Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, February 5, 2023
by Dr. Kimberly Leetch, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: Although we may be quick to judge, Jesus calls us to look inward and refrain from judging others.
People judge each other every day. Most human brains are wired to put all the stimuli we receive into categories. It helps us process the overwhelming input we get. Our brains learn to tune out the sounds that aren’t alarming: the hum of an air conditioner or the din of the city. We categorize what we see—I need to pay attention to the stop light; I don’t need to do anything with the wrapper on the ground across the street.
And we judge people. In some ways, this can be to our benefit. If walk down the aisle of a grocery store and someone far bigger than me runs at me screaming, I’m going to run the other way. My experience has taught me to categorize this person as dangerous at worst, unpredictable at best.
The problem comes when we judge people based on size, race, gender, clothing, age, or behavior that we may not understand. In those cases, we are judging people not on their value as human beings, but on our own biases against people with similar sizes, races, genders, etc. We fail to see the person and instead only see the label we’ve placed on the person.
The problem also comes when our judging turns into behavior of our own. It’s when we treat others as less-than simply because they’re different from us.
The problem also comes (and Jesus was very intentional in pointing this out) when we sit in judgment on others and fail to see the limitations within ourselves. We cannot use other people to deny our own imperfections. We cannot use other people to make us feel better about ourselves.
Most of us are hard-wired to judge. But we are also given the capacity to learn, to grow, to evolve, and to do something different with the input we receive. We have it within us to change our perceptions of others (in fact, no one else can change us but us). Jesus calls us to be better, to look inward for things to judge and improve.