We live in a judgmental culture.  Its destructive barbs and slurs are all around us – on social media and cable news, in local newsfeeds like NextDoor Digest, or even letters sent to the Pine Cone.

David Brooks recently wrote, “Though as a culture we object to judgmentalism, we live differently than we say we live. There’s moral judgment all around.   I teach at Yale, which has gone through moral crusades over race, gender, and other things. It’s not that there’s no moral judgment going on; it’s that sometimes the judgment doesn’t admit its name.  For example, when you watch other parents with their kids, you judge them right away. But we pretend that we’re tolerant of all things.”

Judgmentalism separates us from our fellow human beings.  It is corrosive and self-righteous. We rightly condemn it.

We reject judgmentalism. So, do we also reject God’s judgment?

Many in our culture don’t believe in a Final Judgment.  According to a Pew Research poll, while older folks tend to maintain that belief, less than fifty percent of those younger don’t – and that includes many Christians.

But, could it be we’ve judged wrongly about God’s Judgment?  Are we equating human judgmentalism with God’s Final Judgment?  These two are very different!

This week we’ll examine this challenging belief in our Apostles’ Creed:  “He (Jesus Christ) will come again to judge the living and the dead.”

There was a powerful reason those early Christians put that belief into their grassroots faith.  We’ll consider their reasons — and reasons from Scripture.