Do not judge?

Matthew 7

7‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. ²For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. ³Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? ⁴Or how can you say to your neighbour, “Let me take the speck out of your eye”, while the log is in your own eye? ⁵You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.

We draw conclusions about life continually. We are convinced we can count and we do count; two plus two is always four.  We have confidence in and trust our perceptions and draw conclusions with ease. Jesus teaches us that we should not be so confident in our own ability. He teaches us that we as disciples have an ongoing and ever present tendency to see the world through our own eyes and in our own interests. Jesus teaches that we need to transform our view of the world, the people who inhabit it and so transform the view we have of ourselves. Failure to do this is described as throwing pearls before swine. We don’t like to think of ourselves as people who are not in the position to benefit from the teachings of Jesus. But that is what is being suggested here. We need to adopt the viewpoint of Jesus; see ourselves and the people around us through His eyes. We need to do a personal inventory for ourselves, identify our own needs and implement and be transformed through the application of the teachings of Jesus to ourselves. If we don’t we will simply destroy ourselves through trying to apply the teachings of Jesus to other people while we see others through our own distorted self-righteous self-perception. The key to achieving justice for all; the key to transformation as we have already discussed is; generosity (5), prayer and forgiveness (7-11) and fasting (12) as taught by Jesus. So how do we appear to ourselves, how do the world, our neighbours and our community appear to us? We need to see ourselves as in the same light and need as our neighbours; we all have the profound need of the Grace and transforming love of God in Jesus. Jesus calls us to apply His teaching to our own lives as the means of getting a wise perspective on the world around us (13-24; 24-29). Any other teachings are misapplications and distortions of the Law and Prophets and will not produce the fruit of justice, mercy and peace-making; the false prophets simply perpetuate alienation from God and the life of blood, sweat and tears ‘East of Eden’ (15-23).