In recent days of trying to cast blame to due a recent demise of relationship, I had to stop myself to see where my blame was.  We tend to always play this game whenever disappointment or hurt has taken place in our lives.   Relationships–all relationships: professional, friendly, amorous, familial, etc–survive or fail based on the two individuals in question.  I’ve seen friends talk vehmently about hating their jobs, then lament getting fired.  I’ve seen people fight viciously with family, yet cry over estrangement.  I’ve seen people talk badly about friends, and then report their shock over the abrupt end to that friendship.  We are all called into relationship with each other, seeing God in the other person, loving that person even when it takes everything in us to accomplish that very act. 

As a progressive/liberal/open-minded/fill-in-your-label-here Christian, I find myself loathing people who are not liberal, open minded, and progressive.  It’s amazing how we fragment ourselves from one another in the name of good and God.  Perhaps we need to recognize that we are worshipping a false idol–ourselves–in that act.  Perhaps we can then recognize that it is the furthest action from God, and therefore, Love.

Luke 6:39-49. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?

Obsessing about the speck in our neighbor’s eye seems to be the sin of choice among Episcopalians and Anglicans these days. The questions of authority and morality on which we disagree are important and often perplexing, and someday we will stop bashing each other over them. But for now (and I write this over a year before publication, so possibly things will have changed by the time these words are read, though I doubt it) the bashing continues.

On the one side are the “ignorant, simplistic,  homophobic, fundamentalist, rigid biblical literalists,” and on the other are the “revisionist, heretical, radical, relativist, biblically illiterate secular humanists.” Whew. It’s exhausting just to list the names we call each other.

What if all the accusations are right? What if we are all unfaithful, arrogant, and self-righteous, each  in our own way? Then it would seem we should not waste our energy fretting about other people’s sins,  but focus on the logs in our own eyes that keep us  from seeing the face of Jesus in the person on the  other side of the theological chasm. (from Forward Movement)

 

I ask for forgiveness for what I have done and left undone.  I ask for forgiveness for not loving my neighbor as myself.  I ask for grace in remembering to address the log in my own eye, rather than the speck in others.