The road to recovery

I was listening to a political activist from the Republican party today ranting about the state that our country is in.  He went through this whole laundry list of problems that are afflicting our country, and at the end his basic summary was that the Democrats are to blame for it all.  It would have been laughable if he wasn't serious.  But even more disconcerting is that this kind of finger-pointing is not limited to Republicans.  Democrats do it, too.  Libertarians, Tea Party members, big businesses, small businesses, rich people, poor people, whites, blacks....we all have a habit of blaming our problems on someone else. 

Now I don't deny that this country is having problems.  Whatever your ideology, whatever your reasoning, it's hard to argue that there are major issues in our nation.  But the thing that can be argued is who is to blame for them.  Jesus said that we should remove the plank from our own eye, before we try to get the sawdust out of our neighbor's eye.  What did he mean by that?  I'm sure that most people, on hearing this, would have thought to themselves, "what's Jesus talking about?  I can see just fine."  


But Jesus was illustrating a simple, yet profound point about humanity.  We all have a tendency to pass the buck, to point the finger, to place judgement anywhere but on ourselves.  We all are, in essence, hypocrites.  A hypocrite is someone who expects something of someone else that they are unwilling to do themselves.  And instead of accepting the blame and working to fix the problem, we instead choose to pass the blame onto someone else.  

But that's a sign of immaturity.  Mature people don't look for someone to blame; they look for something to do.  Do you think there are problems in your family, your city, your country?  Then do something about it.  The road to recovery always begins with "me," not "you."  It begins with "we," not "they."  Take a stand for something that you believe in.  Can you imagine what would happen if an entire nation of Christians did the same?

Matthew 7:3-5

³ “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? ⁴ 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? ⁵ You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.