The school where I used to teach had a rule: No gum.

Students caught chewing gum were ticketed, and the tickets accumulated into consequences.

As a new teacher, this was a rule I felt was worth enforcing like Law because gum made a terrible mess.

It was hard work writing all those gum tickets, but I was as faithful as deputy Barney Fife.

One day our principal called me to his office, and from behind a mountain of gum tickets he asked me to guess how many of them I’d written. I couldn’t even guess…

All of them. The answer was, all of them.

It was his rule, and a good one, but instead of congratulating me on my dedication to ticketing vile offenders, he made a suggestion.

He suggested, rather than giving every gum-chewer I caught a ticket, to instead try putting a bucket of sand by my door and see what happened…

But wouldn’t that just encourage more gum chewing? Wouldn’t it send students the wrong message that it’s okay to chew gum in school???

He was insistent, so I tried it and to my astonishment, the students disposed of their gum at the door by putting it in the sand.

The sand bucket was an invitation to do the right thing, and most of them did.

I learned a valuable spiritual lesson that day too, and it was this: Continually pointing out people’s sin is nowhere near as effective as showing them where to get rid of it.

People already know they’re sinners. It’s the Holy Spirit who convicts the heart, not other broken humans who can’t even agree on what good is.

 

Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God.

~ Jesus {Luke 18:19}

 

There’s so much we don’t know, so much we don’t understand.

People are deep, made of experiences and beliefs and reasons only God can decode.

Few will listen to a Christian constantly shrieking Citizen’s Arrest! at every broken soul they encounter.

But they just might follow us to The Savior if they see us living out our reason for following Him—which is His love.

One day after taking the new approach to the gum chewing rule, I stood between classes feeling quite accomplished as I watched some students drop their gum into the sand…

And just then I realized, I was chewing gum too.

 

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So when you pass judgment on them and yet do the very same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does it mean nothing to you that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?

~ Romans 2:3-4

 

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Please don’t slander one another…

There’s only one Lawgiver and Judge,

the One who is able to save and destroy.

But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?”

~ James 4:11-12