Fruit Inspectors

“You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty. In righteousness you shall judge your neighbor. .”

__Leviticus 19:15, NKJV

My dear VPGs

It is important to not read too much into God’s command in Leviticus 19:15.  

What it is not saying is that you must not make judgments.  To function in life (and more importantly to succeed in life) you must separate the wheat from the chaff, the sacred from the profane, the clean from the unclean, the best from the good and the right from the wrong. 

Matthew 7 contains the oft-repeated words of Jesus about not judging (Mt. 7:1-5).  But beginning with the very next verse, if you read the rest of the chapter, you will discover that Jesus then proceeds to give illustration after illustration of the need to make wise judgments.

In other words, there’s a difference between putting yourself in the place of being someone’s judge and making judgments.   

Only God knows the intent of the heart and all the many threads of chance and intentional choices that guide a person’s particular decisions and thus only He is qualified to make the final judgment about any person. 

But as it relates to you and those under your care, you have to make judgments in order to do what is best for your own life and for those you are responsible for.  This is called stewardship which means that you will be judged by God on how you handled the life-with-a-purpose that He gave you.   

So how do you make wise judgments? 

Fruit Inspectors

One rock-solid way is to learn the art of “fruit inspecting.”  Jesus described it this way: You will know them by their fruits. (Matthew 7:16) The context is false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 

These “sheep” look the part and apparently talk the talk (or is it they baa the baa) but a careful and prolonged observation of their life reveals inconsistencies. 

Wisdom and experience has taught you that sheep don’t eat meat, and they, for sure, are not cannibals – they don’t devour other sheep!  Yet these apparent “sheep” are eating other sheep.

Red alert!  The “fruit” doesn’t match the tree (to mix metaphors).  Jesus described it this way: Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?

So what to do? 

Be an unabashed fruit-inspector.  Don’t be their judge (that’s God’s part), but do judge your response to them from the results you see flowing from their lives.  If there is a trail of conflict and controversy surrounding them, keep you distance no matter how friendly and helpful they may seem.

If you notice (another word for inspecting fruit) that repeatedly, after spending time with someone, you depart feeling discouraged, less-than, and demoralized, then keep you distance. Why embrace negativity? There’s enough of that hitting your windshield without you rolling the window down.

An important hint

Especially listen to what people say.  Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Luke 6:45).  One thing wise fruit inspector do is ask a lot of questions and then they listen.  It doesn’t take long for people to reveal their hand once they start talking.

The good news is that there are plenty good people out there – fruitful with good deeds, honest lives, and godly wisdom.  Look for them diligently.  (Be one of them!)  These fruitful people are seldom the loudest and most flamboyant but…

Nerd alert!

…as J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about King Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, “All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost.” 

That night when Frodo & Co. ran into old Strider at the Prancing Pony Inn, they had no idea they had just met their King in disguise). 

That principle works in real life too.  Everyday people walk into and out of your life.  You never know by appearance who they really are – check the fruit from their lives. 

It may take a while, but the fruit tells the tale. 

Love, Papa

*****

Photo by Людмила Гуцалюк on Unsplash