Submitted by Todd Murphy
A good friend of mine and I were chatting recently. We were discussing a situation in which he had lost patience with a friend and needed to go back and make some amends. We all have been through this. Truth be told, there are many more times where we don't actually hurt the surface relationship while we hide it beneath the surface in our heart.
We are constantly sizing people up, even those who are closest to us, and then comparing them with ourselves. Why do we do this? We do it to make us feel better about ourselves. When we see a fault in someone else, we can easily say, "Well, at least I don't do that," or "I am not that bad." We also have more subtle approaches where we begin to treat others with contempt, and when a situation arises, we find ourselves talking down to that person as if from a superior position. It is a form of posturing that makes us feel superior.
This exposes a self-righteous pattern in our thinking that we often over look. If you ask anyone if they have faults, almost all will admit they do. We are just not to forthcoming about them, and the ones we do take responsibility for are usually more like faux pas that we are really not all that ashamed of. It is admission of the particular more serious character faults that we most often don't see. And when we do see them, we try the smoke and mirrors approach to avoid the shame.
The reality is that when we are judgmental of other people it is because we are not looking at our own faults. Let me say it this way: The reason we judge other people is because we judge other people's weaknesses by our own strengths. So let me give you an example. You may have a friend with a drinking problem, but that is not your particular weakness. You have been friends for some time with this person and have watched their destructive behavior. At some point though, their drinking problem becomes a problem for you. Now this does not mean you do not lovingly challenge self-destructive behavior in them. A real friend does, even if your friendship eventually gets rejected over it. But what usually happens is we tend to get personally exasperated with that person and at some point effectively wash our hands of them, even if temporarily. People do this in marriage and other relationships all the time. Becoming exasperated with the person's faults, we want to cut-off or distance. Or perhaps we stay in relationship, but we begin to treat them in a somewhat patronizing way. My point is this. It is easy to judge people for things that we don't struggle with. I have never struggled with binge drinking and have never had any attraction to drugs. At one point in my teens when I had left home, I was living with drug dealers. I saw tens of thousands of dollars of street cocaine pass through my house while I was there. I never tried it or any other drug once. But I have struggled with other things.
This creates an "apples and oranges" scenario. If I don not have a problem with drinking and my neighbor does, or if I don not have a problem with greed, complaining, unthankfulness, etc., and my neighbor does, then it seems that I am comparing "apples with apples." Right? Wrong. Different people have different strengths and life experiences that make them have different patterns of strength and weakness. So to compare my strength with my neighbor's weakness, be they the same thing, is actually comparing apples with oranges because we are not the same person. To play fair and to remove our naturally self-righteous posture, we need to compare our personal weaknesses with that of my neighbor's.
For example, since I have never struggled with substance abuse, it does not help my personal growth nor my neighbor's to compare my strength with his weakness. However, my temper is another thing. I have always struggled with that to one degree or another. That is where my flank is exposed. I have worked really hard throughout my Christian life to control my anger. I know the same frustration of lapsing in this area that a binge drinker might in his own area. As I have grown, these have gotten fewer and far between. But it is not gone. It is a daily struggle that I still have to keep wraps on myself about, perhaps a lot like a recovering substance abuser.
What is most important is that only when we begin to see us against our neighbor through our own weaknesses will we not only be a help to him, but a help to ourselves. Comparing ourselves by our weaknesses levels the playing field and creates the opportunity for true humility.
As I was chatting with my friend I pointed out a climbing analogy. When rock climbing or mountaineering, you only understand and see clearly what you have already climbed. What is above you is always obscured by what is right in front of you. When climbing a sheer face, you cannot see beyond the next outcropping or bulge in the rocks. Our pilgrimage of life is similar. What we have overcome already is clear to us, but what we have not is still obscure. So in the climb of life, the person that is farther ahead may be able to see the person's situation more clearly and wonder why they cannot. Yet if he turns his gaze back upward, there is someone else above him who sees things clearly that he does not. We often look at each other mystified by how in our struggles we cannot see what seems grossly obvious to others. But that is the challenges of the climb of life. We need to understand that our own perspective is always limited by our current location in the ascent. But if we learn to begin with our weaknesses it helps ground us in a humility that will help both us and our neighbor.
