Pseudo-Code

A lifetime and a half ago, I was working as a systems/software developer for an up-and-coming company in Duncan, SC.  Our mainstay?  Analyzing manual work systems and enabling our clients to collect data and use it to make things better.  This was in the day and age when there was no iPhone app for that.  There was NO IPHONE!!  We barely had electricity and did our math homework on the back of a flat shovel with a piece of coal because we had no pencils ….

ANYWHO …. One of the industry buzzwords that one of my bosses latched onto was “pseudo-code.”  He would come in and want me to develop this elaborate software FIRST in pseudo-code, basically in English as a sort of logical walkthrough.  I always resisted and didn’t see the point in doing the work TWICE.  Why not just code it??  We all understood the actual code, so why would we create a false code, other than to fulfill the popular buzzword???  Never saw the point in that …

This week I was talking to some friends who asked an interesting question:  “Why don’t you preach a sermon about how judgemental people become when they start following Christ?”  Why do people find Christ and then, all of the sudden, become super-judgemental?

I attribute that to the pseudo-code of the day.  Pseudo means “false… Pretend…  Unreal.”  We, as the church, are sometimes guilty of developing a false culture.  A culture in which everyone must DO the same things, like the same movies and books, listen to the same music, dress the same way.  And when someone doesn’t do these things, we judge them.  Sometimes we even cast them out.

HOW TERRIBLY FRIGHTENING AND DANGEROUS!!!!!!!  It is one thing to hold each other, as the church, to a biblical standard.  We are DEFINITELY called to do that.  IN LOVE.  But it is an entirely different thing to hold each other to a standard we have developed.  Because RIGHT and WRONG all becomes subjective.  At the whim of the PERSON who dictates the culture.  The IMPERFECT PERSON who will also make mistakes.  It becomes a Pseudo-Culture.

We talked about this on Wednesday evening at EBC.  It does seem far easier to attempt to TELL everyone how to live, what to wear, and what to do in life.  When we do this, we are bordering on telling the world “YOU MUST BE LIKE US BEFORE YOU CAN BE SAVED!” We are selling short the process of Sanctification, which is not our job but the job of the HOLY SPIRIT.

As the church, we are called to deal with the HEART CONDITION.  To Go Make Disciples.  To Baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  And to Teach them THE WORD OF GOD.  And to love them as much as we love ourselves.

Why do we judge so harshly??  Jesus reminded us in the Sermon on the Mount to be careful of how we judge, because the same measure we use might just be used to judge US someday………