you undercut your own goals acting in ways you don't understand and can't explain for yourself.  If you choose to correct yourself (and few do) you couldn't though peace of mind is dependent on it.   I repeatedly undermined my own efforts to make myself acceptable to society.  Once I released that guilt (in my case by turning it over to God) those behavior patterns were defeatable.  Below is the link I sent that young woman to after telling her my story of being led through my own guilt.  If you are dealing with guilt you can't manage, seek a councilor. 

Generation after generation are now being taught through state run schools that we cannot judge people.  Worse, they are promoting some of the sub-cultures identified by their self destructive behavior created by this mass exodus from judgment.  The result is a generation that is growing amoral and raising the next generation which is taught less morality than were their parents.  As societies grow and change, the less standards and tradition they retain the more change and change in this sense means instability and violence.  Civility is dependent on communal trust and trust is dependent on civility.  Break either side of that scale and the society collapses or is defeated by an outside power. 

Looking at our national behavior, we can observe in the news, through polls, studies, and current events what percentage of us retain the ability to live by our society's standards and which are using our society's courts and legislature to reduce those standards.  Example after example demonstrate we are a declining nation.  From the attacks on our rights to speech and self defense, to the attacks on our institutions of moral anchoring, whether successful or not, the attempts are indicators in the condition of our trust, civility, and traditions.  At present, the signs indicate an even split and oddly enough, most of one frame of mind are in one party and most of the other frame of mind are in the other party.  The pundits call this political polarization.  I suggest you take a look at the history of the parties.  Consistently, one party has demonstrated a propensity to block what is right, good, and beneficial while promoting what is self destructive to the individual and to the nation.  You'll be amazed to learn which party was born on the premise of freeing the slaves, which initiated the parks system, which elected the first black, the first woman, the first... you'll be amazed.

What's the answer?  What do we do about our slide into immorality?  The good news is, truth wins out.  In every case, eventually truth wins.  Whoever and whatever organization is on the side of truth will eventually win and whoever or whatever organization which sides with the wrong will lose.  If you value traditions and civility and trust, you must get out there and make yourself heard.  The other side is certainly being heard.  You need to find organizations which support your values and volunteer to help them in their cause.  You have to do your part to make morality desirable.  If there aren't any organizations addressing your concerns, create one.  This is how we keep and grow the republic the founding fathers handed us.  You have to judge your neighbor and call them into the morality that anchors this society.  You have to judge yourself and ensure you are living up to the standards you promote.  You have to shed any unmanageable guilt in that endeavor.

http://www.victimsofchoice.org/Why_Am_I_Hurting_.html