I realised how bad I am at this when I got today’s Daily Encounter, an email devotional. Here’s a copy of the message:
Friday, September 9, 2005
1. On Sawdust and Planks
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Jesus in Matthew 7:3, NIV).
One of the first rules in a healthy support group is not to confess anybody else’s sins and faults but your own.
I think the following rule (though not likely to ever happen) should apply to every newspaper journalist, radio and TV commentator, and every politician in that they should never be allowed to confess another’s sins publicly without having first confessed their own publicly! This surely would silence a whole lot of negative, nasty, and dishonest criticism.
As Greg Laurie said, “Show me a person who is hyper-critical, and I will show you a person who is guilty of far worse sin in his own life. David was guilty of adultery and of premeditated murder. Yet he thought it perfectly just to kill a man who had merely stolen his neighbor’s sheep. Of all people, King David should have been ‘Mr. Compassion.’ But instead, he was ‘Mr. Hypocrisy.’ He fell neatly into Nathan’s little prophetic trap, as the prophet pointed his finger straight at David and said, ‘You are the man.’”
Here’s another possible pitfall as Cecil Osborne put it: “When we are hiding a deeper sin or fault, we tend to confess a lesser one all the more vigorously,” to which I would add, “or someone else’s sins and faults.”
We can’t expect open honesty with non-Christians but for those of us who claim to be Christ followers, before we look at the sawdust in another’s eye let us make sure we check out the plank in our own eye.
