How to Avoid Being “the Church Lady”

I recently had a wake-up moment. I was reading the gospel story that includes the parable about leaving the 99 sheep to find one that was missing.

In case you don’t recall, Jesus was giving a long set of instructions to his disciples when he touched on the subject of God’s view of “people who go astray.”

“What do you think?’ he asked. “If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray.”

I’ve heard the story dozens of times and have always assumed that I’m among the 99 – even feeling a little wounded because there’s more rejoicing over the one that is lost. But why did it never occur to me that I’m the lost one?

Slow to Wake Up
I would bet many believers feel the same, but I don’t know how many are as slow to wake up to this as I was.

Anyway, I decided to write about this because I came across a quote from Pope Francis that says, “The root of every spiritual error is believing ourselves to be righteous.” And feeling oneself to be among the righteous leads to being judgmental.

Being judgmental, at least for a Christian, is toxic. Jesus was pretty clear: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.”

In my experience, the term “judgmental” is almost always applied to religious people by people who are not. And that’s understandable. Being judgmental is sort of an occupational hazard for believers, who try to follow their faith’s moral guidelines. When you follow a set of guidelines, you tend to apply them to others to see where they fall short.

A Bit Tricky

But I think there’s a bit of confusion about the subject. It’s a bit tricky, actually. Following moral standards doesn’t make you judgmental. It means you’re taking your faith seriously and applying it to your life across the board.

And you must use your standards – which are often shared with society – to asses others. People of faith who refuse to see the evil committed by clergy who prey on children, for instance, would be missing the point of having moral standards. You use your standards in raising children, deciding who to work for, who to vote for, who to marry.

Using his moral standards, Jesus himself was unyielding in his criticism of the religious leaders of his day. But I don’t recall one instance in the gospels of him condemning an individual, assuming that the person was “lost.” On the contrary, he emphasized that only his Father could determine that.

Seldom Know Their Stories
Fact is, we seldom know what motivates others. We seldom know their stories. Being judgmental means ignoring that fact and taking on God’s job of determining the worth of others. It’s also impossible to know, or understand, another’s relationship to God or the person’s problems with that relationship.

Part of being judgmental, I believe, is an exaggerated sense of our own righteousness and under-estimating the need for forgiveness, of being the lost sheep and not among the 99. The super-smug “church lady,” expertly played by Dana Carvey on Saturday Night Live of the 70s and 80s, comes to my mind.

People searching for God must do so with humility, judging without being judgmental. At all costs, we must avoid, as Pope Francis reminds us, the error of “believing ourselves to be righteous.”