Beams and Specks

Matthew 7:1-5

                 These verses are some of the best known of Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount.  Unfortunately, there has been a tendency to misunderstand them, especially in recent days.  That’s a shame because that misunderstanding can cause us to miss the remarkable promise implicit in the words.

********

             Passages such as this persuade me that Jesus must have had a sense of humor.  Imagine this fellow with a beam--about the size of a log or plank--trying to maneuver enough to remove a speck--about the size of a particle of sawdust--from another person's eye.  Perhaps this is the kind of analogy you would expect from someone who had spent a few years in a carpenter’s shop.

            Of course this is not an OSHA lecture on shop safety, Jesus is talking about our relationship with others.  It’s important to hear Jesus because this is one area where we often fail, and often excuse our failure.  Now, does that sound like I’m judging?

            You see, it isn't quite accurate to say that Jesus never wants us to judge;  He wants us to practice self-judgment.

            Every psychiatrist must go through years of psychotherapy before being certified.  A psychiatrist must understand himself/herself--quirks and all--before attempting to understand others.

 Even among the people of  God self-judgment is a prerequisite to helping others with their own problems.

I

WE CAN APPROACH THE FAULTS OF OTHERS WITH PRESUMPTION BORN OUT OF SELF-DECEPTION

Before I go on it’s important we understand what Jesus is forbidding.  This is not a prohibition of reasonable discrimination.

Josh McDowell, in a message to the Southern Baptist Pastor’s Conference a few years ago, said some Christians had replaced John 3:16 with Jesus’ statement “Judge not” as the most frequently quoted verse.   This reflects a new understanding of the idea of tolerance.  Whereas tolerance once meant insisting that others had a right to hold ideas different from our own, that we would even protect that right even while we engaged in restrained debate over the issue.  Now however the new understanding of tolerance demands that we accept and affirm every idea, lifestyle, and world-view as having the same worth, the same merit.  Once we had the right to respectfully disagree and to attempt to persuade others to our perspective but now we are to welcome alternative views as having the same value as our own.  The watchword of this new tolerance is “Judge not.”

When we look at the totality of Jesus’ teaching and the message of the New Testament, its clear there is a place for making discerning judgments in the face of error and in the face of bad behavior.

            Consider how lives could have been saved if people had been more discriminating in following David Koresh.  And how much pain and sorrow could have been avoided in Cardinal Law had used his office to condemn the reprehensible behavior of some of his priests, to have judged their behavior heinous enough to make sure they could never again represent themselves as ministers of the church.

Shouldn't we be discriminating when dealing with persons of questionable emotional stability?  When assessing a person’s faithfulness to the Scripture?  When considering giving responsibility to those with little experience?

Let me clear up one more possible misunderstanding.  Jesus is not suggesting that we can somehow quantify sin, that we can measure the sins of one person against the sins of another.  He certainly isn’t warning “big sinners” against judging “little sinners.”  Instead, he’s calling us to a more realistic view of ourselves, a more honest view.  John Stott offers a helpful comment:

“We have a fatal tendency to exaggerate the faults of others and minimize the gravity of our own.  We seem to find it impossible, when comparing ourselves with others, to be strictly objective and impartial.  On the contrary, we have a rosy view of ourselves and a jaundiced view of others.”

With this in mind we can move on to consider Jesus’ words.

Judging the Judgmental Spirit.

I’m not attempting to explain away Jesus’ demand; I’m trying to place it in its proper context.    Jesus is condemning a censorious spirit.  Why was Jesus so concerned about this attitude?  He was concerned because what it did to the individual and to the church.

Eugene Peterson’s rather free-wheeling paraphrase of this verse helps us see what is in mind here, “don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults—unless, of course, you want the same treatment.  That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging.”

