Temptation

Assisi overlooking Porzuincula

Every day the sun rises.  The light and the warmth of the sun give life to everyone and every living thing.  Not just the sun.  There’s the water, air and earth, they, too,  give freely.  They simply offer to us all that is good to sustain our well-being. There is no exception, no discrimination, and no judgement.

I am using these four elements as an analogy to how I can understand a scripture verse and apply it on my daily life.

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.”

I suppose I have to look at this more on a personal level.

First, I am not perfect therefore who am I to judge?  Second, maybe it would help me to put myself in the other person’s shoe.  How would I feel if I am the one being judge?  And finally, I think judging is a sign of weakness on my part.  And to put it in a facetious way, I can only imagine how ugly-looking I am should I have a “log” in my eye.

This verse reminded me about another verse “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”  Again, I can imagine that there will be a lot of blind and toothless people running around the world.

Seriously, I need to hold back or bite my tongue no matter how tempting it is to be righteous.  This verse does not say anything about goodness or love but I believe this is the heart of it all.  It isn`t  easy to be as generous as the sun, water, air and earth but who says being a follower of Jesus would be easy?