I slept for eleven hours the other night (that's a lot of hours and I am aware of that), and at some point during all of those hours I dreamed about getting the planks out of our eyes and how God is the great intercessor and also contact lenses and I wrote it all down when I woke up so that I could blog about it. So this is me trying to figure out what I meant when I was half-awake and wrote down those things:
In Matthew 7, Jesus says to take out the plank in your own eye before you point out and pick on the speck in someone else's eye. The only (physical) things I've ever had in my eye are little eyelashes that sometimes get stuck on accident, and contact lenses. The plank in my eye is the exact opposite of having contacts. Contacts are there to help me see, and they are small and inconspicuous and clear, and I put them there on purpose, and no one can tell that they are in my eye unless I say something about them, whereas a plank in my eye is a huge two-by-four that is just all of a sudden in my eyeball and I keep whacking people over with it because it sticks out so far. There is quite a contrast between contacts and planks.
We talked about this passage in Sunday School when I was little enough so that I understand what's going on, but right now my main question is: does having a plank in your eye not kind of hurt? Because I mean...it's wood. Wood is from trees. And it seems to me that it would be at least a little bit painful to have a piece of tree in your eye. But that part was never addressed in Sunday School.
Maybe I judge people because it does hurt to have a plank in my eye, and I think that if I point out what's in someone else's eye, the pain in mine will go away. However, that's the opposite of the truth.
Maybe the reason I judge people so often is to defend myself from being judged. It's like a coping mechanism. Maybe I act like I'm better than other people because I hope sincerely that I am (but know that I'm not). Maybe I judge people because if they go down, I go up. Maybe I act like I'm the absolute measure of ultimate personhood because I need reinforcement to know that I'm a worthwhile human. Maybe I judge people because if I make people feel badly enough about themselves, then we can all feel badly about ourselves together, instead of just me.
I'm really judgmental. So much so that sometimes I think that the sins I struggle with are better sins to struggle with than whatever everyone else does. And that's just crazy and wrong.
Jesus says, "You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye."
But I don't know how to take the log out of my own eye. I can't. I legitimately cannot. Even if I knew how to, I couldn't do it. My arms are quite too weak to pick up a dang two-by-four and lift it out of my eye. And if I could just barely do it, I would leave so many splinters all around my eye and face that 1) no one would recognize me, 2) people would probably think my face was petrified, and 3) where would I put it? Let's be honest, I would probably drop it on my foot. And then I would have a broken foot and a splintered face and that's not much better than how I started out.
Remember how I said earlier that I judge because I want and hope and wish to be a worthwhile person? I think that, in order to have the log/plank taken out of my eye, I have to realize that I am not. I am not worthwhile, I am not perfectly adequate or even a little bit adequate, I am the worst of all the people in the whole wide universe. I say that not to be hyperbolic or dramatic or exaggeratory; I say it because I am. I wish I wasn't but I am.
When He saves my life, Jesus takes out the plank from my eye, He makes me clean and not sloppy, He makes me warm, and He makes me His. And that's all that I could ever hope to be because that's better than being an adequate person. It's being in the presence of the One who decided one day to invent daffodils just because He could and that is incredible.
So. God, being the great intercessor (that's the specific wording used to describe Him in the dream), takes the plank out of my eye. He takes it out cleanly and then makes sure to carefully take out any splinters or remaining wood paraphernalia around my ocular area.
He can't take it out until I let my guard down and realize that I am not qualified to judge people, even if I really don't like what they're doing. I don't know their whole story. When I know that I am the worst of these sinners and am deeply regretful and aware of it and know that the only way that I can do anything even remotely good is by Him, Jesus comes to make me a different person: a nice person who genuinely cares about people instead of just the information that they can give me. And then I don't need to judge. Because I'm made new and clean and I'm fine. And what other people are up to becomes so much less relevant to me. I have no reason to try to push myself up because I'm as content as I can be just where I am.
I know that it's Christmastime right now and this post is not about Christmas, and I almost decided to save it and post it later when there are no Yuletide celebrations going on, but then I decided to, because I have a plank in my eye all the time: January through December. I was at Walmart the other day observing the franticness of everyone scrambling to pick up cheap presents for people in their lives (was I buying presents? Nope. I was buying mascara and milk), and I was most definitely judging everyone. I was judging the checkout woman who also works at Harcombe, and I was judging the overweight man wearing three separate camouflage articles of clothing, and I was judging the lady in line in front of me for not being able to make her baby quiet. And that's just terrible. I like babies so I don't know why I was being so vindictive towards her in my head. None of those people did anything to me to deserve my judgment....nd then I dreamed about blogging about this so I just had to. So here we are.
Love,
Lauralicious
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