Fear of Judgment is Wisdom's Beginning

JudgmentYou know, in America, we’re all born into a culture of “once saved, always saved”. A Protestant-evangelical culture so strongly influenced by this tenet of Baptist religion, that even we Orthodox tend to think of ourselves as “in”, as somehow saved by affiliation, and somehow being of the Faith is reduced from a continual pattern of behavior to merely belonging to the right group.

It’s important to belong to the right group, but that doesn’t keep me from being a tare, a goat, and kindling for the fire. It doesn’t ensure that my lamp is trimmed and full of oil when the Bridegroom comes. It does not mean that I have visited Christ in prison, or given him a place when he was a stranger. And it won’t keep me from going into the Great Apostasy which is comprised not of heterodox, but of Orthodox Christians. In short, being Orthodox, if that’s a static affiliation or mere attendance at liturgy, or even being admitted to Holy Communion – won’t save me. Being Orthodox will save me, surely, but that’s because being Orthodox is so much more than that. The struggle is not to be called Orthodox, not to be regarded as Orthodox, not even to regard myself as Orthodox, but rather it is to actually continually BE Orthodox. There is no “saved”; there is only “being saved”. Often that phrase is used in the “I’m an unfinished work” manner, as an excuse, but there’s no excuse for lack of progress, for indolence, or for at any time being un-Christlike. There can be no excuse, since we are given what we need.

This leads us, with the fathers, to say “God knows his sheep; I am one of the goats.” and “All will be saved, while I alone am condemned.” and “Murderers will be saved before me.”

It is not really our business to apply these sayings to others – only to ourselves. The occasion I find to wonder what makes others tick is when they are Orthodox and persecuting me, or persecuting those I love, or persecuting each other. I watch them, and think about what they’re doing, and try to imagine what must be going on in their minds. And I think I have come to a conclusion, based on my own experience. They don’t fear judgment. They know, doctrinally, that there’s a Judgment. But they don’t know it prophetically – they don’t know it in such a way that it strikes to the heart the way it did David when, after he’d pronounced what should happen to the evildoer, the prophet replied to him, “Thou art that man!” And he was cut to the quick. He trembled, struck to the core. The words cut to the bone. They were a foretaste of the fire that burns away dross, be it flesh or soul.

When I see them come with the coals and pincers, I see that they don’t fear judgment. They feel secure. They do not believe that God is watching them, and will repay them as the sown wind reaps the whirlwind. They are not afraid; they are heedless. Their eschatology has fallen by the way. Indeed, they do not fear God. God who will bring vengeance and the sword. God who will judge us by the measure we use to judge. God who remembers our words so that we will hear them on that day, and records our deeds in the book of Judgment, so they will be recounted. God who preserves the witnesses, indeed our victims, great and small, who though they are going into the fire, will first turn and point the finger at me, and their punishment will be less, because I have caused them to stumble and harden their hearts against God. I may have been correct, but I was wrong; I may have accurately judged their sin, but mine was greater; they may have deserved judgment, but I presumed to be the Judge and meet it out to them, and so now I will receive such attention to my more numerous sins. And if I can’t see that my offenses are countless by comparison, then, say all the fathers, I am deluded, but even that delusion, brought on by my passion, will not save me.

Judgment comes. The Judge will sit enthroned. And all my life will be sifted. Weighed. Tried in a furnace. Melted away where it is dross.

I speak of this, because I know that I have not feared Judgment nearly as much as I would be wise to do. But when I see those who seem not to fear it at all, I am amazed. They do not believe the flood of fire is coming. It’s a vague theory, not a present reality. I don’t see how they can live – how they can bear an existence, actually, in which there is no Judgment. Truly, if there is no final accounting of all that men have done, then life is absurd, and all of us are madmen in a grand asylum, muttering useless convictions about nothing. Only where men give account of it all does life make sense, is rational worship possible.

Somehow, if we say that justice will be done, if I use that word, I seem to let myself off the hook – is it just that I will account for every little thing? But God’s justice is not my justice. It will indeed be every little thing. Every thing I’ve willingly or heedlessly forgotten. The mote I see as a speck. And there is a very real possibility I will go into the fire. Our teaching makes no bones about this. We are not guaranteed deliverance if we just attend liturgy some. We are told that the means of salvation is genuinely forgiving one another, not repaying evil for evil, loving the poor and outcast of the world and persecuting no one, treating others as we prefer to be treated, indeed loving them as ourselves. Without this, not to fear judgment is insane. I would believe that the persecutors have done all these things, since they seem to think so, except that they again bring the tongs and the flame, and wreak pain on their brothers.

Lord have mercy. I am kindling who desires to be useful wood, but am fit only for the fire. Burn me by their tongs, and purify me, that I might be saved from the eternal fire, forgiving them as Thou dost.

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