I Use The Same One For Everything

You have one and you use it everywhere.

You worked it out years ago, and it is memorable to you and not to anybody else, and it has never once failed you. You can get into everything you need to get into, on the first try, every time.

By any ordinary measure that is a working system.

And yet there is a small permanent weight attached to it, and it has been there for years, and it comes up whenever anybody near you mentions the subject.

It is not fear. You are not lying awake. It is closer to the feeling of having left something undone that somebody, somewhere, would frown at.

Now let me ask the question that has never been asked out loud. Who is that somebody?

Not a person you can name. Not your son, who has never mentioned it. Not the man at the counter, who has certainly never asked. Not anybody who has ever spoken to you about it in your life.

It is a general disapproval with no face and no address, and it has been charging you a small fee every month for years, and it has never once had to say who it is.

Who art thou that judgest another man's servant

There is a verse that asks a question about who has standing to judge, and it is very direct.

Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand. (Romans 14:4, King James Version)

Who art thou. It is not a gentle rhetorical flourish. The verse is asking an unnamed critic to produce credentials.

And the answer, in the context, is that the critic has none. A servant answers to his own master, and to nobody standing at the side of the road.

You are a servant standing before your own master, and no unnamed voice has ever once had the standing to grade a man in his own house. Romans 14:4 asks who art thou that judgest another man's servant, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that question land on a disapproval that has no face.

Notice what the chapter is actually about. It is about people with different practices, over ordinary domestic matters, judging one another. Real differences. Not one of them sinful.

The verdict of the chapter is that the differences are allowed and that the judging is not.

You have been living under a judgment Scripture explicitly does not permit, and a difference in how a man arranges his own household has never once been a fault. The Holy Spirit is the one who reads a chapter's direction correctly, and it is written that the standing and falling belong to a man's own master.

And there is the last line, which is where the weight actually lifts. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand.

The verse does not merely dismiss the critic. It goes further and promises the servant will be held up, and gives the reason as God's ability rather than the servant's arrangement.

You were never being held up by the quality of your arrangements, and no system a man devised has ever once been the thing keeping him standing. The Spirit of God is the one who holds a man up regardless of how he organizes his own affairs, and Scripture puts the holding on God's ability rather than on anybody's method.

What is actually true about your system

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not lift a weight that has been there for years.

Here is what I am not going to do. I am not going to give you a lecture about how these things ought to be arranged. That lecture is available everywhere, it is usually delivered by somebody twenty years younger, and it has never once helped a person who is already managing.

What I will say is this. The thing you have devised is doing a job it was devised to do, and you have never once been locked out, which is more than a great many people can say. Nobody ever taught you a better way, and a gap in the teaching is not a gap in the man.

You have a working arrangement that has never once failed you, and something that works has never been the same thing as something to be ashamed of. The Spirit of God is the one who values what a person actually built, and Romans 14:4 puts the assessment in the hands of a man's own master.

And here is the second half, which is about the guilt rather than the method. Notice that the weight has never once produced a change.

Years of it, and nothing has ever been different afterward. That is not a coincidence. Guilt with no face attached to it cannot produce action, because there is nobody to satisfy and no standard that has ever been stated.

It is a tax and not a warning, and it has been collecting quietly for years without ever delivering anything.

You have been paying a tax that has never once bought a single thing, and a weight with no name attached has never been able to tell a man what it wants. The written word asks the critic to produce credentials, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man ask that question out loud in his own kitchen.

Name the judge

Now the small thing, and it does not involve changing anything at all.

I am not going to ask you to rearrange anything. That may be a conversation worth having one day with somebody you trust, and it is not today, and it is not what the weight is about.

Say out loud the name of the person you have been feeling judged by.

You are able to ask out loud who has been doing the judging, and one question said in an empty room has never once cost a man anything. Romans 14:4 asks who art thou, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when a man puts the same question to a feeling he has carried for years.

And go looking properly. Run through the actual people. Your son. Your daughter. The man at the bank. The fellow on the radio. Anybody who has ever said one word to you about it.

Nearly always there is no name. And when the list comes back empty, say that out loud too. There is nobody.

Because the weight has survived this long by never being asked to identify itself, and it cannot survive the question.

You are asking a nameless thing for its name, and no disapproval has ever once been able to answer that question and keep its hold. The Spirit of God is the one who is standing there when a man finds out the room is empty, and it is written that a servant stands or falls to his own master and to nobody else.