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He also told them this parable: \u201cCan the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a pit? \xa0The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher.\xa0 Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother\u2019s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, \u2018Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,\u2019 when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother\u2019s eye. (Luke 6:39-42)

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In this text, Jesus offers the best description of social media to date: \u201cthe blind leading the blind.\u201d\xa0 It seems our whole society is falling into a pit as a result.\xa0 But, pot shots against social media aside, there\u2019s something really important in Jesus\u2019 words here for our particular cultural moment.

We get really excited about commenting on current issues and events.\xa0 Certainly we have our thoughts about the current protests in Ottawa and the government response.\xa0 Many folks have thoughts on the conversations around gender, sexuality, and orientation.\xa0 There are many other examples.

Closer to home though, we tend to make judgements and speak into the lives of others that to us seem to be making mistakes or bad decisions.\xa0 We want to inform and correct those we see stepping into sin.\xa0 Arising from the evangelical or popular Christian world that many of us are influenced by, there is a compulsion drilled into us to proactively seek or act to correct the errant ways in others.\xa0 They need to know what they\u2019re doing is wrong, and we feel like the Christian faith requires us to tell them.

But does it?\xa0 It seems to me in the very least that quite a long list of prior criteria must be met before we\u2019re even allowed to.\xa0 Are we the right person?\xa0 Is our heart in the right place to hold the weight of someone else\u2019s sin with the love and compassion it requires as Jesus did?\xa0 Do we even see or understand the situation and our faith clearly enough to weigh in?\xa0 \xa0\xa0

Jesus\u2019 words here flip the conversation around entirely as he points out that we ought to be far more concerned about the planks in our own eyes than we are about the specks in someone else\u2019s.\xa0 Jesus is never nearly as concerned about someone else\u2019s character or sin as he is about your own.\xa0 I do believe he means us to take the same approach.\xa0 Hence Jesus\u2019 stern words against judging or condemning others in the preceding verses.\xa0 This is the same Jesus who said \u201clet the one who is without sin cast the first stone.\u201d

The Christian faith begins with humility, surrender, and submission.\xa0 We submit to God\u2014to whom all of us are finally accountable.\xa0 Slowly in the presence of God, we discover the sins and faults in our own hearts and lives.\xa0 And, as the Spirit enables us, we confess these sins, repent, and receive forgiveness.\xa0 Slowly but surely, Christian character\u2014the character of Jesus\u2014is formed within us.\xa0 A character that looks like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.\xa0

Perhaps when we begin to see each of these fruit regularly and consistently in our lives and when others can verify that they see the same, perhaps then we\u2019ve come to a place where we\u2019re ready to attend to the speck in someone else\u2019s eye.\xa0 But only after a long, humbling, submissive journey with our Lord where we ourselves have learned from him what it is to be a sinner met, healed, and restored with loving grace, compassion, and forgiveness.\xa0 And even then, I don\u2019t know that we are ever to be eager to do it.\xa0 Perhaps only willing, when called upon, as an act of loving submission to the God to whom both of us must give an account.\xa0

How might this word from Jesus change the way that you engage with others this week and with the sins you perceive in their lives?\xa0 How different might our world be because of it?

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