Month: May 2021

Real Friends Know They’re Poor in Spirit

Did your school do Red Ribbon Week? It was HUGE in my schools. All the way from Kindergarten to senior year, there were dress-up days, assemblies, fun competitions during the lunch hour, and so much more. In high school, one of our teachers held a Drunk Goggle Mario Kart tournament. We would wear these goggles that looked like safety goggles but they warped your vision to something similar to what it would look like with a BAC anywhere between 0.8. and 1. 5. (Jury’s still out on whether or not that was appropriate, but it was dang sure fun! And it was hilarious to watch my classmates get super frustrated every time they smacked into the wall in the Coconut Mall or fell into the oblivion of space on Rainbow Road).

The whole point was that when our vision was altered, focusing on the track was basically impossible. We weren’t looking at the screen appropriately, so chaos ensued.

Jesus is very conscious of this paradigm. Most of us just want to be like our friends, to go the way they’re going and be like them because not being accepted is one of our greatest fears. We abhor the thought of what it would mean to be an outcast, so we compromise to get what we want. And people get hurt. A lot.

The whole world is full of this. Everybody wants to be like everybody else, but nobody knows how to quit all the pain and hurt. And though Jesus does have a solution, most of us aren’t going to like it very much.

“Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.”

Matthew 7:13-14 CSB

As a high schooler, I didn’t have very many friends. At the time, I thought it was because I took the high road most often and everybody else just settled for cheap fun at parties out in random corn fields getting drunk and doing stupid stuff because there was, in their minds, nothing else to do. In reality, I was a self-centered, stuck up Pharisee who literally thought I was a better person simply because I didn’t get drunk along with them.

Matt Chandler said once, “If you say the right thing the wrong way, you’re still wrong.” That was me. See, I thought I was taking Jesus’s narrow road by staying away from the parties and letting everybody know how wrong they were for going. But the truth is all of us were wrong. We all thought we knew what was best, and we decided in our own hearts that our way of doing things was the right one; that the things we said were most valuable really were the most valuable and important things, and everybody else had better go along with us or they’re wrong. But that’s not what Jesus is saying. He’s saying that there’s only one way to find life, to find growth, to find good, and it’s Him.

My dad owns a lawn care company, and in middle school and high school, I worked for him in the summers. Whenever we had a large, open field to mow, he trained me to find something at the end of the field, dead ahead of where I was supposed to mow, and look at it the entire time I made a pass down the field. If I didn’t look away, my line that I had just cut would be straight, and would look beautiful. If I didn’t focus, the lines would be so off-kilter that the mistake would be visible for weeks.

When we have a target to focus on, the results lead to good things, life, and blessing. The problem for us is sin. It literally means missing the mark. To be a sinner literally means “to be one who missed the target.”

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,”

Titus 2:11-12 ESV

Jesus is that grace of God that appeared and brought salvation for all people. He died in your place because of your self-centeredness and is offering you the gift of a relationship with Him-direct access to the God of the universe. And in Titus’s words, the only way there is to realize we’re living our lives enslaved to anything but God, without self-control, and beaten down. We’re poor in Spirit. If we don’t get that we miss everything.

Jesus’s target is simple, and it’s been saturated throughout the Sermon on the Mount: trust God over yourself and you will find life. Anything else will destroy you. According to Jesus, lots of people miss this line. You and your friends are on one of these two paths: you either trust that Jesus is wiser than you and y’all follow His lead, or you don’t. That’s it. Every decision that you and your friends make about what you will do, what you will say, how you will treat others, and so much more, is filtered through this dichotomy. How are you doing? How are your friends doing?

Take a look through these two lists of fruits, or results, and ask yourself: which of these do I see in my life and the lives of the people around me? What’s most common?

FAKE FRIENDS:

“Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. I am warning you about these things—as I warned you before—that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Galatians 5:19-21 CSB

REAL FRIENDS:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.”

Galatians 5:22-26 CSB

So what is it? Where do you and your friends fall? Are you really being authentic, genuine friends to each other, or are you using each other? Are you being a real friend or a fake friend? When you look at the people around you, it shouldn’t be too hard to see.

“Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”

Matthew 5:3 CSB

People who think they’re rich in spirit are only looking at themselves. Sure, they may look around at the people near them every once in a while, but then it’s right back to them. When you’re looking at yourself, it’s easy to think you’re rich in spirit because you are small. Ever heard the phrase, “You’re missing the forest for the trees”? A mature oak tree can produce 10,000 acorns and has an average of 200,000 leaves every year. That’s a lot to look at and to focus on if you only look at the one tree. But a forest is much more interesting than 10,000 acorns. There are beautiful birds, peaceful deer to watch (or eat if you’re into it), silly raccoons and squirrels to laugh at, awesome views in clearings and along trails to take in, and sometimes there’s cozy cabins to hunker down in or maybe even towering waterfalls to swim under. But you miss all of that when you’re focused on the oak tree. When you look up, you realize that this tree is just a small part of something much bigger and more beautiful than itself. Fake friends don’t get this. Fake friends focus on themselves so Fake Friends think they’re rich in spirit.

People who know they’re poor in spirit aren’t looking at themselves; they’re looking at Jesus. They realize there’s a lot more going on in the world than just them and they want to be a part of it. So they wake up every morning with a desire to quit looking at themselves and start looking at Jesus. They do what it takes to remove the distractions that are always trying to pull them onto the wide path. And the best part? They find life every time they get their eyes off themselves and look to Jesus.

Look at the fruit of your life. Galatians makes it clear. When you’re focused on Jesus, you’ll see a lot more love. When you’re looking at the Father instead of yourself, joy rules the day, even in hard times. With the Holy Spirit as your target for your attention, you will find yourself peaceful even in the craziest, most terrifying moments. Kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; all of it will be evident more and more every day. When you’re looking at yourself, you’ll see hatred sabotaging your friendships. When you’re self-centered with your attention, your anger will explode and hurt you and your friends. Looking at you and only you will bring in all kinds of selfish ambitions, dissensions, envy, promiscuity, and so much more (not to mention sexual immorality, drunkenness, and all the like). Look at your friends and ask yourself if you genuinely want what they have.

If it’s not Jesus, it’s only going to destroy you. You need to be willing to trust Him on that or you will be seriously hurt by sin one day.

He loves you so much He didn’t want to leave you stuck without a way to focus on Him and be with Him. So TRUST Him! Realize you’re poor in Spirit and let Him fill that emptiness with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, & self-control.

Real Friends Do What You Need

If you think humans are naturally good people who just need kindness and smiles to be okay, you’ve clearly never watched Super Nanny.

My wife and I are expecting our first baby in October, so, naturally, we’ve been looking to Super Nanny Jo Frost for all our discipline training. Kidding! (kinda)

Regardless, we’ve watched a lot of the show, and there’s a constant theme running through basically every episode: nearly every parent whose home has descended into kid-induced chaos shares this behavior: they all want to be their kids friends more than they want to be their parent. They never say no, they spend thousands on their kids more than they should just because the kid wants more stuff, and they give them food with the same nutritional value as whatever you’d find on a random trip to the local landfill. And they do all this because they don’t want to have to hear their kid scream. “I’ll give you whatever you want! Just stop crying!”

They do a pretty good job of following the American version of the Golden Rule:

“Don’t do anything to others that you wouldn’t want them to do to you.”

The Golden Rule

That’s how most of us have learned it, right? According to the way we teach our kids, this is as high as it gets – nothing is more important. The “gold standard” is that we should keep away from doing anything we wouldn’t want others to do to us. Or, put the other way – we should only do to others what we would want them to do to us. If everybody just acted kind, we wouldn’t have any problems.

This rule seems pretty simple, right? Pretty easy? Well, it’s exactly what all the parents on Super Nanny are doing. I wonder what they’d say if we asked them how easy it is to follow this rule.

It’s not. That’s what they’d say. They’re drowning – all they ever do is give their kids what they want but the problem is none of the kids have the ability to know and value this fact: sometimes what we want has to take second place to what we need.

