A Nonjudgmental Life

“One of the hardest spiritual tasks is to live without prejudices. Sometimes we aren’t even aware how deeply rooted our prejudices are… Strangers, people different than we are, stir up fear, discomfort, suspicion, and hostility. They make us lose our sense of security just by being ‘other.’ ”
–Henri Nouwen

“We put labels on life all the time. ‘Right,’ ‘wrong,’ ‘success,’ ‘failure,’ ‘lucky,’ ‘unlucky’ may be as limiting a way of seeing things as ‘diabetic,’ ‘epileptic,’ manic-depressive,’ or even ‘invalid.’ ”    – Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

“I was a stranger and you did not welcome me …”   Matthew 25:43a ESV

Everone has them. No matter how much we say and try to embody the golden rule of doing unto others, as we would have them do unto us, we love our neighbors imperfectly because we are all imperfect.

When someone says or does something other than what we would have said or done in a similar situation, harsh judgments, cruel criticisms and unforgiving convictions can arise seemingly out of nowhere. We think we are open-minded until we are the ones who feel defensive. It is then that our real perceptions of those who are “other” than us especially stand out. At least that has been our personal experience.

But what we have discovered from our own readings, insights and experiences is this: often the people who have felt the most marginalized in society are the ones who are consoling, compassionate, sensitive, loving and welcoming. Perhaps they readily model these things because they so often fail to receive it from others.

The ballroom that night was beautifully decorated and everyone was dressed well for the region’s annual LGBT Chamber of Commerce banquet. We felt privileged to be there to show our love and support and we were grateful for the invitation.

During the pre-dinner cocktail hour, we noticed a woman walk past us scanning the room as if she was looking for someone. When she returned, she stopped next to us. We said hello and introduced ourselves. She did the same.

“So, how did you guys get connected with the LGBT Chamber?” she asked.

“One of our friends and board members invited us and we are grateful he did. We are happy to be here.”

“I’m happy to be here too!”she responded, smiling.

“How about yourself? How long have you been connected with the Chamber?” we asked.

“I started coming to the chamber this past yearand have been a part of the group ever since. They were very welcoming to me.”

“How did they do that?” 

She hesitated. Then, with a cautious and almost sheepish look on her face, she shared her story.

“Last year my child was murdered right in front of me. I desperately needed some sense of community to hold me up. Many of my religious friends and the religious community hurt me deeply. People kept telling me that ‘my child is in a better place,’ ‘God works all things together for good,’ ‘God doesn’t give me more than I can handle,’ and many more clichés.”

She continued, “I know many of them meant well, but statements like those made me feel more alone, hurt, depressed, and more lonely. I didn’t have anywhere to go with my feelings. In looking for others to meet, I tried attending the other Chamber of Commerce events. But the groups weren’t welcoming. They didn’t seem to make an effort to connect with me. I never felt as if I belonged.”

“I’m not gay,” she said. “But one of my gay friends invited me to one of the LGBT Chamber gatherings. Many of the people in the group already knew my story because they heard it on the news. But they didn’t know me.

She paused and then went on. “Yet, they simply consoled me in my pain. I didn’t hear the clichés. And they have continued to welcome me ever since. No one tried to take my pain away as so many others tried to do; they simply reminded me that I wasn’t alone in it.”

Her story is an example of how people who know what it is like to be marginalized and excluded, who know what it feels like to be negatively labeled, can be the ones to reach out to include and welcome others in their midst. 

She shifted the conversation to us and we indicated that we weren’t gay, either. “So why are you here?” she asked.

“We wanted to be supportive because we know what it feels like to be left out and ostracized. We want our gay friends to know that we care about them.”

“What do you guys do for a living?”

Now we were the ones with the cautious and almost sheepish look on our faces.

“We are both pastors; we have a compassionate listening – counseling — ministry.”

Sometimes we aren’t proud of the religious title we possess because we know that some people who bear religious titles and affiliations have hurt others. This was one such moment. Knowing that she had been hurt by her religious community, we would have preferred to tell her that we are builders, engineers, or store managers – anything other than pastor.

