Posts tagged judgement

Mark 14:3-9 

 ³While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

 ⁴Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? ⁵It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.

 ⁶“Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. ⁷The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. ⁸She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. ⁹I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

I am such a judger.

I’ve been struggling through a lot of different ideas lately, but one that sticks out to me today is the question of “How then should we live?”. I have a hard time reconciling the fact that 16,000 children die of hunger everyday and the fact mega-churches across America choose to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on technology in order to keep their churches “advancing with the culture.” I hear stories of churches spending upwards of $10,000 every Sunday in order to run their multiple-times-a-day technologically savvy worship services and I think to myself, “What a freakin’ waste! All that money could be going to starving children who really need it.” 

I was talking to some friends the other day about these very issues and I was reminded of the above passage (Mark 14:3-9). My judgement is wrong. Not that I now support the mega-church-style, because I don’t. But perhaps the time that I take to judge churches/organizations/people would be better spent in reflecting on my own life and making sure that I am doing “beautiful things” for the glory of Jesus.