Wisdom Nugget: " How can you say to your brother, brother, let me take the speck out of your eye, when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye..."
A faulty vision is dangerous. It makes you see life and people
different perspectives. You see things in the opposite; you could call a
goat a sheep and a sheep a goat when your vision is obscure. The spec
in this context could mean fault-finding in others, and this stands the
chance of keeping us away from the plan God has for us. A faulty vision
is one that does not agree with God's plan, it does not exhibit faith,
but is full of pessimism. We tend to call people names when we even do
worse than the negative names we have tagged them. For instance we say
"he's such a liar" as if we have never lied before.
A young couple moved into a new neighbourhood and the next morning while
they were eating breakfast, the young woman saw her neighbour hanging
some washed clothes on the line just outside her window. "That laundry
isn't very clean," she said. "She doesn't know how to do the laundry
properly. Perhaps she needs a better laundry solution." Her husband
looked on, but remained silent. Every time her neighbour put up her
laundry to dry, the young woman would make the same comments. About a
month later the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line
and said to her husband: "look, she has learned how to wash correctly. I
wonder who taught her" The husband replied: "I got up early this
morning and cleaned the windows."
And so it is with life. What we see
when watching others, depends on how dusty or clean the windows of our
vision is; through which we look.
Honestly, we ought to learn to look at people with a heart filled
with love. It goes a long way to help us see them in the right light, instead of criticizing and placing tags on them. Most times it's our
minds that need purging and therefore have come to change our perception
about other people's actions. You see most people say "All lawyers are
liars". Some guys say "all girls are cheats". I could go on and on and
these misconception may have come to be as a result of certain
experiences we must have had in the past. One person's experience cannot make a
law; it cannot be deemed applicable at every point or situation.
William Temple said, "Our present time is indeed a criticizing and
critical time, hovering between the wish, and the inability to believe.
Our complaints are like arrows shot up into the air at no target: and
with no purpose they only fall back upon our own heads and destroy
ourselves."
We should work on ourselves, ensure we look inwards and live correctly, then can we say to our
neighbour, "there's a speck in your eye. Can I help you take it off?"
Wipe your window clean and you'll see how clean your neighbours laundry
is. William Blake adds "If the doors of perception were cleansed,
everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."
