Why Is The Beam Always In Our Eye?

One of the most pointed verses in the Bible concerning our behavior to other people is Matthew 7:3: "Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? (NASB)" One question I have long had about this verse is, why is the beam (or log) always in our eye, and why is the speck in the eye of the other person? Today I would like to look at at least a few possible answers.

On Specks

The answer to the question of why the speck is the eye of the other person seems a bit easier to answer, so I will tackle that one first. What we see of other people is rather limited. Even a fairly obvious person (I would probably qualify as one of these) still keeps a fair amount of information inside simply because not everything can be communicated to other people without a large amount of time spent with someone in a wide variety of different situations. Furthermore, much of what we do communicate verbally and nonverbally is subject to interpretation (and misinterpretation), which presents a further barrier to understanding other people. Therefore, even for people whose living is spent critiquing (that is how I pay my bills, after all) only have a small amount of material available to judge someone on.

This need not be a bad thing. We are not to be judgmental after all (much easier said than done), so it would be salutory for those of us who do tend to be a tad more hypercritical than we probably should be to recognize that we may be wrong (sometimes really wrong) and mean it. However, even when we judge something correctly in other people, we must realize that even here our information may be incomplete. No mercy will be shown to those who show no mercy, and when we do not know why someone acts the way they do, we may err in being harsh to those who suffer and struggle greatly. Consequently, we may be too easy on those who are better at hiding their sins (or are politically powerful enough that most people with a modicum of sense quail at challenging). So, what we see is often imperfect and that we see imperfectly. Therefore we cannot but see specks in the eyes of others, as their logs are often quite hidden to us.

On Logs

On the other hand, we all have logs in our eyes (I have mine, and I am blessed to have other people around me who seem to take great pleasure in reminding me about them, often). We need not be too hard on ourselves--God knows our situations better than we do--but we do need to look realistically at ourselves and understand that we all fall far short of our goal. Without the pardon given to us through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, salvation would be far beyond our reach, as if we were trying to stand on the ground and grasp for the stars in the night sky.

There are many reasons we have logs. For one, most people do not examine themselves particularly closely. We selectively compare ourselves to others and justify ourselves by looking at how other people fall short and how we have been wronged (I say this knowing I do the same thing, often, myself). In doing so, even when we see the worse parts of our own nature, we mitigate them and try to explain away our own problems through forces beyond our control while denying this privilege to others, what is called the fundamental attribution error. Furthermore, by not dealing with our own problems, we have a skewed perception of reality, which prevents us from seeing our world clearly and makes us less able to correctly judge other people.

What To Do Then?

How do we avoid this difficulty? Besides remaining in a state of blissfully ignorant hypocrisy, there are really two solutions. One is not to judge at all, and the other is to learn how to judge wisely. Our society right now seems to point towards not judging at all (though here it is only those people who wish to live righteously who are judged, in a perversion of the concept of judging). Not judging basically amounts to this: you do what you want to do, I'll do what I want to do, and as long as you don't hurt or judge me I won't judge you. This is incorrect, because if we desire a just society that is suitable for human existence, we must realize that no act is without consequences for other people, no matter how private it may seem. I could go at length about this, but a common example should suffice. For example, many people think that buying cocaine is a decision that effects only the drug user. This is false. The purchase of drugs is but one link in a rather complicated picture that involves a lot of people. Besides harming the user himself (itself a sin, as we are to honor God's temple--our bodies), the act of buying drugs supports a whole legion of people who make their livings in illegal ways (drug dealers, laboratories, etc.) who often combine drugs with other criminal behavior such as prostitution, theft, violence. These people, in turn, depend on the sources of their drugs from international drug traffickers who themselves are involved in crimes such as illegal immigration, terrorism, the international slave trade, massacres of populations in drug growing areas, and so forth. When we act, we can either be a part of a nexus of good or a nexus of evil. We cannot pretend, though, that what we do has no consequences outside of ourselves.

That leaves us with the choice of judging wisely. In doing so, we need to be aware (at least as much as possible) about what is right and wrong, and about why what is simple for us may be difficult for someone else (and the reverse is true also). In seeking to understand others, we may find that they have much to teach us and we have much to learn, even when we set out to teach them about their errors. Also, we must separate the sin from the sinner. We are all sinners, all worthy of the death penalty for our actions, and all (potentially) covered by the grace of God should we choose to accept the offer. We all have much to struggle with in this life, and we should recognize it as such. If we spend the limited time and energy we have on this earth honestly and openly seeking to live rightly (and increase in knowledge so that we have a better idea of what it is we are to do and how it is we are to do it), then we will speak louder about sin than we would through a million jeremiads against the sins of others. Sometimes we speak loudest through our own example--do you know what your example is saying? That is a frightening picture to consider indeed.