“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” Matthew 7:3
It is a diabolical human trait. We dwell on the past and remember the things we should have long forgotten. We often go to the blame garden and pluck the memory that can best serve us in judging ourselves and others.
I like the way David Augsburger puts it: “Going through our old memories to place blame is like hunting a black bead in a dark room at midnight wearing heavy gloves and a blindfold.”
We are ill equipped to judge ourselves. We judge with blinders on and with deep seated emotions. Our emotions get in the way of treating our own mistakes with some semblance of clarity. Little wonder that we cause inner suffering for ourselves as we look at those dark shadows lurking about in the halls of days gone by and rattling the bones that have so long been dead.
Recognizing that we are so ill equipped to judge ourselves brings us to a greater realization of how unqualified we are to judge a brother or sister. Jesus would help us to see that our vision is impaired as though a plank were protruding from our eye. How can we say to a brother or sister, “Excuse me I would like to remove that speck from your eye?”
Paul stated it carefully in I Corinthians 13:5 (Love) keeps no record of wrongs. Love is breaking the lead from our bookkeeping pencil, tearing up the scorecard and beginning again. Love ends the blaming game and gets on with the real questions: “What is the loving, responsible, truly respectful thing to do now?