Plank Eye Disease – Pt 2

This is part 2 of a 2 part series on judging others. If you missed Part 1, you can find it by clicking here.

When Pinocchio lies, his nose grows. When people unlovingly criticize another, a plank begins to grow out of their eye! I know this pretty well because I’m still trying to take the splinters out! I still mess up every now and again, mind you. The truth is, everyone has fallen and has judged another, but the better truth is Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life.” And we can choose whether to walk out our lives by what we think is right in our own “plank filled eye” or by the living Word of God.

For every person in your life, if you thought long and hard enough, you probably could think of at least 1 thing each one could change about how they live their life. Be honest, you know you could! Since we are all human and imperfect, even you (me?? yes you!) have areas of your life you can work on. Noticing imperfection isn’t necessarily the problem, it’s how we deal with it. This brings us to symtom number two: Have you talked TO the person as much as you talked ABOUT the person? If you’ve talked more to other people about the issue than the person you actually have problem with, you’re the problem. (We’ll talk about white flags in a moment.) The hard part now is how do you talk TO that person. The good news is that most people are softer when they talk TO a person rather than hard when they are talking ABOUT a person. How to talk to someone starts with humility and love.

When thinking about how to talk TO a person with humility and love, I am reminded of an incident that happened about a year ago. Like most married folk do once in a while, my wife Kara and I weren’t exactly agreeing. In the middle of it, I realized we weren’t getting anywhere and I asked God for help. “What should I do,” I thought. I then heard just one word: “Humility.” I realized I had been pointing out everything she had been doing wrong or could have done different and, up until that point, I was too prideful to stop and confess what I could have done different. I then immediately began to point the finger back at me and you could immediately feel the air change. It was like a bomb was diffused. It’s probably what the disciples felt like after Jesus spoke to the storm to be still.

If you notice that you’re having a conversation where both you and the person across from you are waving swords of attack, be the sacrifice. Be the first to wave the white flag. Building relationships begins in surrendering in humility and love. That doesn’t mean that you don’t win (maybe it’s we win), it just means that you admit where you can grow.

There’s a BIG difference between loving someone too much to allow them to continue living a certain way and judging a person. Don’t take the gavel from God to judge others because He will take it back in the end.

Let’s give our gavels to God. Quit thinking you have the last word in a persons destiny. People can change, believe in them! Our words are more like commas anyways, than periods. God will have the last word and He is the period. Period.