Some of what Jesus is talking about is a pettiness that can destroy morale.  (The word Karphos is literally " a small piece of straw, chaff, wood, etc., to denote something quite insignificant." A-G)  In American English we sometimes refer to someone being guilty of “nit-picking,” meaning that they focus on the minutia, the microscopic faults of others.  By the way, just to make your day, a “nit” is the small, almost invisible egg sack left by an insect like a louse.  “Nit-picking” refers to the process of searching through someone’s hair to find these nits.  Now, in a case of lice-infestation, such nit-picking is necessary; but as we commonly use the term, the person who nit-picks is searching for something, however small, to criticize about another.

Several years ago, in another place, two pastors spoke to me in the same week about criticisms being made against their wives.  One said that people were complaining that his wife dressed too elegantly; the other said that people were complaining that his wife was too dowdy.

You have to pity the pastor and the pastor’s family living with that kind of scrutiny. 

At the same time, Jesus is condemning an attitude that rejoices when people fall.  This is the person who whispers, "I saw it coming.  I could have told you.  How could you have missed the signs?"

Jesus condemns this nit-picking spirit because it is an attitude that stifles the courage and creativity of others.  Even in the best of churches few people are bold enough to advance a new ideas or attempt a new way to minister when they are surrounded by such critics.

As devastating as such a critical spirit can be when it’s unleashed against others Jesus suggest that it is an attitude which often reveals more about the judge than the judged.

--It may reveal a deep-seated self-righteousness that ignores the faults which are obvious to everyone; it may reveal a sense of inferiority which is characteristic of people who believe that the only way to build themselves up is to tear someone else down.

--Those who practice this type of behavior may even be driven by the incredible assumption that says, "If I point out the speck in his eye, people will ignore the beam in my eye."  Picture this, the word translated “speck” or “mote” refers to a particle the size of a bit of sawdust, “beam” refers to a timber plank used in the construction of a house.  We might call it a rafter. 

You can have a speck in your eye but having a beam in your eye is impossible.  Again, Jesus isn’t talking about real-life situations.  He’s asking us to draw comparisons.  Some people can have lives so messed up when compared to others, it’s like they’re trying to walk around with a beam in the eye.  Yet, these are the people who hope we will focus our attention on the person who has a  tiny speck in their eye.

Ultimately, it is an attitude which inevitability brings judgment upon itself.  Why will such a harsh judge be judged?  Unless you see the beam in your eye, you're not ready for grace.

A Fruitless Work

There’s something here I don’t want you to miss.  Jesus words clearly imply that there are times when that “speck” needs to be removed.  Yet Jesus shows us that a censorious spirit in the one attempting to remove the speck often makes the efforts fruitless.

This is an example of  "hypocritical" helpfulness.  Often those whose lives are most dysfunctional are the first in line to "help" someone else fix their lives.

Their help is often reduced to pointing a finger and saying, "That man has a mote in his eye."  Their help only hurts.

Due to the beam in our eye our judgment will be faulty.  It might even manifest itself in what psychologists call “projection.”  That judgmental person projects his own feelings or weaknesses onto another.  When we lash out at them we’re really lashing out at ourselves. 

During the televangelism scandals a few years ago one prominent evangelist was discovered to be guilty of the very sin he had so long blasted in his sermons, sermons which seldom attempted to maintain the Biblical ideal of hating the sin while loving the sinner.

But while we can multiply examples of a judgmental spirit, the important thing to remember is that Jesus points us to another way.

II

WE CAN APPROACH THE FAULTS OF OTHERS WITH PATIENCE BORN OUT OF SELF-DISCOVERY

Jesus doesn’t leave the person there with the beam in his or her eye.  He suggests the possibility of recovery and further usefulness.  When you finally have the courage to look into the mirror and say "Hey, I've got a beam in my eye", you're on the road to healing; and you may be on the road to becoming a healer.

We see this in twelve step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous that are based on the theory that those who have grappled with a problem are best suited to helping others grapple with theirs.

Seeing that beam can be a shock but seeing it can also produce change.

1.  Changes in our attitude toward ourselves.

When Jesus says, “First remove the beam from your own eye,” he’s saying we may no longer pretend, no longer be oblivious to the fault that needs correction.  That’s an important place to be.

