Biography
F. Dean Lueking has been the pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest since 1963. In addition to his role as a local pastor, he is the author of six books and numerous published articles. A world traveler, he has been around the globe twice, making contact with Christians in other cultures. Dr. Lueking is a valued member of the Chicago Sunday Evening Club's Ministers Advisory Council. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.] 

"No More Condemnation" 
Let me begin with a recollection of a phone conversation some years back. Late one evening, the phone rang. I answered it and recognized the voice of a fine and friendly man out in New York state who had been called to join our pastoral staff at Grace Church in River Forest. He had accepted our call; he had come out to River Forest in the Chicago area; interviewed with us; gotten well acquainted and even made a down payment on a home for himself and his family. All seemed ready for him to come and take up the work with us in Grace Church.

His phone call alerted me immediately to the fact that there was something amiss. He said, "Dean, I feel really torn. I think I have made a mistake in accepting the call to come to Grace in River Forest. I can't tell you how bad I feel about this. I have set a lot of things in motion; a lot of expectations have been gathered around my decision. You people are all ready for me. But, I have to just tell you the way it is with me at this moment. I think I've made a mistake and I am wondering if I can be released from my commitment to come."

I could tell by the tone in his voice that he was really and truly anguished. The words that came to my mind right off the bat were these, "There is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8:1). Of course, we released him from his agreement to come to us. With an almost audible sigh of relief, he responded with appreciation. we bade him godspeed as he continued on his work and service in the eastern part of our country.

I begin with that experience because I think it points to something very deep and very universal, something that everyone of us knows about. It is the experience of having a kind of haunting feeling that a mistake we have made is going to follow us. It is going to find us like radar and keep on accusing us, keep on condemning us, keep on holding us in its grip, that somehow or another we are trapped. We are bothered by that. We're wondering if we are ever going to get free. I take it that is an experience you know something about. I certainly can identify with it myself. It is something that goes so deep into being human. If the word "condemnation" seems a little strong, then try the words "I feel like I am never measuring up. I feel as though I have never quite done enough. I feel as though there is a judgment that hangs on as I go about my daily affairs from day to day."

I find that one never has to scratch very far below the surface to touch this instinctive sense of having not measured up — in spite of the words of the text from Romans 8:1, we feel a sense of condemnation. Think about parenting. As parents, how many of us look back over the work that we have done, the efforts we have made, and are mindful that it hasn't been all that it should have been. Or being a child, a son or a daughter, in relationship to a parent — there again you don't have to scratch very deep to find a sense that it hasn't been everything it should have been.

Think of how it goes in our world of work, the job performance. It's instinctive that we can sense in ourselves, and certainly often enough from those around us, that it hasn't been up to par. I think that all around us we can live in a sea of judgment, of condemnation — a sense of the fact that we are really not measuring up in the way that we ought to.

There are a number of ways in which to go about dealing with that kind of instinctive sensitivity. One is to dismiss it altogether as not real or foolish. Or, we can take a guilt trip upon ourselves. That doesn't quite work even though we live in a world, as George Forell recently described our moral dilemma, where there seems to be no right and wrong at all. Moral decisions are purely a matter of personal taste, like preferring pizza to lutefisk.

As much as we in our world would like to shed this sense, there is something down deep inside of us that won't quite go away, something that links us with the words from the psalmist, "Why are you cast down, o my soul? Why are you so disquieted within me?" At the root of all of that disquiet, at the root of all of that uneasiness, and sense that we indeed have not measured up, there is a deeper truth. The fact is that you and I have not measured up to all that God means for us and all that God calls for from us. There is really and truly a sense in which we have missed the mark.

In the biblical faith, the word for that is sin. Our God loves us too much to let us settle for our own standards or, for that matter, to get lost in our own self-recriminations. Our God takes us seriously. Having made us all in His image, He therefore holds us accountable to the decalogue, to the Ten Commandments, and above all the center of the Ten Commandments you shall not turn anything else or anyone else into a God. That is to say, to look to that someone or something else for all good, as though that one or that thing could really deliver us and make our lives flourish and have purpose, power and meaning.

We can't really clean up our own act from this shadow of not measuring up. God knows that. The judgment in which God holds us means holding us in those strong hands of His carefully, with care for us, not in order to see us squirm and destroy ourselves, but carefully so that He might hold before us the mirror of the reality that we have missed the mark with Him. At the root of all of our unease and dissatisfaction with ourselves is the truth, the fact that we have not measured up to Him.

