Out of the Courtroom, into the Father's House

Excerpt from Chapter 8: “Into the Courtroom: the function of judgment in the place of loss” Significantly, the invitation to look at the courtroom was not just an invitation to look at the judge: “look at what goes on in a courtroom...”. Through this wider lens we see that “judgments” constitute only one aspect of life in the courtroom. In fact, only a tiny portion of actual courtroom time is spent in the rendering of a legal judgment concerning guilt or innocence. The vast majority of courtroom time is spent in the presentation, gathering and consideration of evidence concerning the case at hand. Even when “judgments” are delivered from the bench during a trial they are largely rulings about the admissibility or inadmissibility of evidence. We see what in retrospect seems obvious: evidence is the life blood of the courtroom. Everything received there is received as evidence... So it is in the spiritual courtroom of this world and of each of our hearts. As judges we are continually gathering evidence. In so far as we remain the judge of our own lives, everything that happens to us—all that people say and don’t say; the looks we receive; the words of cursing and of blessing that come to us—all of it comes as evidence in the core of our being—in the place where the deep agonizing questions live: “Who am I? Am I loved? Am I lovable? Do I belong? Am I safe? Does my life have meaning? Do I have a purpose?” We gather evidence of our innocence in the face of condemnation. We may even gather evidence to establish our guilt when we have been pronounced innocent! We gather evidence when we are hurt or offended, but also when we are applauded! We gather evidence whether we fail or succeed; whether we find something or lose something; when the pastor speaks to us; when he looks past us; when our friends call; when they don’t. We gather evidence to justify the judgment we’ve already “handed down” and the one for which we’ve just begun to build a case. Everything in our life is received as evidence about whether we are loved or unlovable; included or excluded; secure or vulnerable; useful or useless. This is life in the courtroom. It’s all about evidence all day every day for the heart where Jesus is not enthroned as the only righteous judge. No wonder that when the call to walk the “more excellent way” of love comes to us in our courtroom [1Cor. 12:31], it comes as an offensive violation of the legal system in place there! How (our flesh cries out) can we function here—how can we manage our life in this world—if we “keep no record of wrongs” [1Cor. 13:5]? What? We just throw out all the evidence?! In the New American Bible, the phrase is translated this way: “[love] does not brood over injury”. A telling translation. As we accumulate evidence we are often like a hen “brooding” over her eggs. We hatch a “case”; we sit on it; we keep it warm; it grows. And the offspring of that brooding becomes an ugly duckling of our own birthing. This throws light on a very common pattern of human behavior: so often we react to others, and they to us, in ways that seem out of proportion to the situation at hand. Why does that one little critical thing I say to you in this moment set off such a strong reaction? Why do these few words from you make me feel far worse—more worthless, rejected and angry—than they “ought” to? Even I may feel shocked by the extreme nature of my own response, and may find myself saying, “Why do I behave this way?”, or, “Where did that come from?”. In the face of this type of experience we may tell ourselves that we have reacted this way because this one relatively minor thing someone said is, after all, the “last straw”! But what is the “last straw”? Is it not simply the latest piece of evidence in a long chain of evidence we have been gathering? When we say “the last straw”, we are describing a reaction to something more than the thing that has just happened—more than the “straw” of this moment. We are saying that straws have been gathered over a period of time and bound together in our hearts into one thick bundle that has become too strong for us to break. We no longer have the freedom to respond simply to each little “straw” as it comes to us. Every little straw has been given the power to hit us like a baseball bat, bound up, as it is, to all the others! That one straw might have come as a slap in the face—a slight irritation in the moment—but when we’re wacked by a two foot thick bundle of straw it has the potential of altering the course of our day! And it often does. This is true of all of us in so far as we live in the courtroom. The event of this moment is heavier than it appears to be: it carries all the weight of yesterday’s events and those of the day before, and so on, way back in some “cases” into the distant past—perhaps so distant that its root is long forgotten. But we do know the place where the practice of gathering evidence is ultimately rooted. Before we go on to look more deeply at the implications of all this, let’s look backward briefly. The garden: a last look Just as Genesis [3:1-6] describes human judgment, so too it chronicles the gathering of evidence—that “gathering” and the judging which follows being inseparable. The serpent tempts Eve to enter into the courtroom by tempting her to gather and consider evidence. His method is simple and effective. He tempts and teaches her by setting the example. As the prosecuting attorney, he simply treats God’s word as though it is evidence. He puts Eve on the witness stand: “Did God really say...”? Then, taking the stand as a witness for the prosecution, he presents evidence in rebuttal (unsubstantiated, false evidence we might add): “You will not surely die..”. He builds his case for disobedience: “...your eyes will be opened...you will be like God...you will know...”! Everything that is said and all that is not said comes as evidence in the serpent’s courtroom, where Eve has been invited to weigh that evidence and to judge God’s word, after due deliberation. Her judgment is based upon the evidence presented. We hear this clearly in the evidentiary justification of the judgment being rendered [vs.6]. From that list it is clear that Eve’s judgment of God’s word is based upon both the evidence presented to her (she would gain wisdom) and that which she herself has gathered (the apple was “good for food” and “pleasing to the eye”). The gathering of evidence leads to the human embrace of idolatry through the judgment of good and evil.