Comparing the Forest to the Trees

Comparing ourselves to each other is something we may struggle against, but most of us are guilty of it. If you have curly hair you probably wish you had straight hair. If you're a brunette you might wish you were a blonde. If you're older, sitting in a classroom with brighter, younger people like I did, you might wish you were not an old fart and certainly much smarter than you know you are.

If you tell me you never compare yourself, your body, your hair, your smarts, your lack of charm to someone else I won't call you a liar, but we both know you are. We are always comparing ourselves as well as things to each other. We even say if we had lived when so-and-so did we never would have done what they did. Oh brother, what arrogance! Bottom line, even though we know better, and even though many of us say we don't compare ourselves to others, there are folks we wish we were like and there are folks we are glad we are not like.

We also do this with sin. We know there are a lot of things in our life we need to change, but at least we don't do this-or-that like so-and-so does. One of the tools of evangelism is the Ten Commandments. I have yet to meet anyone who has never broken at least one of the commandments, but we seem to have this internal ranking system that catalogues what God hates. Where in the Bible does God tell us that a liar is worse than a thief or a murderer worse than an adulterer? Is what we call an alternative life style worse than a proud look?

There is a Latin expression (I failed Latin in college) falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. It means false in one thing, false in everything. It applied to Roman law which took a thousand years to develop. In a legal case it meant if a witness was caught lying about one thing than the court could not believe anything else they said. Their entire testimony was thrown out unless there was some kind of corroboration. Let that fester for a while.

There are a host of things we do wrong every day that probably won't land us in court or get us incarcerated. Pastors have told me that a gossip can cripple a church, but it probably won't get them arrested. In fact, slander seems to be gaining in popularity.

In Biblical Textual Criticism there is a style called sorites. It is line upon line, precept upon precept logical statements that come to a conclusion based on a succession of facts. Each statement picks up the last key word or key phrase of the statement that came before it. It is a form of persuasion, to get the reader to come to a logical conclusion.

My conclusion is that whether you are in prison or out of prison, Democrat or Republican, in church or out of church, Beaver fan or Duck fan, we are all screwed up. Whether or not our sin lands us in prison does not change the fact that in our heart we know we have sinned, made poor choices, poor decisions, whatever you and your parole officer, you and your psychiatrist or you and pastor want to call it.

No one can prevent any of us from reaping the consequences of our actions; in our body, in our mind, in our heart and in our spirit. There are consequences, whether on this side of the river or the other side of the river. In the meantime, why are we so hard on people who are not like us? Why are we so exclusive?

Jesus said we need to remove the beam from our own eye before we try and remove the sliver from someone else's eye. Why don't we get that? How come we don't see the forest for the trees?