With that kind of a basic truth getting through to us — and as we say, God reaches and diagnoses that ailment in us through His law — then we are prepared to really come to the heart of our own difficulty. We can see where the way through is, where the genuine pathway unfolds before us in which we can find nothing less than the peace of God, a purpose and a direction. We don't live under a shadow for acknowledging, in humility, that we do indeed need God's mercy and grace every day we live. That prepares the way for us to be able to accept the incredibly and incomparably good news, "There is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

The key to it all has to do with God's greatest deed done in our behalf: that in and through Christ Jesus, His Son — born as we were born, lived in this life and world where we live, but in giving His life upon a cross and in His being raised again, in that great good event of God's mercy — there lies the answer to the condemnation. There lies the good news that another has carried the burden for us and loaded it up upon His shoulders and carried it right straight through to a victory on Easter morning. It is in Christ Jesus that you are free, that you are no longer under condemnation. You are transferred in the presence of God from judgment to grace, from law to mercy. There is a freedom in that and there is a power and a peace that is the best gift that can ever come into your life.

No more condemnation means no more condemning. It means that we resign from the judgment committee. We no longer live with the sense that the only way we can establish our own place is by a condemning spirit of another person — maybe another person of a different walk in life; maybe another person with AIDS; maybe another person with prison experience; maybe another person whose actions and attitudes have offended you and have been hard to take. To be lifted up above that sense of condemning is to find the way into the right relationships, the real relationships that endure and that are so solid and deeply satisfying.

No more condemning means, for sure, no more condemning of yourself, no more living on and on with that haunting sense that the past will catch up and hold you tight in its grip to suffocate you. You are free from the kind of self-condemnation that means all your energy is put into trying to beat others at their own game or trying to establish yourself by what others say or think of you. It frees you from the terrible burden of having to fix everybody else's problems. It allows you to accept, first and foremost, yourself with the right kind of self-esteem, knowing that you are loved as you are, fully known, fully forgiven. Accept the acceptance that is your heritage, that is your birth right by grace. In that self-accepting and finding yourself in relationship to God centered in the Christ who has freed us from condemnation, accept that no more condemning extends to relationships with other people.

Theodore Roszak offered us a very important sentence about relationships with other people and what that means for ourselves and for the world around us. He put it this way, "We must understand that the fate of the world is wrapped up with the fate of the social order of the soul. If the spirit within us flourishes, so will the world around us that we build." Now Roszak is not saying the world is going to be perfect. However, he is telling us that in the right relationships that are built upon acceptance, understanding, grace, compassion with justice — in that kind of a relationship — there builds a world and an order that grows out of the commitments of the soul.

What a tremendous thing that is! Your spiritual energy is released; your spiritual leaven and witness is offered to people around you who are still stumbling and burdened with the terrible sense of rejection, self-judgment, prejudice, bias — people who are miserable. Whatever our particular vocation, place or circumstance in life may be, to be part of the freeing spirit is life's greatest calling. There is tremendous importance attached to how this social expression of relationship grows that is freed from a condemning spirit.

Let me tell you a story about what rides on all of this. I read this recently in a writing by Charles Colson. He was recalling an incident involving a physician who, during the days of Joseph Stalin in the Gulag at Ekibastos in the Soviet Union, was having to live in the hell of that camp of political prisoners. This physician was given the job of tending fellow Prisoners. Oftentimes, he was ordered to deliver a lethal dosage to prisoners who were no longer wanted or deemed useable by the commandant of the camp. The doctor began to loathe those who were around him and to develop a strong sense of condemnation at every turn. He could not bear the sight of the people around him. He was being turned into one as hateful and loathsome as those who were giving him the orders that were so inhumane.

Into the midst of all of this, he came into contact with a man of faith in the prison camp whose greatness of inner-spirit shone like a sun in a terribly dark place. The physician, Boris Kornfeld, was drawn by this man and impressed with him. He found out that the goodness of the light of the Christ that illumined this man's life could also find an entry into his own spirit. He entered into the Christian faith and life. In a short time following, he came into contact with one more prisoner whose tortured countenance and withered spirit really touched Dr. Kornfeld. This man was afraid; he was bitter. Kornfeld simply began to pour out to him what he had been freed from in the way of condemnation.

