“Why do you…..pay no attention to the plank in your
own eye?” – Matthew 7:3
I think people must have smiled when Jesus spoke these
words. Picture it: a person with
fencepost jutting out of one eye while trying to see straight and to poke away
at a piece of sawdust in someone else’s eye.
When we get involved in conflicts, it seldom seems to us that
we have a fencepost in our own eye. Most
of us will admit to having a speck of sawdust in our eye. After all, nobody’s perfect. But the other party is obviously the one with
the problem. Look at them! Anyone can see that they’re narrow-minded,
rude, insensitive, unreliable, inconsistent, and more.
Perhaps they are.
Perhaps they are clearly in the wrong.
But then why would Jesus warn us with such a powerful picture to keep a
close eye on ourselves? Because He said
that we will be judged as severely as we judge ourselves.
What should we watch out for? Well, it’s obviously subtle enough to miss,
or we wouldn’t be focused on specks in others; yet it’s also clear enough to
detect, because it’s huge. Here’s a
clue. Had somebody ever said to you, “It’s not what you said; it’s the way you
said it,” or even worse, “You seem pleased to be showing me my fault”?
It’s easy to spot, really.
It’s that plain old spirit of judgmentalism. It’s a condemning spirit. With that infection present, there’s no way
through conflict.
