Iheard a story a long time ago about a drunk who became a Christian. One of the biggest surprises of his new faith was that the church didn’t know how to have fun. He missed his old friends at the bar, their transparency and their authenticity. I do have to wonder, why do the pagans have better parties than the Christians? This matters when we think about how Jesus was the guy who brought the best wine to the wedding reception in Cana (John 2:1-12). Makes you think, doesn’t it?
One of my best friends just reminded me about the need to judge not only ourselves but other people as well. I know, I know the Pharisees are going to misquote Jesus and say we are never supposed to judge (Matthew 7:1) and I am about to make some people’s tattoos irrelevant (Only God Can Judge Me). In this passage Jesus is talking about the hypocrite who has a self-righteous, overly critical spirit and is always finding fault with others. There is no doubt that guy needs to let up, take a self-inventory and remove the stuff in his own life so that he can see properly in order to help someone else with the stuff in their life. If we stop reading Matthew 7 at verse 1, we will miss verse 5, “then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”
If I am driving off a cliff please tell me (please judge me) so you can save me. Does that make sense? We all have logs, and we all have specks, the question is do we love, can we be trusted, are we transparent and are we authentic?
Calvin Miller wrote about a woman in his work, An Owner’s Manual For An Unfinished Soul named Cora who steals apples. She feels bad about her sin, so she goes to her priest. The trouble is her priest is an apple thief too. One day that priest falls from a tree while stealing apples and dies. A new priest comes to town, he too is an apple thief. Cora confesses to the new priest about her problem with apple stealing to which the new priest responds, “You too?!” Cora and the new priest end up stealing apples together. After stealing a lot of apples together they began to pray for one another and depend on each other for support and finally both were able to quit stealing apples or as my friend says they did not steal them all that often because some sins are hard to beat.
We can’t help our fellow apple thieves if we are self-righteous or fake. “You too?” can be some of the best words that we ever hear. We owe it to each other to keep the logs out of our eyes so we can see the speck in our friend’s eyes. Go ahead and judge, just be sure you love.
He told me to tell you that.
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