A world without mirrors

It has always been sad to me (not surprising, but sad nonetheless) to see how eager we are to preach violently against the things we are not guilty of. Or we hear a convicting sermon and immediately think of all the other people who need to hear it. And it's not as though we don't have enough faults to occupy our time. We could spend from now until the Lord returns examining ourselves and asking God to expose our sinful habits, actions, motives, thoughts, attitudes, etc. and we'd never finish. Scripture is full of admonitions to examine ourselves and yet we are much more content to seek out and publicly expose the failings of others. We pass a resolution condemning the secular alcohol industry and reject one calling us as a convention to account for unregenerate membership and inflated rolls. It's like we live in a world where we can see everyone else but have no means of looking at ourselves. Why is this?

Maybe it's just easier to expose the faults of others. If we look at ourselves we are the ones then responsible to deal with those things. It takes time and work. When we point out others' failings, our job is done. They are the ones who bear the task of having to work on them and we can go on our way.

Maybe it helps to distract and deflect attention from our blame. When we know we are guilty and certainly worthy of criticism, we can avoid that by pointing at someone whose sin is either more public or more socially reprehensible or culturally demonized. And then maybe people will forget about the sin we've committed.

Maybe it makes us think we've actually done something. We can vote, for instance, to prohibit alcohol consumption and feel that we have improved our churches and our communities and strangthened the moral fiber of our land. And in fact, we may have done nothing at all...or less than nothing.

Maybe self-examination doesn't make for good reading. I'll admit that I'm guilty. I go searching the blogs and my morbid curiosity hopes for a new exposee or accusation. When I see a blogger's personal confessions and admissions, there aren't quite as many comments. Self-examination just isn't exciting and attractive.

I've seen a lot of this type of behavior in my life and especially over the past few months. And I'm not saying that we can't respond to people or that we can't bring to light things that honestly need to be exposed. It just seems that so many times I am much more eager to sit in the chair of the judge than I am to sit in the chair of the defendant. May God help us all to not just confess, but REMOVE our beams before we deal with the specks of others.

Dave