The Problem Isn’t Judgment. It’s How We Imagine It

Most people hear the word judgment and imagine a courtroom.
A verdict. A sentence. A life evaluated and a case closed.

But what if judgment isn’t a final verdict at all?
What if it’s something that happens every moment, guiding us toward a better future?

Judgment. For many people, simply hearing that word triggers a flood of thoughts, memories, and feelings. You may remember a parent’s disappointed look when a report card came home, being compared to another child who always seemed “better,” or having your wardrobe second-guessed. At school, you may have felt judged by your teacher when your paper came back covered in red ink, or by your classmates when you didn’t quite fit in or said the wrong thing at the wrong time. And you may remember going to church and hearing about a God who will someday judge your whole life, with dire consequences in the balance.

My book, Open and Relational Parenting, presents God from the perspective of open and relational theology and proposes that parents can mirror God’s loving nature to their children. In it, I discuss many divine characteristics, including God’s judgment. Several of my readers who are well-versed in open and relational theology have told me that the idea of divine judgment still raises many questions and emotions for them.

If we rethink the idea of divine judgment, it can shift from being scary to a loving response that gives us direction. When we examine it carefully, divine judgment turns out to be three unexpected things: it is momentary rather than final, aspirational rather than condemning, and deeply felt rather than emotionally detached. When we look closely at Scripture, theology, and our own experiences, divine judgment begins to look less like a final courtroom verdict and more like an aspirational, moment-by-moment response guiding creation toward a better future. We, as parents, can mirror that nurturant judgment as we guide our children into the future.

Scripture certainly points to the idea of a judgment after death. Speaking of an apocalyptic future, Daniel says that after death, some will arise to everlasting life, while others will be brought to shame.1 The writer of Hebrews says, “… people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.”2

On the other hand, many scriptures about judgment say that God will judge our actions, but do not say when. For example, the writer of Ecclesiastes says, “For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”3 Scriptures like this tell us that God will judge, but don’t point to a future, final judgment. Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”4 If divine judgment helps the blind see, it suggests that judgment happens now, not just at the end of time.

Regardless of our view of a final judgment, I think God’s primary judgment is momentary and serves to point us toward better decisions in the future. In process theology, God always lures creation toward the best possibilities available in a given moment. When we act, God responds to what actually happened. This response is divine judgment, not condemnation. It is a loving evaluation that preserves what is good and guides the next moment toward something better.

From a parenting perspective, God regularly says, “We’ll do better next time,” pointing to opportunities for improvement.

Scripture also presents different pictures of the nature of divine judgment. Sometimes it portrays God as an angry, vindictive, Zeus-like deity who smites people if they don’t perfectly comply with God’s direction. Examples include:

• Most of humanity’s destruction through the flood

• The annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrah

• The Israelites’ punishment for creating the golden calf

• Uzzah’s immediate execution for touching the ark of God

• Jonah’s confinement in the belly of a fish

Scripture sometimes paints a picture of God displaying divine condemnation and even retribution.

I am a pediatrician and theologian, not a Hebrew Scripture expert, so I look to scholars like Pete Enns ( Odds & Enns - A Substack by Pete Enns ) for help. He recognizes these portrayals of God and says, “[I do not] believe God passes out violent retribution like he’s sowing grass seed. I do believe that the Israelites believed these things about God. They imagined God in the only way that God would make sense to them - through the language and concepts of their time and place.”5 He summarizes this idea by saying, “God lets his children tell the story.”6 Ancient people often imagined God’s judgment as vindictive and condemning because that was how they understood the divine within their cultural world.

Alternatively, we can see God’s judgment as aspirational, pointing toward possibilities for a better future. Divine aspirational judgment is primarily concerned with helping creation move toward a better future. It offers an unbiased assessment of what we have done and points us toward what we can do better in the future. In this view, we can see God’s judgment as Alfred North Whitehead did, a “judgment of tenderness.” It doesn’t come from a cosmic prosecutor tallying sins, but rather from a loving parent who turns to a new page and says, “Here’s a better way forward.”

Jesus frequently exemplified aspirational judgment. His interaction with a Jewish tax collector who colluded with Rome against his own people convinced him to repay his debts and change his ways. He told stories, such as his parable about a son who took his inheritance early, ran away, and wasted it before returning home empty-handed, pleading for mercy. His father’s judgment was not condemning but aspirational, restoring the relationship and opening the future.

One of my favorite stories that demonstrates God’s aspirational love and judgment comes from John’s story of Jesus.

Early in the morning, he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and, making her stand before all of them, they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now, in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once again, he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”7

Here, Jesus shows us what God is like. He doesn’t defer to a divine judgment at the “end of time,” but instead shows what momentary aspirational judgment looks like. He clearly understands what the woman has done, yet protects her from the angry crowd by deflecting their anger. When the crowd has gone, Jesus sees the woman, shows loving mercy, and points her toward a better future. His statement isn’t a legalistic command to never do anything wrong again. It is an invitation to imagine a future that doesn’t repeat her past mistakes.

Jesus doesn’t condemn the woman. He sees her, makes a connection with her, and saves her from the crowd’s wrath. Yet he is not permissive. He doesn’t “look the other way” regarding her actions. Instead, he points to the possibility of better decisions in the future, saying, “Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.” He anticipates a better future and points her in that direction.

