The Bible, Planet Fitness, & Judging Others
No one likes to be judged, and we all tend to think that we don’t judge others. The reality though is that we are almost always judging others in our own minds.
PLANET FITNESS
Let me give you an example. I’ve been going to work out lately at Planet Fitness. And the motto or slogan at Planet Fitness has become, “Judgment Free Zone!” They work hard to make sure that you know if you come to work out there and you are not the most in shape person around that you will not be judged, looked down upon, or made fun of there.
However, Planet Fitness also has a sign up that says,“Lunk Alarm,” and defines a lunk as someone who grunts, drops weights, or judges others. The sign even gives an example of a lunk. It says, “Ricky is slamming his weights, wearing a body building tank top, and drinking out of a gallon water jug… what a lunk!”
In other words, they are saying, “We don’t judge people here at Planet Fitness, UNLESS they are lunks!” If you wear a body building tank top, slam your weights, and drink out of a gallon water jug, then we do judge you. You are not welcome here at our “Judgment Free Zone!”
When I first saw this sign, I just chuckled at the irony, but then it hit me that almost all of us do the same thing. We don’t want to be judged, and we declare that we are “judgment free zones” ourselves; however, most of us do at least judge certain kinds of people.
Even if we don’t judge “most people,” we usually have particular types of people or behaviors we look down upon, and here’s why…
SELF-JUSTIFICATION
We all feel the need to justify ourselves. To justify our existence, our significance, our meaning in this world. The easiest way to do that is to compare ourselves to others who we feel are making more of a mess out of their own lives than we are. Never mind that we may be failing at certain areas in our own lives, we can always find someone who is failing even more miserably than us in those same areas.
But what we will often do is highlight something in our own lives that we are trying to overcome or something we are trying to hold onto. I read a quote one time where someone said, “Everyone is either trying to prove or disprove who they were in high school.”
Maybe we were considered beautiful, and we are trying with everything we have to hold on to our beauty. Or maybe we were told that we were ugly, and we are trying to convince ourselves and others we are beautiful. Either way, we highlight in our own minds the features of others we find less attractive and use those to justify our own beauty.
Or maybe we were rich, and we are working hard to maintain our wealth. Or it could be that we were poor, and now our entire life is centered on proving we have what it takes to earn money and be rich. Once again, either way, we look to those who make less money and use them to justify what gives us meaning in our own minds.
It could even be religion or morality for us. We were the good kid growing up and are desperately trying to uphold that perception, or we were the rebel and are now trying to prove to everyone that we are not a bad person. Look around though, and we can find someone who isn’t as moral or who isn’t doing as many religious activities as we are. That way we convince ourselves that we are better, and God approves of us way more than them.
We may not even realize that we do this, but if most of us did some honest introspection, we would begin to see how much we self-justify in our own minds by judging others.
The problem with this is that other people are not the ultimate standard, and if you are in Christ, you have already been justified!
JUSTIFIED BY CHRIST
In Romans 5:1, the apostle Paul is writing to those who have put their faith in Jesus for salvation, and are therefore in Christ, and he says,
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.
You “have been justified,” Paul says. Past tense. It happened the moment you put your faith in Jesus by his grace, and you now stand in that grace. You have been justified, and you always will be justified.
And it wasn’t something you earned by being prettier than others, having more money than them, or even by being moral and religious.
Two chapters earlier, Paul says in Romans 3:22-24,
22 Righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
In other words, God is the standard, and we all fall short. And there is no amount of justifying behaviors or activities that will ever allow us to rise up to the standard. You can’t reach perfection if you’ve already failed at something.
So, righteousness and justification had to be given to us by Jesus through His finished work on the cross to forgive our sins and the regeneration that happens through the indwelling of the Spirit and our union with Christ.
NO NEED TO JUDGE OTHERS ANY LONGER
Therefore, if you have been justified by Christ, there is no need to ever judge others to justify yourself.
The next time you are looking down on others in your fleshly, self-justifying area of interest, renew your mind to the truth that you are already completely justified in Christ.
You are significant in Him. You have meaning in Him. You have worth in Him. Even if you don’t feel this way, it is still true, and you have no need to convince yourself based on another’s failures that you are ok.
This changes the way we see ourselves. It also changes the way we see others and the way we interact with them. It frees us from the bondage of having to use them in our minds to get something out of them for ourselves and instead frees us to value them, serve them, and love them the way Jesus does.