The man was drawn to the physician. One night he heard a noise and a stirring. He learned the next morning that his physician had been beaten to death by prison guards. This man did not forget the legacy that was given him by the physician in this prison camp in Russia. He went on to tell his story to a very large audience in the world. This prisoner's name — Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Does it matter if we can enter into that spirit of acceptance, as we have been accepted? Indeed it does. Does it matter to you that "There is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus"? What does that mean to you now? Let your answer be, "Everything."

Interview with Dean Lueking
Interviewed by David Hardin

David Hardin: Dean, in looking back over your ministry in recent years, what do you think have been the most significant aspects in your church?

Dean Lueking: Let me select one experience that comes to my mind. About five or six years ago, I began a friendship and a contact with a splendid psychologist in our town, a man of high commitment and great skill. Our friendship has blossomed into a fruitful partnership in working together to help each other be better for our respective roles in serving people.

In serving the congregation I, like many clergy, come to have the trust of people. They will come to a pastor, a minister, with what is on their heart whereby they are not always ready to go elsewhere. In coming to me, I have often found that people have some problem that I am not altogether qualified and trained to handle. So, I have been able to refer them to my friend, the counseling psychologist, who is very skilled to handle particular disorders of emotion, mind or spirit.

He and I then meet about every three weeks for a lunch together. Always with permission of the people, we talk together in such a way that he can help me understand some of the aspects about the person that I have not been able to understand before. In turn, I can open up to him some dimensions of that person's life, experience, setting, family, etc., that are very helpful to him. This is always done with the permission of the person. I think this has been so valuable and I recommend it highly because it is an example of the crosswalks that are very productive for people in helping professions to work together.

Hardin: By crosswalks, do you mean linking up one discipline with another?

Lueking: That's it.

Hardin: I think we probably have created an artificial gulf between psychology and spirituality or religion, haven't we?

Lueking: It has been there for the better part of this century. It is unfortunate. It need not and ought not to continue. I think in the last decade that breach is beginning to close. There have been many, many more people on both sides of this chasm who recognize that we can really benefit from one another, can listen to each other and be more respectful of one another in sharing insight, talent and experience. Again, it is always for the good of the people. That is the thing that counts.

Hardin: I think we have started to learn that we need to share who we are in order to see who we are. I know a lot of people who get so much out of counseling because it simply forces them to suddenly take hold of their lives and look at them.

Lueking: There has got to be a safe place for people to stop and be able to do this — to see ourselves in order to understand what is going on in ourselves. I like to think that a congregation or a relationship of people of faith is a safe place to do that because the chart of our existence is that we really don't have anything to hide from each other. We don't have to pretend that we are always acceptable or perfect. We begin on the basis of the fact that we are forgiven and, therefore, accepted. That is a very freeing thing in order to help people be honest and open.

Hardin: I'm in a very honest, very small, little group of men who come together for a meal about every three or four weeks. It is very rewarding to realize that all my anxieties are shared. Problems are there for all of us. Sometimes we get the feeling that we are the only bad guy. As you said in the sermon, we feel we are not good enough for God. We can get beyond that in this group.

Lueking: It is an essential thing for our continuing growth as human beings to know that we are in the company of people who can relate to us in our failures, with egg on our face. That doesn't move us out of the circle.

Hardin: I know that you are very involved in traveling to the Third World and are going to El Salvador in May. We wonder about our behavior in some of these countries. I feel that we have put too much into weapons and not enough into economic help. How can we as Christians be most useful to people in the Third World?

Lueking: Let's begin by remembering our baptism, by that I mean we are bonded together in God with people all across the face of the earth. Let's permit that to have some real leverage. People are people and we should meet them as fellow human beings — learn their names, understand their circumstances in life, learn from them. one of the important things for us in our part of the world is to have the humility and the wisdom to learn from other people about courage, about being faithful under difficult circumstances, about enduring — a great lesson we have to learn from people across the water.

Hardin: Sometimes we are a little parental. We think we have answers and other people don't. We kind of inflict our answers on them instead of saying, "What do you need to be whole?"

Lueking: Exactly. It is amazing how patient people in other parts of the world can be with us. I have been on the receiving end of that patience. People have been really a blessing to me in this very respect of saying, "We would like to share our learning with you. We would like for us to not just be on the receiving side, but on the giving side." We do have an awful lot to learn.

Hardin: It's been wonderful having you here. Thanks very much.