Helping or Hypocriting?

From the Gospel of Saint Matthew: Chapter 7 and verses 1-5


‘Judge not, that you be not judged . . .’ Jesus with this and the following verse is warning that when you look at another, see a fault, think about it, reason in your heart about that person’s fault, and conclude then pronounce--or point out--that they are in the wrong the same meticulous scrutiny that you put them under you will be put under. You can hear this a little better in verse two when Jesus uses the words ‘the measure you use,’ so by the rule of judging you used that very same rule will be used on you.
Are we never to come to someone, a brother perhaps in the faith, and point out when he is in the wrong? That is not what this text is saying, rather it is a call to help others but first examine yourself.

‘first take the log out of your own eye . . .’ It is easy to see the faults of others because they are in front of us and because the natural desire for humans is that we want to see fault in others because it helps us feel better about ourselves. Note the contrast between a speck--something very small--and a log--something very big and blatant. How foolish is it to have huge, noticeable, undealt with problems of your own and come to someone and point out something very small in themselves? And it is not as though you must be perfect before you help someone else out--too many say ‘oh but I am sinful, how can I help others’ this is foolish; was not Paul sinful, was not Peter sinful, is not your pastor sinful!--but rather you must examine yourself and ask are you out for the other--their good--or your personal gain?

‘You hypocrite . . . ’ Jesus rightly calls these people ‘hypocrites!’ What makes these log-lodged speck removers hypocrites? They care nothing of helping others and removing sin or bad habits, for they do not care about removing such things in their own lives, rather they would sit back in their false-sense of righteousness and say everyone else is a sinner: They care nothing of helping, only exposing others so that they themselves can feel righteous.

‘then you will see clearly to take the speck out . . .’ The aim is to help one another, but not sit back as a perfect and righteous judge condemning one another. We must be willing to say, brother, you are at fault here, but in humility and awareness that we too are very sinful. The key difference in the judging mentality versus the ‘me too’-helping mentality is that the ‘me too’-helping is done out of humility and love, and the judging is done out of arrogance and self-love. You cannot rightly help others and glorify God without first being humble--knowing you are not perfect and that you are just like them--and loving--wanting to see them be rid of their sin and vices.

What Are You Basing Your Life On?

We live in the Scientific Age. Well that is what the nerds call it anyway. I will confess, we have a great dependency on the very many new scientific findings including all the technology, which is considered science . . . unless it gets too arithmeticish, but even then it is still science. Okay, enough poking, we ARE in the Science Age. We want facts! Meteorologists, aside from religious people, are among the most disliked in our communities because they are so often wrong; we want to the truth not some 20% turned 100% in a matter of 30 minutes. We also love our scientific food facts: the calories, the myriads of fats, what is good and what is not. Facts, facts, facts!

Do you base the truth off of facts? What about God? Absolutes and religion muck-up science one might say. Well that is no answer, that is a deflection, surely we can be honest with this question. Although we live in the Age of Science, we come to depend on how we feel more than ever it seems. As my evolution friends might say, we are relying on our primal instincts. We do not roam the earth dwelling in caves with a club in one hand and the hair of a woman in the other, we’ve progressed . . . but which way?

We eat because we are hungry, not because we know by facts that we absolutely need food; we watch TV and stay on Facebook because we want to, not because it is proven to make our lives better; we make friends, we dump boring ones, we say this or that, we do almost everything because we want to, not because it is factually the most helpful, right?

Feeling are good, really good, but only when they are used appropriately. God gave humans feelings to be able to expound on facts: Your friend just had a successful surgery, it is good news and if you are not malfunctioning you should feel happiness! When you hear of someone you know is in a car wreck it is not good news and you will be sad. But sometimes our feelings do not comply with reality. What about when you receive fabulous news that your spouse actually does not have cancer . . . and you feel nothing. Or when you watch a movie and someone gets brutally murdered and you become happy. Feelings are odd and fickle.

So again I ask, are you trusting in facts? Are you trusting that reality is based upon your feeling your sense? Let me tell you that experience is not science. Experience in our culture is elevated too highly. Now of course I want the doctor who has been in the field for a long time to examine me--unless it is Greg House--, but what I mean is when you base your life on one or two outcomes that others seem to think is not right. We often throw in experience because it is fake science, it is a hoaxed closed observation. We want a result and if an experience appears to give us that result we champion it with 'Aha!'

