Main news for 24 July 2022

These words of the apostle immediately make us come to our senses; they serve as an antidote to self-exaltation and to judging other people. If only we would always remember them!

My very existence is a gift, and how many beautiful things I have in addition to the bare fact of life! I have a heart, a mind, feelings, a will, a body, the love of parents and other people - for no reason at all! Simply because I am myself! I have the loyalty of friends and the love of animals, I have knowledge, a home, possessions, and many other things... I have the sun and stars, clouds and trees, I have heaven and earth, I have God! Everything I have has been given to me, and all of it was created by God for me!

Against this background, boasting before others, and all the more being proud, exalting oneself, and judging, is simply foolish. If one is to boast, then only in God, who gave me everything! The awareness that everything I have has been received as a gift not only helps me avoid self-exaltation, but also truly sets me free. For when I try to take possession of something - whether spiritual qualities or a material thing - I become unfree: what I have claimed is "clenched in the hand," and in that very way I "lose the hand," in the words of Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh. Life with such awareness gives true peace - humility - and gives rise to gratitude toward those through whom I received all this: toward God and people.

Continuing the conversation about ministry, Paul turns to another theme very important for the servant and for everyone seeking the Kingdom: the theme of judgment and evaluation both of the person himself and of his activity. The apostle's reasoning undoubtedly echoes the Savior's words: "Do not judge, and you will not be judged," and for Paul they prove to be the expression of one of the most important principles of life and of relationships between people in the Kingdom. The key to the apostle's understanding of the problem of judgment and evaluation is his remark that he not only has no concern for other people's evaluations of his activity, but does not even evaluate himself in any way (vv. 3-4). Judgment is God's affair; it will take place at the end of time, so one should not get ahead of events with hasty evaluations (v. 5). Only in this way can mutual self-exaltation be avoided (vv. 6-7), and therefore one can become faithful servants and witnesses of Christ and the Kingdom (vv. 1-2).

Such an approach is not accidental, if we remember that in the Kingdom each person receives precisely his own reward. The Kingdom presupposes not collectivism but community life. A collective is a purely human phenomenon, and therefore the criteria for evaluating each person in it will inevitably be purely human and, consequently, universal. Here standardization is inevitable, and a final evaluation both of everything done by a member of the collective and of judgment concerning the person himself is entirely possible. By earthly measures, a person proves to be only, in the words of sociologists, a "product of the environment"; in himself he means nothing, and everything he has done is valuable only insofar as it is useful "for society," or more precisely, for the particular collective to which the person belongs. In the Kingdom, however, only God can evaluate both the person himself and everything he has done.

Of course, in a community a person's relationships both with God and with neighbors are extremely important, but here the person does not become derivative of the community in the way that in our still untransformed world he often becomes derivative of society, of the collective. And in that case it becomes clear that neither the community as a whole nor any of its members individually can or should "judge" a person, that is, give a final evaluation of the person himself and of his activity. Of course, if certain actions contradict the Torah and the one who committed them does not repent of anything and regrets nothing, the situation becomes quite unambiguous; but in that case one can say of the offender that he brings God's condemnation upon himself. In all other cases, as we can see, it is better to refrain from evaluations until the end of time, when the One to whom the decisive word belongs at the Last Judgment will speak His word.

What the apostle Paul speaks about is one of the most difficult and at the same time most necessary things in Christianity. From a worldly point of view, the path that the Lord Himself takes and to which He calls His disciples is the path of failure, the path of humiliation. “We have become a spectacle to the world”—the Greek text uses the word θέατρον, theater, spectacle: people who are watched with derision. Jesus, who was welcomed as the Messiah—scourged and crucified on a tree. Paul, the most learned of the Jews—weak and forever persecuted, constantly insulted by his own children. Peter, the head of the new religious community—crucified upside down... Is such a path not madness? The Christian’s place is in this company. This is difficult, because we so greatly desire honor, recognition of our merits, and, finally, well-being. Paul’s experience is important to us because, together with those to whom he writes, we can see the One for whose sake he endures all this. And then, in response to our consent to become refuse and a laughingstock to the world, we will hear the Creator’s words: “You are precious in My sight” (Isa 43:4).