Who died and left you judge?

I've blogged before about how I don't really watch TV anymore, which I only mention here to explain why, on a recent flight to Alberta, I spent almost the full four hours staring blankly at that tiny little screen on the back of the seat in front of me. I just wanted to see what's been happening in TV land since I last watched.

So I watched a show about some dancers who think they can dance, but find out from three well-dressed and articulate judges who know better, that they really can't in the end.

A show where people who sing ballads or juggle flaming chainsaws or some such stand under the scrutiny of their fellow Americans so that three discerning judges can tell them if their nation has any talent after all.

And a show about some people who think they know what to wear, but find out from well-meaning experts that, when it's all said and done, they don't really.

And I have to say: four hours later, I left the plane feeling really judged. Really. I can't dance anywhere near as well as the worst of those dancers who thought they could; and if they can't then where does that leave me? And I sing way worse than that guy who just got "x"ed off the stage; and if he sucks, then how long would I have lasted? I thought I knew what to wear, too, but now I'm not so sure, because I sure don't dress as sharp as that guy. And, of course, I use none of the gadgets, products, services or media that any of those 30-second narratives peppered between shows kept insisting I needed if I wanted to fit in.

For a fleeting flashback of a moment, I felt like I was in junior high all over again, standing, like I always did, in the wrong jeans with the wrong coloured school bag on the wrong side of the hall. I almost slunk off the plane.

But today, having recovered from all the gawking and name calling and finger-pointing, I'm left wondering: does our media-bombarded world walk collectively under a looming shadow of judgment like this all the time? Is this why shows like these are so popular after all, because they confirm for us what we always suspected about ourselves anyways: no one's good enough, but if I'm not, then at least I know they aren't either.

Do we judge because we feel judged?

But I'm also wondering about Romans 8:34. There Paul asks a question I always thought was little more than a rhetorical lead-in to the gospel, but after four hours of reality TV I'm hearing with new ears.

"Who is the one who condemns?"

Because if "reality TV" is a glimpse of anything real at all, then it's a glimpse of that system of social condemnation that we all participate in, and stand under, and perpetuate, and that is, perhaps, as old as civilization itself.

And that's where Paul's answer shines out as the Good News it really is. There really is only one who's in any position to condemn, because only he stands apart from this whole system of social condemnation, and thus is himself the only Righteous Judge: Christ Jesus.

And as Paul reminds us, the Good News is that this Judge has already passed his judgement on us. The verdict is delivered: in the cross we are found guilty of the worst godlessness and at the same time loved beyond all reckoning ("Forgive them Father they know not what they do" is a judgment on our ignorance as much as it is a plea for our forgiveness.) And in his resurrection victory over sin and death, Jesus judges all our hypocrisies and self-judgments and condemnation of others as the idolatrous systems of human power that they really are, unable to speak the final word on the value of human life.

In that perfect judgment he sets us free from the glare of those televised judges who stare us down from their benches on national TV, or where ever else their eyes are watching. He sets us finally free to love our neighbours as ourselves, knowing that we ourselves have already been judged and claimed by the love of God, and no power on heaven or earth can speak a word of judgment to the contrary.