Jesus understood that a picture is often worth a thousand words, and certainly and well crafted image stays in our mind long after simple words have been forgotten. It may have been for this reason or just for a little humors sake that he taught about judgement with the following parable, “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3–4).
This passage is one of the most misquoted texts in the gospels with bloggers, columnists, and preachers pulling this text to places it never was meant to go. The word plank speaks of a very large piece of wood, while the word speck speaks of a very small bit of wood, even as tiny as a little bit of sawdust, but an interesting twist on this statement is that speck and plank come from the same Greek word, they are the same substance only separated by size. In both cases there is a real problem that must be dealt with, but our perspective is the thing we must first manage to be successful.
Jason
Download PDF