Seen and Unseen

Seen and Unseen--October 5, 2018

[Jesus said:] "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, 'Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye." [Luke 6:42]

Maybe the first question to ask, if we are going to be unflinchingly honest with ourselves, is, Do we really want to know about the logs in our own eyes?  

See, I have a hunch.  I think Jesus knows us and these fickle hearts of ours better than we want to admit--better, even, than we know ourselves.  And I think Jesus is laying down the groundwork here to push us to see the things in ourselves, not just that we cannot see about ourselves, but the things that we choose not to see in ourselves.  I think Jesus is raising the question we don't really want asked and pulling the thread we didn't really want to see anybody tugging on: Jesus exposes that there are things I deliberately hide from myself (and other things that you hide from yourself), which we hide precisely so that we won't notice how they are skewing and affecting our vision of everybody else.  And as long as I have fooled myself into thinking that I and I alone have a "pure" and "objective" view of reality, then I will deputize myself into telling everybody else around me where they are wrong, or what problems they have, or what terrible rotten wickedness I see in their hearts... while I keep myself from seeing my own mess.

And here's where our clever self-deception curves in on itself: as long as I have hidden my the "logs" in my own eye from my own view, anytime someone else comes along to offer to help me with the blind-spots or splinters in my own field of vision, I will perceive it as an attack.  After all, if someone points out something obstructing my own vision while I am convinced that I don't have any blind-spots at all, I will feel threatened and attack back to protect my eyes (which I assume are already spot-free). So the very people who are best suited to help me actually to see more clearly are the people I will at best ignore and at worst see as hostile enemies because they are claiming to see something in my own vision that I cannot see myself.  And from there it becomes terribly easy for me to accuse those trying to help me to see more honestly and truthfully of having their own crooked agenda or distorted vision, when maybe, just maybe, they are the ones best able to heal my eyes.

You can see, I hope, how easily this all becomes a vicious circle.  The very obstructions that keep me from seeing things rightly also keep from seeing the obstructions themselves, and therefore I'll lash out at anyone who dares get close to my eyes to try and pull out the impediment.  So as long as I start with the assumption that my eyes are already perfectly clear, I'll deny any evidence to the contrary because I can't perceive my own blind-spots.  How perfectly, terribly circular.

And the thing is, we are doing this to ourselves literally all the time--we are, each of us, living with at bare minimum eight to ten sticks in each of our eyes at any given time, and each one takes a trusted gentle, honest voice to help us let them in to remove the splinters.  

It's the addiction that I don't want to face up to, and so I deny to myself and everyone around me that I have a problem.  "I can stop any time I want!" I say back to the people who are trying to save me from killing myself, because I cannot see how bad the problem is.

It's when a ten-year-old girl buys into the voices and images she sees on television and on magazine covers that say she is unacceptable unless her body fits a particular image, her hair fits a certain style and texture, and her face matches a supposed ideal.  As soon as she internalizes that picture, she is now trained to judge herself ugly and unworthy for anything that doesn't fit the cookie cutter picture, and also to apply that same arbitrary standard ruthlessly to all the other girls in her class.

It's when a thirty-something white guy, married to another thirty-something white woman, who both grew up in wealthy suburbs, tell themselves they haven't had any special treatment or privileges in life and then start to feel threatened and angry when someone else points out that not everybody had the chance to go to college or take extravagant vacations in childhood, and that not everybody had computers and cars and cell phones placed in their hands.  None of those objects or opportunities are wicked or sinful by themselves, but when I treat those privileges as though they weren't really there, I am setting myself up to feel threatened when someone else points out that I am not the self-made success I would like to tell myself I am.

It's when a man in his sixties says he feels threatened by the rise of women coming forward in our society to tell the stories of their experience of domestic violence, sexual assault, or mistreatment, while never having had to learn to take any steps at all to keep himself safe--never having had to worry about walking down a street late at night with his car keys held through his knuckles, or being taken advantage of by a superior at work, or having someone slip something in his drink when he wasn't looking.  When we cannot see the blind-spot that others have to deal with all the time, we start to get defensive if someone points out what we could not see for ourselves.

It's when folks in the county where I live--in a state that was unquestionably on the Union side of the Civil War--proudly wave Confederate flags at their houses, or have Confederate flag stickers on their cars, or Stars-and-Bars patterns on their clothing or hats--who seem to have no idea how that could possibly be unsettling, especially to Christians who take the New Testament seriously.  When folks defend that as "being proud of living in the country," (and they do), rather than acknowledging the baggage that inescapably comes with that symbol, it's one more intentionally-placed log that keeps people from seeing themselves and the world honestly.

We could go on and on, and surely you can help me to see logs in my field of vision that I cannot perceive.  I would invite that, and together we can see what things in our common sight are of Christ or not.

And that is indeed the first step.  That is exactly what Jesus invites--no, more than that: it is what Jesus challenges us to do.  Jesus dares us to risk letting other people help us see the things we cannot see, and to acknowledge that there are things obscuring my own vision that I need to deal with before I go complaining about why everyone else is attacking me.  Because here's the thing--maybe the people around me who are pointing things out that make me uncomfortable are helping me to see the logs I have placed in my own field of vision at exactly the point where I won't be able to tell that they are there.  Maybe the people around me that I perceive as "attacking" me are simply saying out loud what they can see that is stuck in a blind-spot for me.  

Well, in that case, instead of keeping the cycle going and lashing out at others who say things that make me think (or that make me feel insecure and threatened first), maybe we could start where Jesus points us: to start with the possibility that there could be something in my own eye that I cannot see yet.  Maybe, before I get riled up, I could ask, "Are there things that are skewing my vision, which I hadn't realized were there?"  Maybe, I could do some honest introspection to see where I have been leaving splinters in my own eye, and to see if that is part of why I get defensive if someone else says they can see something I cannot.  There is a reason that Dr. King and his movement insisted that before they take public action like a boycott or a march or a sit-in, that they went through a time of "self-purification" to see where their own hearts had blind-spots or issues they needed to deal with first.  That is what it looks like to check your own eye for logs--it starts with the admission that I do not yet see things perfectly, and that I need to examine myself first, rather than getting defensive at the very suggestion that I have something to learn.

But that is scary.  Almost everything Jesus calls us to do will be, truth be told--not because Jesus is mean or cruel, but because living honestly in the world requires courage, and because it will always feel easier to retreat into imagined worlds of our own imagination.  But just because the challenge of Jesus is scary, or pushes us to look in the mirror to see the splinters sticking out of the whites of our eyes, doesn't mean it isn't worth it.  In fact, it might just allow us to be relieved of an awful lot of pain and anxiety we didn't realize we were dealing with, and we might discover there were a lot of things, seen and unseen, that had been lodged in our pupils.

Today, the first step for us is to look inward--at our hearts, at our lives, and at our view of the world.  Where have we grown accustomed to the pain of having logs, splinters, specks, and sticks in our eyes, and where have we perhaps even intentionally let those things stay in our lives where we won't notice them?  Where might we need the help of someone else who sees differently from the way we see to help us heal our own vision before we go on a crusade against people we disagree with?  Where might we start with the courageous step of looking at our own eyes, and asking Jesus to heal them?

Lord Jesus, heal our vision, and pull out the logs and specks and sticks that we have chosen not to notice.  Give us the courage to admit that you will see more than we do, and to dare to allow your fingers to get close to our eyes.