The look on her face confirmed our reluctance and reinforced our uneasiness. Instantly, her expression turned from joy to sadness. She was visibly uncomfortable. We understood why and we were sorry. We felt deeply for her.

The cocktail hour ended but her story stayed with us. We learned a great deal that night about how to rise above our judgments.

In the English dictionary, the word consolation means “to be” (con) “with the lonely one” (solus). Offering consolation is one of the deepest and most powerful expressions of caring for the needs and suffering of another individual. Consolation is what helps break down the barriers and the prejudices that we all carry. Consolation means no longer looking at another individual as if his or her pain is something far removed from our own pain. In other words, we are no longer individuals on an individual journey; we are human beings on a human journey with one another. Consolation helps us respond to the woman who is lonely and has lost her son, the friend who is gay and has been treated as an outcast, the teenager who no longer feels as if she has a will to live, and the old man who sits in a nursing home with no one to visit him. When we offer consolation, the stranger is no longer a stranger, but rather our friend.

Why do we label people?

What compels us to define others and ourselves by (often) narrow parameters, putting one another into categories based on our jobs, looks, sexual orientation, religion or race? Is it because it’s easier? Is it because going beneath the surface may take us to uncomfortable places? Is it because going deeper into the core of our own or someone’s being may threaten our cherished beliefs or challenge our expectations?

After touring a church that had several outreaches into the community it served, including outreach to those who were gay and HIV positive or living with AIDS, we overheard one of tour group members criticizing that aspect of the church’s ministry:

“The church shouldn’t be open to just anyone. It’s not ‘Y’all come.’ I don’t believe that we should be welcoming those who are gay. Not unless they change their ways.”

This comment came from a woman who was married and divorced three times. Was she feeling a need to put down others in order to make herself feel better about her own history and the circumstances that marginalized her? We wondered if others failed to show compassion to her during her seasons of brokenness and pain. Is that why it was hard for her to show compassion to others who were broken and in pain too.

Have you ever been labeled “slow,” “fat,” “bad,” “selfish,” “lazy,” or “incompetent”? If so, how did it feel? Did it hold you back or keep you down? Have those labels – and countless others – made you feel unworthy, insignificant, ashamed, or disregarded? Have they made you feel restricted, inauthentic, or imprisoned?

Think about it.

When have labels hurt you and kept you from being who you really are? When have they sent the message that you are simply not respected? Considered worthy of goodness? Loved?

We wonder, how have the labels we place on one another kept us from truly being who we are meant and gifted to be? How much of life’s wonder, joy, beauty and goodness have we actually missed because our labels have blinded us to what is actually within us and around us?

One of the labels that we’ve experienced as most difficult to bear personally is that of “pastor.” When some people hear that we are pastors and have served in churches, they make certain assumptions about who we are and what we believe. They assume we are against certain things and in support of other things. They believe we have certain political beliefs. They assume we won’t be open to listening to them and their struggles because they believe that we will automatically be judgmental or critical. They assume that pastors have narrow interests and, often, rigid opinions. They, many times, don’t see us as fully human – with emotions, fears, needs and challenges just like everyone else.

A few years ago I (Michael) officiated at a wedding and then attended the reception that followed. Seated next to a man who had strong opinions on many subjects, the table conversation was entertaining. I enjoyed listening to him and sharing my own observations on many of the issues he brought up. At one point during the conversation he paused and very seriously exclaimed to me, “You know, you’re the first pastor I’ve ever talked to who didn’t make me want to vomit!”

I had never received a “compliment” like that one before. Bombastic as it was, though, I actually appreciated it. He saw me as likable, easy to talk with and as an actual human being, and not a stereotype of a pastor. But, it was too bad that he didn’t see other pastors before me in the same way. It was hard for him to shake the negative label.

How have labels hurt or affected you? How might you reflect on the labels you place on others, especially as you remember how Christ welcomed, touched, cared about, broke the rules for and loved the very people who were marginalized, scorned and labeled as unworthy in his era and time? 

