Plank & Speck

For the last few days gospel reading, it was all about Jesus teaching us how we should behave in our daily life... eg...like judging others...




Jesus never said we shouldn't help others clean up their lives.
We are not to judge anyone.
Our vision gets planked when we judge their MOTIVES.


The plank that blinds us is the idea that we can actually see into their hearts. Sure we have clues, but it's only circumstantial evidence. We're the bigger sinner when we take the clues and jump to conclusions that are incorrect. And since we're not God, we're always incorrect to some extent.


What are the specks that we'd like to take out of other people? It's like having an eyelash loose in your eye. You can't see it, but you know it's there. It's darn irritating. And if you fail at wash it out, you ask a friend to look and see if your eye's okay. People's specky sins are darn irritating to them, too, and they do appreciate our help -- if it's compassionate.




Take a slice of bread and slather it with peanut butter. Then drop it, peanut butter side down, into a pile of dead leaves. What gets stuck to it? That's what sin looks like. Now clean out the debris. That's what repentance feels like. It's messy. First we pull out the twigs (planks), because they're so big. But there are a lot of little specks to remove. It takes a long time, a lot of effort, patience, and persistence to completely clean it all up. And it requires good vision!

We always put our sin at our back, we ourselves cannot see it, only the person behind us can see.
One reason why God put us into community is so we can help each other see and remove the specks. However, to be helpful instead of sinful, we must never assume that we understand another person's motives. The people we see sinning might very well be just as frustrated with their specks as we are! They will appreciate our assistance, but only when (1) they have gotten so frustrated that they WANT our help, and (2) we approach them without a plank in our eyes bonking them across their heads.



http://www.usccb.org/