But getting to that place can be tough.  Have you ever waked up, looked in the mirror, and saw evidence of something like an eye-infection?  Maybe instead of the healthy white you were used to seeing you saw a livid red.  That can be unnerving. But imagine waking up and seeing a beam in your eye.

It’s a scary moment but also a sacred moment.  It’s scary because we discover we’re not what we thought we were.  It’s a sacred moment because it invites us to turn to God for his transforming grace.

When I see my need of grace, I’m less likely to condemn another who needs that grace.

Both the beam and the speck--whatever they may represent--need to be removed.  And, often, when we have something in an eye, we can’t help ourselves because we can’t see properly.  We need help.

Several years ago our son got a tiny piece of metal in his eye.  We were afraid to try to dislodge it so we took him to our optometrist.  She used a powerful magnet to get it out safely.

 Jesus may very well have been trying to contrast the religion of the Pharisees with that of the Kingdom of God.  So some believe the “beam” in this case is self-righteousness, that attitude which makes us feel we are better than others.  If that’s so, we need to remember something.  Just as we can’t make ourselves humble because in doing so we will become proud, we can’t rid ourselves of self-righteousness without running the risk of believing we have done something which makes us better than others.  We run the risk of praying, “ thank you God that I am more humble than this Pharisee.” 

In any case, the underlying message of the Sermon on the Mount is our need to trust God’s grace.  Beams can only be removed through God’s grace.  The good news is God is eager to help us be rid of both the beam and the mote.  And that grace takes a more remarkable turn.

God in his grace has helped some people deal with beams and, thus, made them capable of dealing with specks.

Isn't that the kind of person who is ready to help others?

2.  Seeing that beam and experiencing a divine “beamectomy” changes  our attitude toward others.

Our attitude suddenly begins to produce more compassion and less condemnation.

We begin to see that they are very much like us; that we are very much like them.  And that will inevitably change their attitude toward us.  Where once another may have thought us remote, unfamiliar with failure or unwilling to admit failure, they now see us as traveling on the same road.

3.  Following that “beamectomy” we can expect changes in our approach to others.

Where we once approached the faults of others with harshness, we now approach them with tenderness.  The Pharisee-like attitude that demands we criticize others to hide our own weakness is gone.

Our judgment is tempered with understanding.

The dinner party was going on downstairs and little Billy was having a hard time getting to sleep.  More than once he had called his mother up to his room because of a monster in the closet or under the bed.  Each time she told him to stop being silly and go to sleep.  Finally he came down the stairs and said, “Mommy, there’s a lion in the front yard.”  Everyone laughed.

Wanting to impress her guests, the mother walked Billy to the window and said, “That’s just a big old tom cat, now you go back upstairs and pray ‘til God tells you he forgives you for lying.”

A few minutes later, Billy came back downstairs.  His mother saw him and asked, “Billy did you pray?”

“Yes,” Billy said, “I prayed.”

“Well,” his mother asked as the guests were snickering behind her, “what did God say?” 

Billy answered, “God said, ‘That’s okay, Billy, when I first saw it, I thought it was a lion too!’"

That mother and those guests had forgotten what it meant to be small and frightened.  When you’ve had that beam or that speck removed, you understand what someone who needs that operation is going through.

In those circumstances we come, not as a judge, but as a physician; we come to heal, not to condemn. 

Our attitudes and actions are born out of a new self-understanding.

Until that self-understanding comes we're really not ready to help others.  When it comes we can be instruments to bring healing and wholeness.

CONCLUSION

I said it at the beginning but it bears repeating: Even among the people of God self-judgment is a prerequisite to helping others with their problems.

Jesus wants us to start looking at ourselves in the mirror so we'll stop looking at others with a magnifying glass.

 The judging spirit is learned, it can be unlearned.

The Spirit can lead us to clarity, cleansing, and compassion.

Finally, keep in mind that there is a beautiful twofold lesson in this passage. 

If you discover a “beam” in your own eye, it not the end.  Not only can it be removed but you can become a more useful member of the Kingdom as you engage in the compassionate ministry of helping others.