And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.
This week I preached on one of the more well known passages from the works of Jesus.
“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. 2 For the judgment you give will be the judgment you get, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. 3 Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye but do not notice the log in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.”
-Matthew 7:1-5 NRSVUE
This passage deals with a few different things very close to the human experience:
The fear of being judged
The immense joy and superiority we gain from judging other people.
I love when Jesus talks about being human in all of it’s grossness. I know I have plenty of planks in my eye, but I would much rather look out for the specks in the eyes of others.
Nothing frees us from introspection quite like judging others
And that is why being judgmental is being commodified for all of us. Every social media has a convenient button (or set of buttons!) that allows for us to make snap decisions that we broadcast to the whole world. We like or we love or we care or we are angry or we are sad about someone’s post on Facebook and now… everyone knows how we “feel,” about every little thing.
And the most innocuous things are being judged. Thankfully, the number of dislikes on a Youtube video are no longer readily visible, but you can find them if you look hard enough. I found a video of puppies playing and there were 1,800 “dislikes,” on the video. Now either cats have got logins or we live in a time where we are broadcasting our opinions a bit too much.
But it’s not just in the digital realm. This morning, I was reading “East of Eden,” and one of the people who borrowed the library book before me had made clerical and grammatical notations in the book.
Now listen: I am no apologist for the novel, I am only at page 92 and there have been plenty of racially charged and misogynistic language in the text. But I do think that since it’s publication in 1952, they would have had a chance to correct any commas out of place.
When we are defacing library books to correct Steinbeck, it may be time for us to pause.
Our judgment is killing us. The more we identify the way other people are failing or require our corrections, the less we have a chance to ask ourselves, “am I becoming more like Jesus today? Am I getting holier than I was yesterday?”
Love the sinner, hate the sin.
This whole conversation started because we were looking at this old chestnut above. This turn of phrase has been used for decades to dismiss who groups of people, especially LGBTQ+ people in the church. It is used to declare, essentially, “because I can see your sin, I can dismiss who you are (you’re a sinner) and continue to feel fine about the way I treat you… because that is the most loving thing for me to do.
But friends, when we do this, we are missing an opportunity to be curious. But most importantly when we dismiss people in this way, we are ignoring the log in our own eyes to try and search for specks in others.
If you are a follower of Jesus, we must spend more time pursuing reconciliation and understanding amongst people we do not understand.
You see, it’s because the Love that God has called us towards is not the sort of sentimental love that sells greeting cards. Instead it is the sort of love that will require us to work, tirelessly, for the betterment of other people.
And so our call must be to
Love the person, put that love into action.
We don’t get to dismiss people. We get to be curious. We care about the logs in our own eyes and if we get to help someone with the speck in their own eye it is so that we might bring that back home.
Which reminds of the title of this entry that I stole from Steinbeck: “and now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
So be good, beloveds. It is better because you are here.
