Today, the world is poised to honor the death (and eventually,the resurrection) of the exemplary spiritual hero and cultural icon, Jesus Christ. I am prepared to join in the somber celebration as well, for this day marks what Dr. Martin Luther Jr. considered "the great event...that stands at the center of the Christian faith." Before I do so, I want to remind you, my friends, and more importantly, my own troubled spirit, of the dangers of premature judgement. In this post, I want to highlight the effects of judgement in three different contexts. I by no means intend to equate each with the others. However, I do believe we all still have more to learn from the life of Jesus, Rwandans and Reverend Wright.It is believed that some two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ, the radical Palestinian Jew, was judged and murdered as an enemy of the state. He was criticized and abused by the self-righteous, intolerant, hypocritical and deceptive leaders of his time. The Pharisees, one of the most influential religious-political coalitions in the Roman Empire, were at the time the chief morality police force that led the charge against Christ. They were excessively rigid and intolerant of the slightest deviation from tradition and the rule of law. Jesus discerned their hypocrisy and chastised them frequently for caring more about regulations than their relationship with God, their public 'religious' observances than their intimate spiritual commitment to the Creator. He publicly denounced their professed moral superiority and troubled their spirits when he called them 'a brood of vipers' and 'whitewashed tombs'--beautiful on the outside, but filled with dead bones and impurities on the inside. Jesus' righteous indignation earned him much attention and (unfair) criticism. He did not apologize or conveniently alter his stance for public approval, for he knew the treasures of the alternative moral matrix to which he subscribed: truth, justice, service, love and boundless compassion. For his supposedly 'harsh' claims and refusal to deny his role as The Christ, he was forced to endure excruciating torture and a painful death. Without a doubt, his death is the result of public judgement.
Sadly, Jesus is not the only one who has suffered as a result of judgement. We've all had needless pains because of someone's judgement. After all, judging is a universal habit and deadly transgression. Judging, one could argue, is a two-edged sword. We have all been responsible for condemning others, at times to the point of public humiliation. And conversely, we've all been 'buked and scorned' at one point or another. Unfortunately, our judgement often brings pain, sorrow and shame to the hearts of its recipients. And at times, judgement is so severe, so intense, that it leads to intense waves of persecution--a burden we can seldom shoulder on our own. From a broader perspective, it must be noted that some of the world’s greatest tragedies have been results of poor or uninformed judgement. The Rwandan genocide is a prime example. It has been 14 years since approximately one million Rwandans died in the name of 'politics' and 'ethnicity'. Bodies were shot, sliced, smashed, abused, pulverized, hacked, discarded and, in some cases, crucified on trees. All this happened because at different points in history, one particular ethnic group perceived the other to be evil due to the colonist divide-and-conquer strategy and propaganda campaigns. The classifications Hutu and Tutsi, which were once socioeconomic designations, became 'ethnic' when the Belgian colonial regime judged each citizen according to height and facial structure as it instituted identity cards in 1932. The two groups became divided communities between whom there was no welcome social intercourse. Each was ignorant of the other's histories. And although the streets are no longer littered with corpses today, the effects of poor judgement are still plain to see. There are currently thousands of bones lying in mass graves, more than half a million orphans around the country, and just as many unemployed widows searching for hope. In this case, overcoming the effects of poor judgement is not an easy task. The past, it seems, never really becomes the past. Instead, for Rwandans, it is an ever-present reality.
The recent firestorm surrounding the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ affords us yet another take on the effects of judgement. FOX News, the Pharisees of our day, tried to reduce the ministry of this activist-preacher to a 30-40 second sound bite. Because of this rage-heavy clip, millions of Americans labeled Reverend Wright a 'racist', anti-semitic and unpatriotic. His life's work of fighting against racial and economic injustice, collaborating with multiple faith groups and serving in the military for six years was all erased--or rather, conveniently ignored-- in the public imagination. I can't be a modern-day Peter and deny this minister. I do know him and, yes, I admire him. He has worked diligently to serve the poor in the Southside of Chicago, to add epistemic diversity to the academy by constructing an Afrocentric Christology as another way of understanding Christ, and to puncture the culture of (selective) amnesia that plagues America. He reminds those of us young activists that despite the improvements over the last forty years, we cannot forget enslavement, Jim Crow, the Klan and the persisting economic inequalities of our time. While some may not agree with Rev. Wright’s remarks or delivery, he has showed the world that the United States, though integrated, remains unreconciled. In addition, through the recent unfair campaign against him based almost exclusively on the 30-second YouTube sound bite, we see how quick the masses are to condemn, even with their limited understanding of an individual.
The stories of Jesus, Rwandans and the Reverend Wright invite us all to start anew. In our assessment of others, let us seek a holistic analysis of an individual's character and history. Resist the conveniently simplified summaries of an individual's life and deeds. Dig deeper; search for more. Be wary of criticisms that amplify and accentuate only what is wrong with an individual, for it's quite possible that it's only a part of the story. Dear friends, may we be ever aware of the effects of our judgement.
Blessings,
jr
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