The bad habit of judging the circumstances of others …

When something goes wrong in the life of someone else, today’s followers of Christ aren’t very good at actually following His example of how He responded to those people.

If you examine the interactions of Jesus with people whose circumstances were tanking, His default response was love. He cared about their situation and routinely expressed compassion for them.

For some reason, Christians often seem to think there needs to be a prerequisite established before dispensing the love and compassion of Christ.

What is that prerequisite?

Judgment.

There seems to be a pattern of thinking among many Christians today that if someone finds themselves in troubling circumstances, something such as sin, poor judgment or bad decisions might be the root cause of their current condition. Taking that further, we justify in our minds that if someone brought on their problems because of sin, or even just from bad decisions, then we’re free of any responsibility of caring for people hurting in such situations. It’s as if we think we really only have a responsibility to help people who face terrible circumstances due to something that happened to them beyond their control.

But if you look at how Jesus responded to people, He didn’t waste any time examining the cause for someone’s failing circumstances; instead, He saw their need and cared about their suffering in spite of the root cause. Jesus was concerned about moving people forward from where they were, rather than digging through their past. That is not to say He didn’t care that sin may have caused their problems. As He healed their diseases and gave them hope, He added to that, “Now go, and sin no more.”

We, however, have an appetite for trying to find a thread of the salacious in reasons why people find themselves in the circumstances they face. The disciples expressed this attitude to Jesus when they made an immediate assumption about a blind man …

“As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. ‘Rabbi,’ his disciples asked him, ‘why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?'” John 9:1-2.

The disciples had made a judgment that sin had to be the reason for someone being born blind. But that wasn’t the case …

“’It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,’ Jesus answered. ‘This happened so the power of God could be seen in him,'” John 9:3.

Christians need to free themselves of the knee-jerk thought that if someone is going through trying times, they’ve done something wrong or sinful. Sometimes the most ordinary events of life can grab us in a way we cannot suspect, and bring about terrible circumstances.

That truth is revealed in an old story of an eagle who, on an early morning during the spring thaw, soared high above the forest looking for something to eat. As he followed the course of a river he looked down and spied a small rodent, trapped on a piece of ice that had broken free and was floating down stream.

Seeing an easy meal, he swooped down, landed on the ice, killed the mouse and began to eat. As he continued his meal, he saw that his perch was rapidly approaching a waterfall, but determined to finish eating and thinking he would rise into the air and to safety at the last moment, continued his course.

As the ice neared the falls, the eagle finished his last bite. Satisfied with his breakfast he spread his mighty wings and attempted to rise skyward as the chunk of ice tipped over the edge. While enjoying his meal, however, he had failed to notice that the warmth of his feet had caused his claws to become embedded in the ice. Try as he might, he could not dislodge them and free himself from what had now become the burden that would carry him to his death on the rocks far below.

This story has an eagle doing what is the normal and natural thing an eagle would do any given day, but something about the experience this time would have devastating circumstances. The same can happen for human beings. We get up some morning and follow the morning routine, and then head out the door into a day where the same kind of daily experiences will suddenly and unexpectedly bring about very different circumstances.

Not because of sin or anything other than we live in a world in which we are not in control of everything that can come to bare on our experience of life.

For every one of us, sometimes “life happens” and we find ourselves in a set of circumstances we desperately don’t want to be in. Can you imagine, then, how truly offensive it is in those times to experience Christians responding to such shifting circumstances with judgment rather than love or compassion?

There are times when, while helping someone move their lives forward, we must help them identify and address core reasons for their troubles because their circumstances have been caused by something they have done, and those behaviors must change. But that isn’t the starting point. Love and compassion are!

At least, if we want to follow the example of Jesus, they should be!

How do you respond to people in difficult circumstances? Do you focus on why they’re having trouble? Or is your first expression one of love and compassion for them?

Scotty