The Beam in My Eye

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
– Matthew 7:3-5 KJV

My niece has a tendency to not listen to me. Shocking, right? Toddlers aren’t always the best at following directions.

But they’re pretty good at humbling you.

After her timeout was up, I sat her down and asked why she didn’t follow my instructions.

“Because I didn’t want to,” she said.

I sighed. “You can’t just listen to what you like and ignore what you don’t.”

And then the Holy Spirit whispered, “But don’t you do that, too?”

That took the wind right out of my self-righteous sails.

I couldn’t even continue my lecture. We just stared at each other until finally I told her she could go play.

Meanwhile, the Spirit’s prodding stayed with me.

As Christians, we have a tendency to downplay certain sins. Usually the sins we commit regularly like lying.

But like I told my niece, we can’t just listen to what we like and ignore what we don’t.

(Read more about this in my post Buffet Christianity.)

I think what we downplay the most, though, is hypocrisy. We point out other people’s sins and ignore our own.

The irony here is that judging others is a sin we like to point out when other people commit it, but we tend to ignore it when we do.

And even though we know it’s wrong, we do it anyway.

Before we know it, we find ourselves in the same situation I was in: chastising someone for something we do. My niece may ignore my instructions, but I sometimes ignore God’s.

Neither is good.

Especially since I’m doing just what Jesus warned against: I’m so busy pointing out the mote in someone else’s eye that I miss the beam in mine.

So the next time we’re quick to point out another’s flaws, maybe we should take a moment to see if we have that flaw. And if we do, we should take care of ourselves before we begin chastising others.