Pot and Kettle situations

Today we had a dress rehearsal for a musical at church. Jasmyn was standing on the stage and her brother, who has a very hard time focusing and staying on task, was not where he was supposed to be. Jasmyn screamed at him from the stage, "Jonah! You get up here right now! You are not where you are supposed to be!" It was obvious to me at that moment that Jasmyn's behavior, rather than making Jonah look incompetent, made Jasmyn look rather brattish, demanding, and bossy. So, in turn, I turned to Jasmyn and yelled, "Jasmyn, stop yelling at your brother! If you keep yelling at him from the stage...." and then the irony of the whole thing hit me as I saw everyone staring at me with frowns on their faces.

We all see this kind of irony, or lack of self-insight in those around us. The worst drivers I know are people who tailgate, drive recklessly and way beyond the speed limit and yet these are usually the same people whom we find cursing everyone else's driving. I had a woman correct my manners publicly once - I asked someone to do something and she added "Please" in a very loud, corrective voice and again she was completely unable to see that her response was more lacking in manners than my failure to remember the word "please". I can think of one situation in which a wife cannot throw anything away and has a refrigerator, kitchen, den, family room, etc. so covered with stuff that you can't function in these spaces and yet she is constantly "worried" about her husband who has a den full of stuff.

It is easy to see these flaws in others. It is easy for us to see the log in someone else's eye who is trying to remove the speck from ours. Can we even begin to see the logs in our own eyes when we are critical of others? This is much, much harder to do.

I thank God for those little moments of insight in which I see my own hypocrisy and lack of self-reflection, knowing that there are things I miss. But I also pray that we might all strive to remember that we don't see our own imperfections very clearly, so it behooves us to be less judging of others in turn.