Week 42:
The bit where I introduce:
This week’s news inspired this week’s devotion. If you watched the news or social media you might have met a woman named Katie Zacharia, who is now infamous for being the White House press secretary for 5 days.
You can look her up but one thing I noticed about this was the way society likes to bring people down and freely launch criticism on someone else. Have you ever wondered “Why are we so quick to judge others, yet so slow to examine ourselves?”
One reason could be that psychologically speaking the tendency to put others down often traces back to early life, or other concepts such as:
Comparison: Pointing out someone else’s shortcomings can make us feel better about our own.
Insecurity: Another person’s choices can challenge our sense of certainty or expose something we struggle with ourselves.
Projection: We may react strongly to traits in others that we find difficult to acknowledge in ourselves.
Control: We can feel uncomfortable when people make choices different from the ones we would make.
Self-justification: Focusing on someone else’s mistakes can distract us from our own.
Is this something you struggle with? It got me thinking about what can we as individuals do to combat this epidemic of criticism and make a positive difference?
The bit where I refer to the Bible and ask a few rhetorical questions:
Read Matthew 7:1–5
7 “Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. 2 For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged.
3 “And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? 4 How can you think of saying to your friend ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? 5 Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye. (NLT)
These verses refer to when Jesus challenges people to examine the plank in their own eye before trying to remove the speck in someone else’s.
Matthew 7:1–5 is part of the well known Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7), where Jesus teaches his followers what life in God’s kingdom looks like.
Throughout this sermon, Jesus challenges the gap between outward religious behaviour and the condition of a person’s heart. He challenges not only what people do, but also their motives, attitudes and understanding of what God desires.
First important part of this chapter are verses 1–2. It reminds us that we shouldn’t expect a generosity, mercy or fairness from others that we refuse to extend ourselves. My understanding is this passage doesn’t necessarily mean God will judge us in precisely the same way we judge others.
It also isn’t a command to abandon our discernment. Jesus is challenging the hypocrisy of scrutinising other people while remaining unwilling to examine ourselves. We do that don’t we? we don’t like examining ourselves perhaps for fear of what we might find.
Then verse 5, Jesus uses the illustration of someone trying to remove a speck from another person’s eye while having a plank in their own. He exposes the irrationality of being highly attentive to other people’s faults while remaining blind to our own. Oops, when you come to think of it, it is a bit irrational. My interpretation with this verse is Jesus doesn’t say that the speck should never be removed. He says to remove the plank first, then you will see clearly to help with the speck.
The order matters. Self-examination comes before correcting someone else!
Jesus’ challenge for us: have we examined our own motives before commenting?
Sometimes it can also be what we think, we may not always say it out loud. Let’s be real, not all criticism is spoken aloud. It happens too easily in our thoughts: comparing ourselves with others, questioning their decisions, or feeling quietly superior because we would never do what they have done. We might never post the comment or say the words, but we can still nurture a critical spirit. The invitation is for us to examine not only what comes out of our mouths, but also what is happening in our hearts.
What I think the objective is, it isn’t to become passive or to stop helping one another grow. It is to approach others with humility, honesty and grace rather than superiority. We can hold people accountable without humiliating them. We can disagree without demeaning them. We can recognise a problem without reducing a person to their problem. And we can remember that we, too, need grace. Oh boy do we need it in today’s world!
Perhaps one of the hardest things for me about Matthew 7 is that I/ we can immediately think of people who are guilty of judging others. We can picture the person who gossips, the colleague who criticises, or the person online who seems to have an opinion about everything.
But Jesus doesn’t invite us to use this passage to identify everyone else’s plank.
He invites us to look in the mirror.
As in the preface with Katie this week we can criticise many things as in her example, their ability to do a job, someone’s parenting, appearance, beliefs, relationships or opinions from behind a screen. We see a “carefully selected” snapshot of someone’s life and feel qualified to judge the whole person.
Before we criticise someone’s parenting, relationships, faith or decisions, are we willing to examine our own? Before we assume we understand someone’s motives, are we willing to acknowledge how much we don’t know? Before we correct someone else, are we prepared to let God correct us?
Perhaps the goal isn’t to stop noticing the specks in other people’s eyes. It’s to become people who are humble enough to recognise our own, and compassionate enough to help others without making them feel small, even when we think they are easy targets!
I think the moral of this story is following Jesus isn’t about becoming better at identifying what’s wrong with everyone else. It’s about wanting and then allowing God to keep working on what’s happening within us.
The bit where you get to think about stuff: Questions for the week.
Why do you think we find it easier to recognise the faults of others than to acknowledge our own?
In what areas of modern life are we most tempted to judge people without knowing their full story?
Before offering criticism or correction this week, what might it look like to examine our own hearts first?
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