Plank Eye
one
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus teaches:
Do not judge, and you will not be judged yourselves; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned yourselves; grant pardon, and you will be pardoned. Luke 6:36
Jesus says do not judge and do not condemn. What does He really mean?
God designed our intellect to make judgments or decisions.
Recall that when we meditated on prudence, which is the art of making good decisions, there were three steps:
1. Deliberate – gather all the information
2. Make a Judgment – make a decision about what is the right thing to do.
3. Then, take Action
All decisions require that we make judgments. We can and must judge ideas or propositions: this is accurate this is inaccurate. We can and must judge behaviors: this is right and this is wrong. However, we cannot judge persons: this is a good person, this is an evil person. We can judge their ideas if they express them and we can judge behaviors, because we can see them, but we cannot judge or condemn them as evil.
Judgement is a necessary part of decision making, but we cannot condemn others. Jesus said, “The judgements you give are the judgements you will get, and the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given.”
We are quick to judge others, and we do so harshly, on very little evidence. By this we are setting ourselves up for our own very harsh judgment. By condemning others, we condemn ourselves. Is that what we want?
two
There are three things that determine if an action is good or bad, right or wrong:
A. The Act itself – what you do
B. The Intention or motive – why you did it
C. The Circumstances surrounding the decision
We can and must judge actions. We cannot know the intentions of another for they are hidden in the heart. And we often do not understand the circumstances.
We can judge that this action is good or that action is bad. But we can never say, this is a bad person.
How often have we been judged, and we said to ourselves, “How can they do that? They do not know why I did this or what was going on in my life.”
That holds true for every person we condemn.
Good Will is the virtue that conquers rash judgment
Practice
a. Wanting good for others: even competitors, even enemies
b. Think good of others:
i. give them the benefit of the doubt,
ii. make excuses for them
1. Sure, you can see their action or the results of their actions but the motives and circumstances are all hidden from you – so you cannot judge accurately
c. Speak well of others: every person has the right to a good reputation
three
Now let’s talk about plank eye. No, not pink eye—plank eye.
Jesus taught: Why do you observe the splinter in your brother's eye and never notice the plank in your own? How dare you say to your brother, "Let me take the splinter out of your eye", when all the time there is a plank in your own? Hypocrite! Take the plank out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother's eye.
In his book, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis explains a primary strategy the devil uses to destroy us. Speaking to his demonic underlings Satan instructs them to “Aggravate the most useful human characteristics, the horror and neglect of the obvious. You must bring him to a condition in which he can practice self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office.”
Why is it that we see the defects, weakness and sins of others so clearly, but we are completely blind to our own?
Because, strong disordered desires make us blind to our own sins. Think of your disordered desires, what might be blinding you in your daily life? What are you too attached to that blinds you?
four
The intellect is designed to guide our decisions and our feelings. We should be led by the truth and not impulses, by the intellect and not by our desires.
In the case of vice, the disordered desires or feelings rebel against reason and hold it hostage, forcing our reason to serve our passions. This is when we rationalize or sin.
What does that mean. Well, everyone of us has two or three dominant deadly sins, vices we fall into habitually - pride, vanity, envy, sloth, anger, greed, gluttony or lust. Something triggers one of our dominant vices and this disordered desire becomes inflamed and takes our reason hostage. Then the intellect begins to build a case based on partial truth to justify or rationalize our vice. Something like, Hey, it has been such a stressful time, I deserve this glass of scotch or this comfort food. Then we enter into the vice. Or if I allow my kids to continue in this behavior they will ruin their life so I need to attack this behavior right now and we blow up in anger. We build an argument based on some partial truth the passions allow us to see to justify the action we know deep down is wrong. This is how the disordered desires blind us to our own behavior.
But when it comes to other people we are not blinded by our disordered desires. Therefore, we can see the sins of others clearly because we are not blinded by their disordered desires that blind them.
five
How can we avoid neglecting the obvious vices, sins and character flaws in our own life?
When we are able to pull out of the stream of disordered desires we must analyze our behavior. In those moments when we are not blinded by strong disordered desires we must examine our own life.
First, ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you your dominant sinful and destructive habits.
Second, try the best you can to assess your behavior and identify your dominant vices. If I look honestly at my life I can easily come up with 10 or 12 habitual sins. But, I can’t work on 10 or 12 at once. Pick one, the one that seems the most important to work on.
Third, ask someone who knows you well but has nothing to lose if they offend us by their honesty what they think is the main thing we need to work on.
Fourth, make a simple, concrete resolution or plan to act differently.
These dominant deadly sins are bad habits. To overcome a bad habit we need a strategy. Form a concrete strategy to act differently.