The Speck In Your Eye?

Wisdom Nugget: "“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? ⁴ How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? ⁵ You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye."

Ever experienced a situation where you tried to use a particular tool, but couldn't? You tried several times to no avail then you finally concluded that it was broke, only for someone else to make use of the same tool and you realizing it was your fault, you didn't know how to use it?
Blaise Pascal puts it this way, "Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion". Robert M. Hutchins added "This is a do-it-yourself test for paranoia: you know you've got it when you can't think of anything that's your fault." Outward judgment often fails, inward judgment never" - Theodore Parker

A mother and daughter walked into a supermarket to get some groceries. On their way out the mother very upset said, "I don't know what's wrong with that attendant; her character is so annoying she couldn't even smile", she snapped.  "Did you see your face when you approached her?" her daughter replied smiling, "mum, your facial expression was worse when you approached her, it's not the attendant". Sometimes we get so engrossed with what the problem is with other people, that we fail to realize that the problem may not be with the other one as we always think, but very much within us.

A man feared his wife wasn't hearing as well as she used to and he thought she might need a hearing aid. Not quite sure how to approach her, he called the family doctor to discuss the problem. The Doctor told him there is a simple informal test the husband could perform to give the Doctor a better idea about her hearing loss. Here's what you do," said the Doctor, "stand about 40 feet away from her, and in a normal conversational speaking tone see if she hears you. If not, go to 30 feet, then 20 feet, and so on until you get a response." That evening, the wife is in the kitchen cooking dinner, and he was in the den. He says to himself, "I'm about 40 feet away, let's see what happens." Then in a normal tone he asks, 'Honey, what's for dinner?" No response. So the husband moves closer to the kitchen, about 30 feet from his wife and repeats, "Honey, what's for dinner?" Still no response, Next he moves into the dining room where he is about 20 feet from his wife and asks, Honey, what's for dinner?" Again he gets no response so, He walks up to the kitchen door, about 10 feet away. "Honey, what's for dinner?" Again there is no response. So he walks right up behind her. "Honey, what's for dinner?" "James, for the FIFTH time I've said, CHICKEN!"

We must take care to correct the problem with ourselves; we must work on our own shortcomings. There are changes we need to make. This isn't to say that faults, bad habits and sins do not abound with those around us. They do. We out to focus on ourselves because until fault-finding or blame transfer stops, character building cannot start. While we can easily see the other persons' short comings, we are almost all the time blind to our own faults. For most of us, it's difficult to shift the spotlight to ourselves from others..

Photo credit: neuroticcamel