Stop judging, that you may not be judged.
The Pharisees seemed like they were always ready to judge and to find fault with others. They did so to bolster their own image as fastidious adherents of the law. But it was precisely this disposition that was so fundamentally deceptive for them. They trained their eye to notice minutia in the behavior of others so much that they failed to engage in any introspection about the state of their own hearts.
Jesus himself was different. He was qualified to judge because he was the only one he saw things clearly, as they truly were. The Father had given all judgment over to him, as uniquely proper to the Son (see John 5:22). But this was judgment of a different sort, a definitive verdict, not given out of self-interest, but as a validation of the choices one made during life. During his life on earth Jesus never weaponized his judgment as the Pharisees did. Instead he welcomed sinners and tax collectors and basically anyone who was willing to seriously take accountability for the state of her life and of her heart. He did rebuff those who were unwilling to look seriously at themselves, who considered themselves perfect already, while making the judgment of others a primary purpose of theirs. This was the reality of Jesus helping them to encounter the wooden beam in their eyes, by showing them the ways in which it caused them to stumble and collide with reality. It was not done out of hostility, but kindness. It did not issue from a limitation of his own vision, but rather from a desire to share his clarity about the situation with others.
Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye,
but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?
Fortunately we have Jesus, who is able to see clearly and help us to recognize that our moral judgment is too immature for us to be too eager to condemn others or to exonerate ourselves. If anyone else had said something about a board in our eye we would have had to assume that it was an aggressive act trying to discredit us. But from Jesus we can sense in the very way that he phrased the metaphor that he was not trying to undermine us but to guide us and heal us. He used humor to take the edge off of what would have otherwise been a painful revelation. It is not only the Pharisees who judge hypocritically, it is ourselves as well. It is much easier to look outside of us to find fault than it is to look within. Or it can be, if we don't have a compassionate friend who is willing to help us face what we find there, as Jesus wants to be for us. His good humor in the face of our flaws gives us confidence that he isn't out to get us, but to save us, first of all from ourselves.
You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first;
then you will see clearly
to remove the splinter from your brother's eye.
We're going to need help if we want to remove the wooden beam from our own eye. We are so accustomed to the distortion of our vision it causes that we are in no position to help ourselves. And as long as it remains we should be very suspicious of our own judgments, and particularly of what our motives are for making them. Are we even interested in helping our brother remove the splinter from his eye or are we actually more interested in celebrating it, and making fun of him for the fact that it is there? We love to say 'I told you so' in events like this, where people clearly ought to have been wearing safety glasses. But is that really what happened? How can we know for sure if our own gaze is so impaired and unreliable?
It is relatively easy to judge the objective morality of actions in themselves when the conversation remains at the level of the abstract. It is hard when real people and situations are in question. When it is about us we tend to err either in excusing ourselves or giving in to hopeless despair. When it is about others, if we like them, we tend to rush to make excuses. If we're neutral, we may resign them to the same despair we sometimes feel about ourselves. And if we have anything against them, we tend to interpret their every action as malicious on that basis.
For as you judge, so will you be judged,
and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.
Jesus desires for us to have hearts like his own, that are ordered toward mercy, forgiveness, and grace. We tend to pass by such statements as the above without realizing their full weight. We don't really imagine the mercy we will receive from Jesus could be limited because of our unwillingness to show mercy. We have a hard time believing that we will encounter a more severe strictness during the last judgment if we have behaved that way toward others during our lives. In the final analysis, it isn't that much that is asked of us if we want to encounter a merciful judgment ourselves. It almost feels like a cheat code to know that we can affect our own judgment simply by acting as Jesus commands toward others. But there it is. It is a demonstration of the fact that to be merciful as the Father as merciful seminally contains all the teachings of Jesus.
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