We remember Jesus spending so much of his time with or speaking kindly about people whom the culture in his time devalued – tax collectors, women, children, lepers, Samaritans, prostitutes, those who lived with disabilities of many kinds, for example. He did not discriminate against them. In fact, the people he seemed most frustrated with were those with power, those who were self-righteous – those who shunned and harshly judged others and who attempted to exclude others from God’s love and care. They were the ones who received rebukes from him. Those who were culturally and historically marginalized received his compassion and his grace. He spent time with them, against the cultural dictates of his day, and knew the reasons that led to their circumstances. He treated others with dignity and grace, especially those whom the culture didn’t, thereby helping them to believe in their worth and showing them ways to live and to be, enabling them to see that a better way of living was possible. He wanted no one to be excluded from the goodness and grace of God and the abundant life of the spirit that God wants us all to possess.

In the church we often spend so much time focusing on the cross that we can sometimes forget what led Jesus to the cross. He showed love to people who were shunned. He touched those who were considered untouchable. And, he proclaimed that everyone belonged to God’s kingdom. It was all the rigid rules he broke that ultimately got him in trouble and sent him to Calvary. As we remember how he loved, we are given a deeper and fuller understanding of the cross and its compassionate significance for us.

We have to be honest. In writing this story about our involvement in an event with people who have historically been marginalized, judged and excluded in our culture and in the church, we had some fears. Knowing many people who have strong opinions about LGBT issues, especially as it relates to some religious understandings, we recognize that there will be people who challenge our involvement with those in that community. But our reading of scripture, especially in the life of Jesus, and in our experience listening to people’s stories, we see a very clear mandate to simply love one another and to offer grace in all circumstances. Jesus, in our understanding, was consistently about including people, offering compassion, accepting differences and loving others no matter their station in life, lifestyle or life circumstances. He respected, valued, nurtured, shared himself as well as meals with the people of his time and place, especially with those whom his culture dismissed. It was that love, nurture and sharing that gave him the                                authority to speak words into their lives that could help them grow, change and turn toward a life living in the grace and love of God.

We also see a clear message about grace. God is above all things gracious. God welcomes and loves all of us and desires for all of us to live an abundant life—abundant in love, abundant in joy, abundant in peace, and abundant in relationship with God and with one another.

We believe in a God who has created each one of us and who loves each of us unconditionally, with all of our different experiences, gifts, and lives. God wants none of us to be left out, nor left behind. Ever. We believe that God desires for every one of us to experience the eternal wonder and glory of God’s blessings and infinite goodness. Just because we may not always agree with someone else’s opinion or perspective on any given issue, doesn’t mean that we should diminish that person.

We’ll never forget the retired Southern Baptist pastor who sat before us and confessed that throughout his ministry he had always believed that people who were gay were outside the Kingdom of God. That was until his own son admitted he was gay, was diagnosed with AIDS and, sadly, died from the disease. With tears in his eyes, he told us that his opinion had changed when he was confronted with the realities of the child he dearly, unconditionally loved. Grace is born through this kind of love, the kind of a father for his son, for all the children he created.

In the words of Brother Robert L’Esperance, of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist:

This is what Christ calls us to do by his own word and example: to affirm the worth and dignity of every human being we come in contact with. Not to label others, not to dismiss them with a category and demean their humanity, but to call others by name as our God calls each of us by name. To value with compassion every other human being.

The fact is, everyone we meet has shared the same human feelings to one degree or another—loneliness, fear, and insecurity. No matter the circumstances or station of one’s life, all of us have likely felt undervalued and unworthy, unloved and unimportant at one time or another. Perhaps many times throughout our lives.

So, what do we do with that? We believe that because of our common humanity and vulnerability, we all need to offer grace to one another. We need to have humility and an attitude of generosity and compassion for our very common experiences.

No matter what our culture indicates, the Bible tells us that Jesus loves us all. No matter what. It is this divine love that breaks down barriers when we allow it to wash over us. It is this divine love that guides our relationships with one another.

The civil rights icon Rosa Parks once said, “You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.”

She also said, “Each person must live their life as a model for others.”

That’s simply what we try to do. It’s simply how we try to be.

Because as Henri Nouwen has written:

Only when we fully claim that God loves us in an unconditional way and look at “those other persons” as equally loved can we begin to discover that the great variety in being human is an expression of the immense richness of God’s heart.

Photo by Aranxa Esteve on Unsplash