Steps of Judgement

Over the years I’ve been accused of coming up with many a strange link in these pieces; perhaps this is one of the strangest.  My feet recently led me <groan> to think of Judas Iscariot.  Read on before you condemn the idea as total nonsense.

When I say that I love walking, what I really mean is that I like the idea of being in the open, with the sun streaming down around me, and a gentle breeze tickling my face.  In my imagination, I’m looking over a broad stretch of rolling meadowland to an historic village nestling in the woodland below.  The only trouble is that, to arrive at such an idyll, one has to walk.  My feet aren’t best friends with thick socks and walking boots.  They get sore and, through the lack of years of practice, my legs and ankles ache after just a short walk so, far from being the delight it should be, this is something of a challenge to be undertaken only rarely.

During Jesus’s earthly lifetime, there were no cars or cycles. He and his disciples walked everywhere: possibly barefoot.  We simply cannot comprehend a lifestyle like that.  For us walking is a leisure activity; for them it was a way of life that is beyond our modern understanding.

Now, like my feet and walking boots, the disciples were not best friends with understanding.  They had their problems; the gospels are strewn with phrases like, ‘Do you still not understand?’(Mat. 16:9), and ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time?’ (John 14:9).  Words like this show just how far they were from thinking like their Master.  Judas was most spectacularly not on Jesus’ wavelength.  One line of thought says that Judas believed he was hastening the fulfilment of Christ’s mission by turning Him in to the temple guard.  In a sense he was, of course, but not in the way he expected.  So much so that he took his own life in remorse that he had so misjudged the Saviour of mankind.

The expression “Don’t judge a man until you have walked a day in his shoes” was quoted in the film ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’.  It is credited to the first century rabbi Hillel, but whoever originally said it, the words represent a caution that I find myself in almost daily need to remember.  Who am I to say that walkers are eccentric fanatics?  And who are they to say I’m a wimp for not following their healthy example?  After all, Jesus taught us, ‘Do not judge, or you too will be judged’ (Mat. 7:1).

By the way ... how did I do with that link?