Realistically, this woman probably didn’t live a perfect life from that point onward. Even though she would likely fail, Jesus pointed her toward a flourishing life. When she failed again, God reminded her of divine love and said again, “Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

I was reminded of another aspect of divine judgment to consider during the Open and Relational Theology Online (ORTLine) conference last weekend. My dissertation advisor, Dr. Tom Oord ( Thomas Jay Oord ), noted that when he sees injustices in our world, he wants God to be angry. He was careful to distinguish this from a desire for God to punish. I agree. It seems that if God truly understands the world’s situations and sees injustice, God should sometimes be angry. The opposite of this idea also seems reasonable. If God sees moments when the world achieves truth, beauty, and goodness, God should be joyful. The question becomes, “Does divine judgment have feeling?”

After hearing Tom’s ideas, I considered them in the back of my mind overnight. The next morning, the issue hit me again during worship at Christ City Church. As my friend, Josh Cosby, led us in a musical prayer to God, we sang the lyric, “May the works of my hands bring you joy.”8 I stopped singing and thought about how we naturally expect God to respond to our actions with feeling. If I want God to be joyful when people do good things, it is only natural that I expect God to be angry, sad, and frustrated when people’s actions bring injustice and harm.

The idea that God’s judgment is not simply factual but also affective doesn’t come only from experience. It has a philosophical and theological basis. The philosopher and theologian, Charles Hartshorne, expands on Whitehead’s idea that God feels feelings and calls God the ultimate “feeler of feelings” of others.9 In this role of incarnation, God feels what we feel every moment.

Let’s explore this idea through the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which happened less than a mile from where I am writing. When Dr. King died, many people were affected and felt strong feelings. His family, friends, empathizers, and supporters undoubtedly felt sadness, grief, anger, outrage, fear, and anxiety. God saw what they were going through and felt their feelings. God didn’t simply know that Dr. King was dead or that his supporters were sad and angry. God felt these feelings and was sad and angry with them.

The complication that comes with this example is that God would have also “felt the feelings” of white supremacists who celebrated Dr. King’s death. Here, it becomes important to recognize that God’s “feeling of feelings” relates to divine judgment. God feels the mourners’ and supremacists’ feelings and weighs them with the assassination’s impact on the world. Responding to Dr. King’s death, I think God was sad and angry, empathizing with the mourners and recognizing that a path to flourishing had been thwarted.

God not only “feels our feelings” but also sees the possibilities in each moment that could have led toward overall well-being. I think God synthesizes judgment and feeling into affective judgment, understanding how each of us feels while leading us all toward overall flourishing. God can be angry when injustices occur and joyful when the world moves toward truth, goodness, and beauty.

Parents can use this view of divine judgment as a model for their relationships with their children. For some parents, the idea of “judging” their children seems distasteful. Other parents take to it so naturally that they are almost always in “judge-mode.”

In reality, we all necessarily judge our children. In any situation, we have aspirations for what they can choose to do that would be “best.” They may or may not follow our guidance. Regardless, we see their choices and actions and inevitably compare them to our aspirations and evaluate the outcome. This comparison is an example of momentary judgment. We don’t save up all of these momentary judgments for a monthly “report card” or an end-of-childhood assessment. Instead, we respond to our children each moment.

Similar to divine judgment, parental judgment involves feeling. In addition to seeing the cold facts of what happened, we experience our own feelings and perceive our children’s feelings. We may feel excited, joyful, sad, disappointed, or angry. We may sense that they experience happiness, pride, shame, fear, or anxiety.

We combine our aspirations, the child’s decision, and everyone’s feelings into a response that is aspirational rather than condemning. We avoid arbitrary punishments, instead relying on natural or logical consequences and developmentally sensitive communication to help them evaluate what they did and see the best options for similar future situations.

Putting this all together, imagine a child who hits a sibling during an argument. A condemning judgment might sound like, “What’s wrong with you? Why do you always do this?” An aspirational judgment sounds different: “I can see you’re really angry. Hitting hurts people. Let’s figure out what you could do next time when you feel this mad.”

When many people hear the word “judgment,” they imagine a courtroom. A judge sits behind the bench, a verdict is delivered, and the case is closed. If the judge is divine, everything is bigger, scarier, and riskier.

When we carefully look at stories from Scripture and ideas from open and relational theology, we see something different. Divine judgment is not primarily a final verdict waiting at the end of time. It is God’s loving response to each moment of our lives.

· It is momentary rather than final.

· It is aspirational rather than condemning.

· And it is deeply felt rather than cold and detached.

God sees what we do, understands our feelings with a “judgment of tenderness,” and preserves what is good while guiding us toward something better in the next moment of our lives.

Good parents practice this kind of judgment every day. When our children make mistakes, we do not declare a final verdict on who they are. Instead, we see what happened, feel the emotions involved, and point them toward a better possibility for the next time.

Many people assume judgment and love are opposites. Judgment condemns, while love forgives. Judgment closes the case, while love offers mercy.

But the story Scripture tells is different. Judgment is not the opposite of love. It is one way love works. It is a judgment of tenderness that refuses to give up on the future.

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