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| REST STOP #3: There’s a log in my “I” “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own I?” I looked at the paper I was holding and read these words again and laughed. I was grading a paper from one of my classes. It was a simple and understandable mistake, to be sure, but it was worth a chuckle. What a great pun! The log in your own I. Then I stopped, stopped like I was hit with—well, a log! What if there was a connection between condemning and criticizing others and my “I?” I started to think about all the times that I judged people harshly, too harshly, times when I criticized outwardly or mumbled to myself inwardly. Was I so judgmental, in ways that Jesus clearly points to as sin, because I was having problems with … me? I scratched my “I’s,” my false selves that love to cause spiritual blindness. The self that loves to get praise. The self that worries about what other people think of her. The self that never likes to admit she’s wrong. All those selves find their energy in the false understanding that good identities are a scarcity, so I need to fight to get mine. I need to find myself by proving my own worth, because there’s just not enough love to go around. What if people knew how little I really knew about the Bible? What if they knew how scared I was at times? What if they knew … my sin? Feeling so unworthy, feeling my own identity so threatened, I lash out at others. In the book Our Many Selves, Elizabeth O’Connor points out that it’s quite possible that what we criticize in others, we would also find in ourselves, if we dared to look. As I dared to look, I saw how very true those words were for me. Continued... |
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