Reflection Not Refraction

Luke 6:41-42  Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?  Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.


Marsha used to say that we judge others by the outsides and ourselves by the insides. If the resulting judgement was jealousy she would say if you want the good part of their outsides remember you have to take their whole life. She was saying that we all judge both the apparent good in other people lives as well as the their bad. I've always said that judgement is bot bad in itself it is bad when we judge and then make ourselves God with our decision. It is when we judge the person as a result of judging a particular behavior, when God alone will judge the person. 


One thing is sure our judgement in all cases is imperfect at best. In physics terms with gather information like refracted light. Refraction is the bending of light as it passes through a lens or prism. I think it is impossible for me to judge perfectly because the facts will be bent or distorted as I gather them through the lens of my perception. I can't help it. Some facts in the situation will be known to me and some will be hidden, some will appear different to me than to others because of my experiences, some will hit areas of my own denial perhaps, but in one way or another we will find refraction. A speck can look like a boulder through a certain lens.


Reflection has it's problems as well. By reflection I mean examination as with a mirror. It is looking at yourself, the light you send to the mirror is returned to your own eye and you see yourself. It is possible to have a curved mirror and the image might still be distorted, like the makeup mirror that makes the spot look larger or the carnival mirror that can make us look thinner of fatter. Ideally however the speck looks like a speck and the boulder looks like a boulder. I know the parable is log but I like boulder better myself. We can also have trouble with reflection if we examine ourselves by the wrong standards. Like the alcoholic who sits at the bar a few seats down from the homeless town drunk and think to himself I don't have a problem he's the alcoholic. Our standard is God's word not that of man. I think some people want to avoid reading the bible daily because they really don't want to know God's standard. You see this parable comes almost immediately after the love you enemies teaching of Jesus. Put in that light without refraction and we have a clear standard by which to judge our own reflection.