Some days, I picture myself finishing a marathon fast enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon. Other days, I dream of completing the World Marathon Challenge. Most days, though, I just go for another run that reminds me how much work it will take to pull those off.
Because it’s summer and hot as you-know-where, most of my running happens on a treadmill at the gym. It’s not my preferred way to train – I’m actually a bigger fan of the “get out so early that it’s too dark to be seen” method – but it’s air-conditioned, has some of the biggest ceiling fans known to man, and is a “judgement free zone.”
It’s also full of hypocrites. More on that in a bit.
Four or five times a week, I’m there doing various types of workouts, looking like a hamster as I do them. Recently, I’ve been following a training method called Low Heart Rate training, which means you run as slow as necessary to keep your heart rate within your “easy” zone. Once you pass through the upper limit of that range, you walk until the heart rate drops back down before starting to run again.
You can imagine how this looks on a treadmill. Fine for the first mile or so as your heart is getting warmed up, but once that first walk break happens, it can be a frustrating workout full of starts and stops, with more and more frequent stops the longer you’re on the treadmill.
In other words, to someone who doesn’t know what you’re doing, it doesn’t look much like running.
Of course, a case could be made that what I do doesn’t look much like running even when I’m outside just, well, running. I’ve done plenty of runs that sound epic – and may even be epic (50 miles on the day I turned 50 comes to mind) – but my laptop proudly displays a “world’s okayest runner” sticker, and I stand by that. I’m an okay runner.
But when I found out recently that my running was being judged by some people at the gym – at the “judgement free zone” that I pay to be a member of? Let’s just say that I wasn’t okay with that.
My friend happened to be working out with a couple of guys who were commenting on all my starting and stopping. “He’s not running,” they’d said. They judged me while standing under the words “no critics” while watching me run under the words “judgement free zone.”
Like I said, my gym is full of hypocrites.
There’s a lot of judging going on in the judgement free zone, and guess what?
I go to the gym anyway because going to the gym is good for me, and what I do in the gym helps me achieve a stronger, healthier, and more active lifestyle. Going to the gym reminds me that I’m not alone. When I go to the gym and see people of all body types and fitness levels, I smile because I know we’re all part of a community that understands one simple truth:
We go to the gym because we know that we need to go to the gym.
Knowing that hypocrites will be there, and that I might even be judged there, doesn’t outweigh the fact that I need to be there, and that changes everything.
Judgement happens everywhere, even under large letters declaring that it doesn’t. But judgement isn’t the only thing that happens at the gym. Growth happens, too.
The critic says, “You aren’t really running.” I say, “I can see why you’d say that. But I’m actually training to be an even better runner.”
The critic says, “That’s all you can lift?” I say, “Yep. But because I’m lifting this now, I’ll be able to lift more later.”
As a pastor, I see plenty of parallels between a gym full of hypocrites and a church full of hypocrites. Maybe you went to church once and got judged, and now you refuse to go back. But what if you simply went to church because you needed to?
Because you want to be better, stronger, more in love with Jesus?
Because you need to be reminded that all kinds of people from all kinds of places are there for the same reason?
What if you were so in love with Jesus that you could actually thank the hypocrites for pointing out areas of your life that you already know need improvement?
What if you could see their judgement as confirmation of your choice to be there?
“I get it,” you could say. “My life is messy, inconsistent, and often looks anything but like Jesus. But that’s why I’m here. Why do you come?”
The “judgement free zone” doesn’t mean we’ll never be judged.
It means there’s a way to live free from judgement, a life that isn’t swayed by what this person or that person said, thought, or posted about us.
How do you develop a life like that, you ask?
In the gym with the hypocrites.