The problem with seeing the Golden Rule the way we do has a few sides to it, so the rest of this article is going to tackle each one and offer what I think, and most importantly what God thinks, is a better alternative.

Side #1: Wants Trump Needs

Let’s face it: when it comes to choosing between what we want and what we need, we let our wants trump our needs more often than not. We’re really good at pushing off responsibilities and indulging our desires. We’re really bad at getting the work done and relaxing afterward. Work is not easy. And we don’t like not easy. So even though we may need to get up and out of bed and get our day started so we’re not late to work, we want to sleep another 15 minutes. So we do. And the cycle repeats itself all day long. Before we know it, that pile of dirty dishes has been sitting in the sink for 10 days.

This makes our version of the golden rule exceptionally difficult. It’s what we see playing out on Super Nanny; if the only thing our friends ever do to or for us is what we want, our jacked-up wants will ruin everything. If I want my friend to let me drive his 1969 Mustang at 100mph in heavy traffic, and he lets me, he shouldn’t be surprised when I total it 2 minutes into the drive. If I want to be able to make fun of my “friends” for their mistakes, I shouldn’t be shocked when they eventually boil over and snap back at me, or when their ability to make and maintain friendships is broken in the future. I may want it, but I don’t always accurately estimate the cost.

Other times, I desperately need things I would never want. Surgery for a broken bone is excruciatingly painful, which is why they have to knock you out to do it. But if I was so scared of the IV needle that I refused the surgery, I’d have to live with a broken arm and the issues it caused as it healed without the surgery for the rest of my life.

We may like to let our wants trump our needs but if we live like this and only ever give people what they want, what we actually end up doing is hurting each other unnecessarily.

Side #2: Jesus Never Said It That Way

Most people attribute the original Golden Rule quote to Jesus. But there are others who said versions of it literally hundreds and thousands of years before Him; Rabbis like Hillel, Greek philosophers like Socrates, Aristotle – even Confucius had his own iteration of it. Multiple humans have believed the idea that we ought to treat each other the way we want to be treated. And while Jesus may not have been the first publicly-recorded teacher to teach this idea, His version escalates the issue to a stellar level that all the rest don’t even come close to.

The version of the Golden Rule from an ancient teacher that comes closest to Jesus’s version is from Aristotle. A student once asked him how we should treat our friends. Aristotle replied: “As we would that they should act to us.” According to Aristotle, this kind of behavior only applies to our friends.

But look at what Jesus actually said:

“7 Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. 9 Who among you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him. 12 Therefore, whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 7:7-12 CSB

The verse that actually contains the Golden Rule is book-ended by God Himself. Verse 12 starts with a “therefore,” and every time you read “therefore” in the scriptures, you need to back up and find out what it was put there for. In this case, it makes verse 12 a stamp of practical action on verses 7-11: your God is good and you should seek what’s on His heart.

The end of verse 12 makes the Golden Rule a kind of headline for the Old Testament: treating others with the behavior you would want is the banner over all of God’s instruction for the world prior to Jesus.

These two ideas are inseparable from each other. To leave either on their own creates even more problems.

If all you do is seek what’s on God’s heart without putting any of it into practice, you become a Pharisee; AKA you care a lot about God’s word but very little about the people He died to save. If all you do is treat others how you want without seeking what’s on God’s heart, pain and chaos will ensue (as we just observed with Super Nanny above).

Jesus’s Better Alternative

When we seek what’s on God’s heart, what we end up wanting for ourselves is what He wants for us. This becomes our basis for how to treat others. And unlike Aristotle’s teaching, it’s the basis for how we treat all others, not just the ones we like or who we consider friends.

“1 So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

Colossians 3:1-3 CSB

It’s not easy to seek what God wants. Centering your life around the idea that you’ve already died and your life isn’t your own is crazy difficult. It almost sounds morbid. But it’s essential. It’s what we need. Any “friends” who don’t get this will only end up using us for their own desires. Any time we call ourselves a “friend” but we don’t get this, we’ll just end up using them, too.

Fake friends are the kind who let you have whatever you want. They are afraid of the pain of confrontation, so they flatter us and avoid difficult conversations, letting us do what we want and be what we want and ignore what we actually are. And most likely, when times get hard and we need them to stand by us, they ghost us and are nowhere to be found.