Do you base the reality of God or his character off of feelings, about what you think, or do you know facts about God? What if the Bible’s facts about God being holy and just and being willing and promising that he will judge righteously those who do not live in obedience to him? Why should he have the right to be obeyed me us, you may ask? Because he made us, and he being the maker of us can tell us what to do. But he is no tyrant, he knows what is best for us. Are you basing God on some bad childhood experience; why not see for yourself who the Bible says God is, that is why it is in our language.

Are you simplistically living by what you feel is right and good? Friend you are then basing not only your entire life but what lies beyond death upon a very unsatisfactory method. Are you sure you are willing to be that certain of something so whimsical? Feelings fly in the face of faith, one may say; God and the reality of faith—an expectation not a crossing of the fingers—stands regardless of what we say about: it is. And it must be reckoned with now or later.

Who I Am

Dirty, dingy, corroded, gross!
Step away: don’t make contact: keep going.
Not the homeless hag hobbling in the hidden halls;
Not the loud drunk demanding the world’s dough;
Not even the helpless whore who’s high on hopeless;
But from the ‘just getting by’ and they’re serious.
The broken down car, no healthcare for their failing health,
The one blanket too few, the chairless table or the tableless chairs,
The maybe a new light bulb later, the leaky roof drooling on their collapsing floor.
I step away because I’ve forgotten that I
Was they and more: the homeless, prostitute, raging, poor.
I dodge the holy love–laced dart and leave the privileged of providing to other hearts

There Is Nothing That He Does Not See

‘The eyes of the LORD are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.’

Can you imagine that the Lord of the universe is watching everything that you do? You cannot go in the physical darkness of night or in a closed area without your actions being watched by him. There is no place on earth or in the heavens of which you are not exposed to the perceiving eyes of God. Even if you retreat to the deepest recesses of your heart, God is even looking at that for he knows your thoughts and the intentions of your heart.

Not only does God see and know, he will judge everyone for all their conduct! Friend, when you go to do your sins, know that God is watching you; when you devise schemes in your heart how will you will do this or that you must know that God is watching your heart; when you greedily and wrongfully desire things in your mind, know that God is watching your mind. God is everywhere and everywhere you think and intend and do, God is watching you. And as he watches he is keeping a record of all that you do against him, that which we call sin and disobedience towards God. Do your thoughts coincide with his will; he will judge you for them. You must know that when you die God will judge you for all that you have said and thought and intended but never did: nothing will be hidden but all will be exposed before him. When he rightly asks you, ‘Why did you not obey me, but instead do whatever your own heart desired?’ what will your response be, friend?

But for the Christian, the terror of God’s awful and accounting gaze is turned into something new altogether. Christians, those who do the will of God and strive to walk in obedience to his desires, are God’s children; being a good father God is very eager to com to their aid, to help them, to teach them, to discipline them so that they may love him better. The Christian knows that God is watching everything and nothing done against them by others will not eventually go unpunished. The Christian, and only the Christian, and live life in ease for he knows that God, his father who loves him deeply, is jealous to keep him protected and is watching him at all times.

Do you live in the fear or comfort of God’s gaze? Why are you so sure that you are God’s child? Do you know that your life is wicked right down to your very thoughts and intentions? Do you know that your life on earth and the hope of eternal life is hopeless apart from the completed work of Jesus Christ? Do you know that Jesus Christ was not raised from the dead his death would be worthless? Friend, God is watching, are you worshipping him or worshipping something else? He will one day bring up all your thoughts and actions and call you to account for the, Will you be able to say in truth, ‘But I have trusted in Christ, he has paid for all these wrongs’?

Are You Working for Nothing?

‘Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?’

This is a great question to ask, but there are many confusing elements to it; How do I know if I am spending my money for bread, which is not really bread; How do I know what really satisfies; where do I find such things; what is this person talking about??

The fact of the matter is that the one speaking is talking to those who are spending their money on food, legitimate, physical, scrumptious meals! So the question put to them was strange to them as it is strange to you and I; as a result some of the same questions were perhaps forged in their own hearts just as in ours today. The obvious answer is, I am eating real bread, would you have me steal it, or are you suggesting that I not eat food? But the obvious answer is not the one the speaker is looking for. We get a better clue when he continues: ‘and your labor for that which does not satisfy?’

Well these words come from the mouth of a prophet in the Bible’s Old Testament, Isaiah is his name. His audience was the people of Israel, the people whom God had made into a nation and himself established. In the New Testament we find Jesus saying the same thing as Isaiah and to the same people: ‘Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ Jesus points out that work and labor is not an end in itself.

