You Really Don’t See the Truth!   What Do You Perceive?                                                         By Capt. Kelly Durant  6-10-12         Matthew 7:3-5

3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

Perceptions are deceiving. There is a story of the 5 blind men and the elephant.

Once upon a time, five blind men came upon an elephant. "What is this?!" asked the first one, who had run headlong into its side. "It's an Elephant." said the elephant's keeper, who was sitting on a stool, cleaning the elephant's harness.

"Wow! So this is an Elephant! I've always wondered what Elephants are like!" said the man, running his hands as far as he could reach up and down the elephant's side. "Why, it's just like a wall! A large, warm wall!"

"What do you mean, a wall?" said the second man, wrapping his arms around the elephant's leg. "This is nothing like a wall. You can't reach around a wall! This is more like a pillar. Yeah, that's it! An Elephant is exactly like a pillar!"

"A pillar? Strange kind of pillar!" said the third man, stroking the elephant's trunk. "It's too thin, for one thing, and it's too flexible for another. If you think this is a pillar, I don't want to go to your house! This is more like a snake. See, it's wrapping around my arm! An Elephant is just like a snake!"

"Snakes don't have hair!" said the fourth man in disgust, pulling the elephant's tail. "You are closer than the others, but I'm surprised that you missed the hair. This isn't a snake, it's a rope. Elephants are exactly like ropes."

"I don't know what you guys are on!" the fifth man cried, waving the elephant's ear back and forth. "It's as large as a wall, all right, but thin as a leaf, and no more flexible than any piece of cloth this size should be. I don't know what's wrong with all of you, but no one except a complete idiot could mistake an Elephant for anything except a sail!!!"

And as the elephant stepped aside, they tramped off down the road, arguing more loudly and violently as they went, each sure that he, and he alone, was right; and all the others were wrong.

As humans we are weak and instead of remembering “Blessed are the peacemakers”, and resolving conflicts of opinions, we are quick to create controversy!

Don’t you see it? People get so mad when someone contradicts what was said, or when someone else has a different opinion.  The situation is, though, that everyone informed on the matter does have some parts of the truth, all are in part right, and in part wrong like in the tale of the elephant.

One truth is clear, you are human, and consequently opinionated, and strong headed and this influences how you resolve conflict matters in your home, in the Corps, and at work.  But, instead of jumping right in and giving opinions though, all of us need to learn how to see the big picture and what is happening before speaking so much and confusing the matter!

For all opinions and decisions, we all need each other’s opinions in councils.  Everyone must council with people who are fully knowledgeable of God’s word. It is imperative we put several minds together to be able to draw conclusions with more of the truth of the whole picture.

It is hypocrisy as Jesus points out here in Matt 7 for a person to be so arrogant to believe they have the correct assumption to judge and condemn another for a sin! You or I must always realize we do not have all the information to make an absolute judgment! What blinds all of us are our own sins that we do not see!  

When you have a problem or disagreement, here or anywhere, what you and I first must do is assume that we do not have the facts, or maybe we are blinded by something!  Pray first, clean your heart, then speak up but only to the right people.

Check your self to not be just like the blind men. Usually each person always believes what they want to believe for their own convenience. It feed peoples pride and makes them feel superior when there is someone doing something dirty that decent folks can frown on! Some people feel powerful when being critical!

But as we see in politics, or anything, attacks always involve partial truths, not all!

Beams get in our eyes from past bad experiences that skew our judgment. Offenses we have been through, things that were not turned over to the Lord for forgiveness. For example: the girl that had an abusive father always believes that the men are always the guilty ones in the picture, like the tree trunk. The minority person who was rarely included in class activities by the teachers may think all the problems in the world are from the people in authority not giving them a chance like the elephant being like a wall. The poor kid who thinks the rich should give him money just because he has it and he doesn’t is like the rope or tail.

Everyone has predispositions and prejudices and usually others see that in you, but because it is so hard to accept one’s own fault, the reality is you don’t see it!

Where do conflicts originate? It is from justifications people make in life to be prejudice or angry; it may in part appear justifiable at times since they have unjustly suffered, but the damage they are causing to their selves and to others by their verbal attacks is not solving the real issue of controlling the evil in ones’ own heart. People always want the other one to be the bad one, never their self!

Tell yourself right now, “I have a beam in my eye and I must remove it!”

How many of you have ever been traveling with a group and one is hungry and they claim they see a restaurant sign one mile ahead and they yell let’s stop I see a Burger King sign. But as you get closer off the exit you discover it is a gas station sign.    Repeat to yourself, “Not everything I see is what is really there”!

In essence what Jesus is saying here in Matt 7 is that what you have in your mind’s eye is what you will see, and it is usually wrong because your heart is not fully clean with all the sin taken out permitting a clear vision.

In other words, the beam in your eye exposes the fact that you have sin, predispositions, and attitudes against others!

