December 10, 2013
Plank Pulling
Often believers withhold spiritual
confrontation with one another for fear that the other party will get mad and/or
accuse them of judging. I’m toying with the idea that I can in fact correct another
spiritually, but must first admit that I too may have the same fault or sin. Jesus
said, “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? 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? (Matt 7:3-4 NIV) Jesus does not say
to ignore the speck (the sin), but rather to examine ourselves first lest we have
the same inclination. The question then becomes, do I recognize the craftiness
in others because I too have craftiness to my character? Or, do I see adultery
in others because I too have a lustful heart? I’m wondering if acknowledging our
own craftiness or lustfulness then frees us to confront that same sin in
others.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----The Scottish Moralists recognized the human component to which you allude. Around that basic idea they developed one of the earliest social psychological theories - Symbolic Interaction. Amidst its core is a concept they called “the looking-glass self”. To their theory, this is the element all humans use to measure and modify their own behavior against behaviors observed in others. The approximate truth of this idea can be seen in the Bible’s warning about keeping moral-corrupting bad company.
-----In fact, “the looking-glass self” is merely the intersection of two more fundamental processes. Joe Dispenza makes copious reference to the observation that neurons which fire together wire together. And well he should. It’s one of the more basic principles which makes your brain work, your consciousness what it is, and your memory of service. This wiring together having come from enough firing together causes pattern familiarity and recognition, including recognition of behavioral patterns. At least in sub-conscious areas, the mind easily picks up on the behavioral patterns of people around us, developing from them a sense of cultural and societal awareness. Plus, it does quite well in noting behavioral patterns of the self.
-----Without the comparative, calculative, concluding functions of the frontal lobes, we would all be monkeys doing what monkeys see. Lemmings come to mind. And I think you can appreciate the magnitude of the effect some calculation makes on breaking the link between seeing and imitating by observing how readily some people follow while others ponder carefully before mimicking. I don’t know how much the Scottish Moralists may have been alluding to the reflective processes of volitional thinking in their reference to “the looking-glass self”. But I do know that our thought processes serve up a sense of the self categorized very separately from the sense of any other being. The mind can hardly be expected to not deal with the two categories of “self” and “others” at least somewhat differently, probably because there is a marked difference between how its awareness of particulars of each category arises.
-----Because neurons that fire together wire together, behaviors of others similar to our own do catch our attention. When they are uncomely behaviors, the firing drags up the back-pressure wiring (conscience) we give ourselves, with all of our personal peculiarities about it. Though the mote is in our eye, nay, maybe even more because the mote is in our eye, we set forth to relieve our neighbor of the speck in his. It is an easier moral duty to remove that speck than one’s own mote, moreover, it generates sub-conscious salving for the pain of the mote. For many reasons, then, it is quite natural for awareness to focus on the self reflected in another.
-----I’m like you. I recognize some good in going after the speck gently with a piece of tissue. But while so doing, I almost always use my own mote as both an object lesson and a comforting example that the Lord has lots of grace and mercy for any patient yet in ER.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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