We are a people obsessed with reasons why we find someone else acceptable.  We easily point to what’s wrong with them.  But when we look in our own mirror, we quite easily justify why we are the way we are.  And it’s as much that we justify ourselves as it is that we so easily see what’s wrong with someone else.  If and when we reach the point that we find what’s wrong with them, different about them, annoying about them, resentful about them, it becomes easier for us to become indifferent to them.  At that point we don’t care if hurt or safe.  At that point we don’t dare if they alive or dead.  And yet for Jesus, the issue is more about the state of their existence as it is the quality of their care.  If people are half-dead, then to Jesus, there’s still life in them — life enough worth saving.  And making judgments about others without first evaluating where we fall short is a recipe for ensuring that no one is alive.  We die by our indifference to another, and they die because we choose not to care for them.  We choose to ignore their life by our inaccurate assessments of who they are and what’s wrong with them, causing an inconvenient truth about who we are to go unnoticed and unaddressed.  That’s how people continue to end up on the road half-dead from journeying along life’s road.  It’s really a matter of refusing to live without facing the inconvenient truth about who we are — seeing the speck of sawdust in our own eyes that so easily contributes to causing someone else to die because our vision of who they really are is corrupted by our self-justification and our judgment of who they are.

• Have you ever avoided someone because you were placing too much emphasis on the sawdust in their eye?
• What are the dangers and benefits of finding the inconvenient truth of sawdust in our own eyes as we look at and give value to another person?

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
God of love and life, enable me to find the courage to remove the sawdust of the inconvenient truth from my eyes. Guide me into accepting people for who they are without judging them by my bias.

         The biggest destroyer of life in any age or culture is our unwillingness to embrace those who are different from us.  It was true in Jesus’ time, and neither time nor cultural advancement has changed the way we relate to one another or choose not to relate to one another.  The Samaritans only compose about 900 people still living in the small village of Shechem, the place of their religious origin.  Still, the Jews have nothing to do with the Samaritans.  And it’s no different in our land.  While there has been what we might call “some cultural advancement”, for the most part we are still pretty much a tribal people.  The blacks have nothing to do with the whites, the Japanese have nothing to do with the Koreans.  The rich have nothing to do with the poor.  The old have hardly anything to do with the young.  An old songwriter once wrote the words:

       “There is a green one

       who won’t accept the blue one

       for living with a fat one

       trying to be a skinny one.”

And it still continues in our world today.  Our refusal to admit to the inconvenient truths we hold within us against others to justify our behavior toward them is a blight on the Spirit of what it means to be a child of God.  And yet it’s continual use and abuse has left people half-dead by the side of life’s road with only a few “Good Samaritans” who have been willing to cast aside their disdain for one another to actually offer the cleansing wine of forgiveness and the healing oil of mercy to those half-dead.  Our refusal to “anything to do with one another” will surely lead to more half-dead people and less neighborliness among those who continue to live.  As Jesus Christ intimated and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stressed, “We will either live together as brothers and sisters or die together as fools.”

• Use today to reflect on ways in which personal and cultural biases have caused people to avoid each other because of stereotypes and misunderstandings.
• What can we do to help remove the inconvenient truths in our own lives that create walls of bias that help to destroy life rather than bring healing and recovery from life’s brutality?

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
God of all creation, work in me to remove my biases so that I may become an agent of Your healing and life-saving powers in my encounters with others.

         We are so good at the art of justifying ourselves. We want to be right (or righteous), and yet we’re not limited in what we will do to make ourselves appear popular and accepted by those who are closest to us.  We’re willing to give comfort and support to those around us who share our blindness to the inconvenient truths about ourselves that we’re willing to overlook.  Group or mob mentality often drives our collective disdain of the other.  We believe what we choose to believe, always willing to “follow the leader” whether they’re right or wrong.  And we’re always ready to give a good reason why we do what we do, say what we say, think like we think, and act like we act.

         What’s clear in each and every instance is that God is not impressed by our self-justifying efforts.  What’s in our hearts is more important than our social status or the cultural acceptance of the groups or tribes to which we belong.  And sometimes, our refusal to address the inconvenient truth about ourselves added to our desire to be accepted by others prevents us from being faithful to the God of life while offering life and healing to others in ways acceptable to God.

• Why is self-justification and peer group acceptance such a powerful force against our desire to be accepted by God?
• How can seeking to justify ourselves prevent us from facing God’s truth of what it means to be a neighbor to others?

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Righteous and loving God, empower Your Spirit to work within me that I may be justified and accepted by You rather than continue to live with the convenient lies I tell to justify myself.