Only after you or I have humbled ourselves before God, only after you or I have cleaned our hearts and taken away all the bitterness, the lack of forgiveness and the judgment in our hearts towards others, will we be able see the faults in others more correctly with the truth.

Let me give an example of someone predisposed that had some pride and believed she was not liked by others in the Corps. She thought that all the Corps people were saying ugly things about her behind her back but I never heard any. One time she came in late to a Bible study. We were studying the whore of Revelation 17-18. She walked in the class and I turned and said, “Oh, look Maria is here, (then continuing with the class), can you look at the scripture of the great whore and follow with me now”?

A few weeks later after not coming back to the Corps I discovered Maria was offended.  Maria formed a bitter attitude against me. What is wrong with Maria? Well, Maria in her mind had heard that what I had said to her that night was, oh because you are here, we will read about the great whore; in other words I was implying she was a whore! What she perceived was totally wrong and opposite the truth! I was just including her in the class and she thought I was rejecting her and trying to embarrass her in front of the class. And I have seen this happen over and over, people hear and see what they are predisposed to hear or see!

A normal person with no beam in their eye would think clearly, and would conclude that neither the pastor, nor any true Christian would ever embarrass any one in a Bible class with an insult! We are trying to win people to Jesus not insult and offend them so they never come back! Right? The sad reality is most people perceive words and other people’s actions as something personal against them a lot of the time when the person talking has no bad intentions at all.

As Christians we all need to be reminded to practice I Corinthians 13: 4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, (repeat out loud, not easily..)and thinketh no evil”, 

Christians are very human. Some people don’t even realize it when they get angry and hold grudges, even for years, against someone they perceived tried to do something to them but the reality is they have their perceptions wrong. 

You have heard Jesus words, John 8:32

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”.  Exposing truth on a matter often may provoke an unexpected outcome. Jesus did not correct the one with the wood splinter in the eye but instead the correction of the one with the big wood beam in the eye calling attention to the other one!

The way it works is, okay, you want to complain of someone with a fault, then are you willing then to allow your life to be opened up like a book and let all see if you have the same fault or not? Like the old picture of the hand, you point with one finger to accuse and 3 point back at you!

In my situation, and like many of you, when you are a leader you will often be loved or you will be hated for attending to the complaints of others. When someone expects you to correct someone and come down hard on them by what they accuse, it is a delicate matter. Imagine causing someone to stumble in the faith because you accuse with information that is not the whole story. Sometimes it comes to light that not the accused but the accuser may end up being the one needing correction.

Most people are quick to dish out correction but they sure don’t like getting correction back on their own selves! It is humiliating to admit that opinions contrary to yours are right.  All of this is from pride and hypocrisy blinding the heart! And everyone must humble their selves before the Lord!

This wrong perception with eye blockage repeats itself over and over all time with all people all around the world everywhere.  Someone communicates something, someone else misinterprets it. In the meantime, others see nothing out of the normal and forget all about it. But the one that was predisposed and is bitter wants retaliation, when in fact no insult was spoken in the first place. So what happens? This person with the beam in their eye, or another expression in English is a person “with a chip (of wood) on their shoulder” want to pick a fight and start retelling the story of events.  But the story they tell of what happened is from their distorted perception.

A good rule in life is not to accept the story of anyone in it’s totality without getting more facts as it is usually only a partial truth. We must recall God’s standard.    Deuteronomy 19:15   One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sinneth: at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established.

So when you hear a story, an accusation, a complaint against anyone, what should you do? Go get a mob to back you up to attack the person? Never!

This propensity to throw stones at others is part of our hypocritical nature of our fallen human state. The good news is as Christians we can be growing in holiness, growing and maturing away from bad judgmental habits, and learning not to repeat the same old mistakes of misjudging all the time.

Repentance for many people only comes from the exposure of the embarrassing truth in their lives. However, getting free from your own blindness can come as well from having a desperate heart to want to please God and be holy as He is!

What do you prefer? To seek God and ask Him to reveal to you your beam of pride, hypocrisy, and uncalled for bad opinions born out of your bitterness, hate, and revenge? Or to have a continual repeating clash and disagreement with others mature in the Lord creating discord amongst the brethren causing others to not like enjoy your presence?

Most everyone can see that when a person has a problem with many other people that the problem is not usually with all the ones this person keeps talking about but with their own self. Embarrassing right? Ask God, how do you see me? How do others see me?  Pray: Take the beam out of my eye today God, speak to your mind about what my beam is! But if you still perceive sin in another after that, if an injustice is happening, if an insult really was spoken, please tell the appropriate leader, not anyone else!   Most of all tell the Lord in prayer!  

Is anything blinding you right now? Come and pray for God’s truth to be revealed! Do you think you don’t have a problem seeing the sin of another? Come and pray for the person in mind! Prayer, humility, and obedience allows more truth in your life! Without more truth in your life you and others will suffer in darkness and ignorance. Now, what will you do with the truth once God has shown you it?