Specks and Logs: It is the church who needs repentance more than the world.

Someone posted this to the social media account of a dear friend and brother in prophetic ministry this morning.

I found this quite offensive.  It seems to me we are so often confused about who Jesus was and why he did what he did.  I think any time we spend time with people as a means to an end, we run a grave risk of seeing people as objects instead of subjects.  I think too many Christian ministries even do their works of social concern with an eye to "converting" people instead of just because we see them as people with needs, and ourselves as able to help with those needs.

Jesus DOES want us to be inclusive and tolerant and accepting, because JESUS IS ALL THAT. If he was not, none of us would have an encounter with him because we ALL need to be included, tolerated, and accepted.  I think much of evangelicalism has become apostate because we view people as means and not ends.  When we count the number of "conversions," the number of meals served, homes repaired, etc., there is a subtle danger which comes from patting ourselves on the back too much.

Our Catholic daily mass gospel reading one day recently included this from the beginning of Matthew 7:

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?  Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? (Matthew 7:2-4, NRSV-CE)

I think it is unmistakably true that if we think someone else has the log and we have the speck, it means, of necessity, WE ARE THE ONE WITH THE LOG.

It would serve us all to remember the old gospel song:

Not my brother...not my sister...but it's me, O Lord...standing in the need of prayer.