Of Logs and Eyeballs

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye,

But do not notice the log in your own eye?

-Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 7:3

Sometimes I feel paralyzed by this verse.  Probably because I feel that judging others is one of my own personal battlegrounds with sin.  One of the peculiar things about having a teenage son, who in my case happens to have a very similar personality to my own, is that one sees an almost comic caricature of ones own personality flaws.  My son is a know it all extraordinaire, and I am also, a lot of the time.  In studying Myers-Briggs Personality Types, and through long searching of my own ego, I understand that the natural inclination I have towards this is rooted in a desire for competence and self-reliance.  Jack and I are both INTJ or INTP depending on the day (Find out what that means here).  That last letter is the only one on my inventory that proves fluid from time to time.  Fifteen years ago I was pretty securely on the J end of that particular spectrum, the J and the P stand for Judging and Perceiving.  When I am operating out of my J tendencies, I am at my most stubborn and bullheaded, because I am doggedly sure that I am right, about pretty much everything.

Pastoral work, parenthood, and probably just plain getting old have pulled me (sometimes kicking and screaming) back towards the P end of the continuum.  To (over) simplify, J is about the destination and P is about the journey.  I find that personally, I function best when the two are in balance, and teaching the J side to appreciate the P is a healthy thing for me to do.

An interesting side effect of this personal balancing act is that I tend to get "triggered," as the younglings say, by judgmental people.  And in my line of work I tend to run into a fair number of those, particularly when I stick my nose out into the broader church.  I believe in the unity of the Body of Christ, and so I try to work with folks from other denominations.  I am not against working along side Pentecostals or Roman Catholics, Lutherans or Methodists, whatever, but there are times when the legitimate differences between those groups can rear up and get kind of ugly with regard to the log/speck dynamic.  At those times it is probably fortunate that I am an Introvert on the Myers-Briggs scale because if I was an ENTJ, I would probably get into more fist fights.  As it is, I am thankful for my ability to conduct internal dialogues, even if they are outraged, without becoming outwardly hostile.

My NT complex means that I gather information through intuition (as contrasted with sensing) and process it through thinking (as contrasted with feeling).  It also means I am in a minority of the population. Unlike the shifting sands of my J-P continuum these inclinations have been remarkably stable and strongly rooted since the first time I took the MBTI in high school.  In practice this means that when I encounter a "trigger," I feel it in my gut, and sometimes pretty strongly in my gut.  But then I need to take the time to think it through before I determine what my response ought to be.  In formulating my responses, often my Introverted nature reels in whatever sort of "enlightened" invective I might otherwise spew forth, particularly if I sense that I will be simply talking to a wall.

This is sort of the long way around to saying something that I think might be valuable to a lot of people who are trying to follow Jesus in the world. I hope it is most valuable to people who are, right now, feeling alienated by the Conservative Evangelical brand of Christianity that is sucking all the oxygen out of the room right now in this country and which, despite the name Evangelical, is anything but "Good news."  I am not naming names or describing scenarios by which I have come to this insight, which you might call a prophetic word, or you might call blasphemy if you are one of the people who is guilty of the sort of thing I'm about to talk about.  What I am offering here is a critique of a certain type of behavior by people who claim to follow Jesus.  It would have no bearing on a Buddhist or even on a Jew because it is rooted wholly in the ethic of Jesus that calls us to care for the least of these and the little ones.

Please listen Christians, try not to get defensive, know that I have had this very thing sticking in my own eye and it has been a great relief to have it out finally.  I'm trying to help:

You do not own God,

Or even seem to really know God very well.

Jesus does not agree with everything you do

He refuses to hate the people you hate

People can believe differently than you

Jesus loves them too.

People can sing different songs,

They can read the Bible with different eyes

They can even get saved differently than you.

Jesus can save people through sacraments,

Jesus can save people through overpowering moments of emotion

Jesus can save people through a still small voice

Jesus can save Catholics, Protestants, Pentecostals, Anabaptists, millennials, baby boomers, gen-Xers, heterosexuals, homosexuals, transgender people, cis-gender people, non-binary people, dog people, cat people, lizard people, vegans, smokers, potheads, Justin Beiber fans, prostitutes, drug addicts, terrorists, bigots, racists, homophobes, Liberals, Conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, Trumpers, Never-Trumpers, Arabs, Israelis, black people, white people, Asian people, Indonesian people, Indians from India and Native Americans, Caucasians (the real ones from the Caucasus), Germans, Swedes, Dutch, Russians, Turks, Egyptians, Irish, Scottish, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Greek, Norse, Latino, Mestizo, Inuit, Eskimo, Samoan, Bajun, Cajun and hillbillies of all sorts, Gauls, Huns, Vandals and Visigoths...

You get the idea, Jesus saves, God loves, stop trying to narrow that down

You're making a fool of yourself.