The Sky is blue....or is it? Our expectations v God's Plan

I was recently asked "Why are so many Christians judgmental? ".  It is a question I have struggled with myself,  mostly because I see so much of it in me. It is one of the biggest complaints non-Christians have with Christians. I have seen it tear apart friendships, marriages, families and churches. We all do it. We are all effected by it. We know we are all flawed, so why are we so quick to judge the imperfections in others, especially those in the world?

It finally hit me. The question answers itself. It is because we are imperfect, we see imperfectly and have imperfect expectations.

I think it is like a child, who after playing outside day after day realizes the sky is always blue. He is curious as to why, so reads and studies to find the explanation. He soon determines that the sky is blue because the way creation works makes it blue. It is beautiful and marvelous how so many things come together to give us a blue sky! He feels he understands what makes it so, glories in this revelation and runs to share it with others. Than one evening, he goes outside, and the sky is red. It is the complete opposite of what his experience and study has told him to expect.


He now has a choice. He can decide decide to ignore the red sky and continue to believe the sky is always blue. He can try to tell the sky that it is not behaving the way it should and must come back into alignment with the laws of nature. or He can recognize that he was wrong in believing the sky is always blue, go back and study and learn more about the sky.

When we judge others, in a way, we have decided to believe that the red sky is not behaving according to the laws that govern it.

As Christians we work, study, and pray to understand God and world around us. We read scripture, listen to pastors and teachers, study the writings of great men and women of God who have gone before us, pray for wisdom and guidance, then draw conclusions about the way things are supposed to be. Often, frequently, we fail to realize, there is much more to it all than we can see, think, or imagine. So when the sky turns red, when people and situations don't work they way they are "supposed" to, we judge them to be working against God. We assume since they don't live up to our experience, understanding and expectations, that they are wrong.

What we fail to recognize, is that maybe we are wrong in our understanding.

Sin and our limited human comprehension prevent us from seeing the entire situation. We claim "The Bible says...", and fail to realize that God has not revealed everything to us. So while what the Bible says is always true, we are missing information. We forget that our human comprehension is flawed, so how we understand God to be may not be what God is.

We yell at the red sky "You are wrong", while God is whispering "You don't know it all". We relish in the purity and whiteness of snow falling from a blue sky, while God says, "At its center, it is a speck of dirt. It is not what is seems."

We preach how the sky is always supposed to be blue. Families are always supposed to have a husband and wife in a life long relationship with respectful obedient children. Singles should be chaste at all times. A mother should never murder her unborn child. We should always forgive, immediately, without hesitation or second thought. Pastors should only preach correct doctrine......and we are technically right. That is the way God has revealed to us it should be.

But the sky does turn red, and it is beautiful, and it is God's plan and design. Marriages break up. Children rebel.  Friendships are destroyed. We can't find it in ourselves to forgive. The pain of life takes longer to heal than we think it should. We can yell at the sky that it needs to turn back to blue with well meant intentions and a desire for restoration, but we aren't going to change it because we don't fully understand it. God is using all the dust, dirt and bent rays of light to His glory. We can call them what they are. We can point out the distortions, but God is using it all to refine, to restore, to give us a glimpse of His unfathomable plan and to demonstrate His glory. We focus on what we see, while God works on the unseen.  Even though the sky isn't blue, He makes it beautiful....

Because God knows something we don't know...

We are wearing sunglasses....

And the sky isn't blue at all.....it is clear...and the blue is only a reflection of Him.