Friend, do you find that life itself is wearisome, that your days are spent toiling and working but to no lasting end? Why do you work so hard and live for a job that one-day you will retire from? Work is a good and right thing, but only when it is not done to give meaning to life. Rest, you will find, does not come in your seventies when you have retired, no rest can be found at any moment! Jesus says, ‘I will give you rest.’ That offer is for now and for eternity. We strive to succeed and aim at something—anything!—that we can imagine will satisfy us that will give us pleasant thoughts as we lay our heads down at night to sleep, but nothing less than Jesus Christ will give your soul rest--for it is your soul that has kept your mind and body weary and tired. You are unsettled because your conscience knows that there is a God who demands worship, yet you find yourself resisting him. Friend, you will not rest until you have given up and seen your own striving at satisfaction in everything but God as sin before God. Jesus did the work that was needed, he paid for our sins by being unjustly murdered.

Isaiah goes on to say, ‘Seek the LORD while he may yet be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.’ Do you find that you are sinful and on a smaller scale even your thoughts are evil? No one can say that they have never wrongly thought about someone--maybe wishing that person driving slowly in front of you never existed--or have always been 100 percent honest in every situation--maybe not all of your sources for your paper are actual sources--or have wrongly wished that someone else’s possessions belonged to you--like their income, their children, their spouse. Let us joyfully acknowledge our sin, no one except God has ever lived and was perfect. But go to God for he will have compassion and even though we have sinned against him he will abundantly pardon.

Are you laboring for things, which will not satisfy you? Are you doing everything except the one thing that will give you rest? As you lay down to sleep are you still laboring because something is awry? You are in a good place then, no one is perfect; go to God with your sin.

C’est la vie

‘C’est la vie, that’s life’ you may say. The loose phrase echoes the sentiment of an unaffected or undistracted person, too focused to be greatly hindered or even surprised by life. The death, the life, the triumph and the dismayed all are disregarded under the simple C’est la vie. But who, in all sincerity and meaning can actually say something of such flippancy when real, shaking, and arduous times avail our lives? To speak in such a way is either a symbol of insanity, lack of feeling, maybe even security and surety.
Insanity: It is conceivable that one is so locked in his own closet of despair that life is too tumultuous for him to come out and play in. The insane man is then able to throw around any phrase he likes, for nothing is of any real substance. He speaks and has as much flooding affects as one drop of water; his words stem from an inability to understand life aright any longer. His ability to see and compute the socially accepted—or humanly appropriated; the natural and normal—response. Therefore, at any moment he can say, ‘C’est la vie’ and mean it, but it means nothing.
Lack of feeling: There are those who feel nothing. We do not mean physical touch but rather emotional ‘touch.’ His mother who was nothing but kind to him unexpectedly dies and he is unaffected. His wife finds that she has finally been able to stiff-arm the long awaited pregnancy and no joy falls over him; thus at any moment he can say, ‘C’est la vie’ and mean it, but it means nothing.
Security: The world could implode and standing on its edges this man can rightly explain our phrase because he has an overwhelming confidence in something. Yes, he feels and yes he understands but still, overriding all things he feels secure. Now there are two possibilities in such security: something you perceive to be trustworthy or something that unequivocally is trustworthy. Many have trusted in their minds, their abilities, their race, their beliefs, their hopes, humanity, karma, good deeds, or fate. Others have searched for something outside themselves, for they know that there is something bigger, more grand than they can find inwardly or in their humanity. They understand that when they the towering mountains sprinkled with snow on its tips all hovering beneath a blanket of serine clouds majesty and awe is the natural reaction because they are in the presence of something greater than they. But these too fall short. Jesus Christ is the only thing that by his nature commands awe but also offers to be followed and to become like him. Sure, Nature seems to call and be natural but we cannot be Nature; we can be captivated by the Grand Canyon but we cannot become like it. Jesus shocked the universe by leaving heaven and becoming a human only so he could live perfectly and be betrayed by his closest friends and followers and killed for being innocent. He left glory to be rejected out of love for his father. And his father raised him from the dead and has given him authority over all the universe and time and that which lies beyond time: timeless eternity. Jesus’ heavenly father asked him to do this great chore so that the rest of humanity could become like him: without blame before the father.

Whimsical words will fall away when our time on earth is done. Our eyes will close one final time and will you have the confidence to say to yourself, ‘ah, C’est la vie?’