The Speck and the Plank

A little while back I wrote this short post on Wikileaks:

Why I Don’t Trust Wikileaks

While at a Church meeting that week, I had a little revelation that’s taken me too long to act upon (perhaps one of the greatest faults of the Western Church-failing to practice what we learn and/or preach).

One of my weaknesses is my impulsive urge to jump in with a hastily-formed opinion in reaction to some event or post that has gotten me riled up.

The above post qualifies.

That Sunday I scribbled the following in my notebook:

“This week do not reveal evil, but reveal good. This week do not overcome evil with evil, but overcome evil with good. You can spend your whole life working on the evil within. Repent for [the] Wikileaks [post].”

Again, this was over a month ago, and just yesterday I found myself writing another reactionary blog post in response to a video praising Assange.

So, very belated, here is my official post asking for forgiveness for the previous post.

Why?

Because I’m just adding to the noise. I realize that the problem is not just “out there,” but I have plenty of problems right here in my own cynical and self-righteous viewpoint.

The world has enough pundits. It has enough people pointing the finger, and I have followed suit, assuming that the best way to beat the finger-pointers is to continue pointing the finger.

But it’s all just a silly game of tag that will never end.

So, rather than point out the faults in other’s writings and thinking, would it not be a better move to learn something from them? Take the meat and spit out the bones?

Is there something in their life and work that I can learn from?

I am much more self-deprecating than many people I know, so I always have people telling me that I’m too hard on myself. I think the reverse is true actually. I don’t think that any of us are hard enough on ourselves. We’re hard on ourselves with the stuff that doesn’t matter, but ignore the big issues, and sometimes it’s the opinions from people we respect least that get at those issues on some level, so rather than deal with it, we toss out their opinion on a technicality (and write an incendiary blog post as punishment).

I still disagree with Wikileaks, but what does my opinion matter? Why should you trust me if I have yet to deal with my own evil? Rather than fight forced transparency with an appeal to censorship, perhaps the best response is voluntary transparency.

I believe that individual evil is the problem with the world, and I’m not immune to it, so rather than focus on others’ evil and feign objective righteousness (the modus operandi of journalism which is now being one-upped by Wikileaks), if I am really to live out my worldview, I need to turn that magnifying glass inward.

I have plenty of baggage to unpack.

Jesus said we are to remove the plank in our own eye before focusing on the speck in our neghbor’s. What would happen if we Christians actually lived that one little command?