Real friends are literally the opposite. They know who we are: very good creations of God Almighty, who have been poisoned by sin, in every part of our lives, making us not good at all. They know we’ve been bought with a price; by the blood of Jesus. And they know that every second we spend living like that’s not true only further injures and imprisons our souls. They see us dousing ourselves in gasoline and lighting ourselves on fire in stupidity and they offer to be the water hose we need to put out the blaze. The question becomes which we will love more: life with the fire or without it. The help from the friend with the water is only beneficial if the fire dies, and often we don’t want it to. We’d rather keep it alive.

So what are your friends giving you? Water or gasoline? You will be the average of the five people you pay the most attention to. So check your own life – do an inspection. Are there destructive fires raging all around you? Do your friends fuel them bigger and brighter and more detrimental or do they help you put them out? Do you even want that fire to go out?

The fire of God is good – a passion for His name and His glory and a relationship with Him is good. A fire without Him, however, is terribly bad. Are you willing to put the fire out, to kill it and receive the life-giving relief of the Living Water of God? You have to decide, and whatever you decide, be consistent. Follow through and let your friends have the hard conversations that you need. As you seek what’s on God’s heart, you’ll find that you’re beginning to want those conversations more and more.

Real Friends Pray; Fake Friends Promote

You ever see that guy on the street corner downtown that prays at the top of his lungs with a megaphone? Like even the megaphone gets worn out. “GOD IN HEAVEN, WOULD YOU SPARE YOUR WRATH ON THOSE HEATHEN THAT ARE WALKING INTO THAT BAR OVER THERE WITH THE TANK TOPS AND SHORT SHORTS!? DO NOT INCUR YOUR WRATH ON THEM THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO!!!!” He’s kinda scary to me, honestly.

Or what about this guy: “Father, we just love You so much, Jesus and God we pray that as we come into Your presence, Lord, that you multiply Your heavenly blessings to us, Lord, and that we seek, Oh God, that we seek Your will tonight, Father God Lord, and Jesus Your power from heaven is matchless, and powerful, and majestic, and so good, and Lord Jesus would you…” CRINGE. What if I talked to my bros that way? “Yeah dude, idk bro I just think it’s not the right day man, bro, you know dude? Yeah, bro, it’s so crazy my guy, I can’t believe it man.” Gag.

I’ve got more: ever had a friend who said “Oh goodness, yeah, I’ll definitely pray for you!” Or maybe you said that to someone, but you both know it’s not actually going to happen. Y’all going straight home and that prayer is 100% not going up because you’re gonna forget. Or maybe you don’t actually care; you just told them you’d pray because saying “No, sorry, I won’t,” is rude and awkward.

Or maybe you got asked to pray in small group, and you nearly laid an egg; Me? Oh no, I can’t pray in front of these people. *gulp* “Sure,” and then you pray, only to leave the group embarrassed out of your mind.

Regardless where you stand with your experiences over prayer, we’ve got some funny ways to do it. Or not do it.

Every single one of these descriptions of prayer only exists because the pray-er is worried about other people. Think about it – hellfire and brimstone boy isn’t screaming for the tank-top short-shorts girls’ sakes; he wants everybody else to turn and watch. Father-God-Lord-Jesus-Savior-King Man is exhibiting a textbook definition “nervous filler-word” dynamic; he’s worried about what the people listening think so he adds a bunch of words to sound super spiritual. Dropping a promise to pray for someone else stems from making a commitment that you don’t know if you can keep, or that sometimes is a straight-up lie so the other person doesn’t hate you for being a jerk. Anxiety about being bad at prayer is a direct result of worrying about “doing it right” or impressing the other people in the group. If that’s how we’re praying, then who are we actually praying to? Sure as heck doesn’t sound like we’re focused on God very much, if at all.

See, the thing is, that’s exactly what’s going on: when most Christians in 2021’s version of Western Christianity pray, they’re not focused on God; no, they’re aiming at impressing the people who listen.

My friends, this is a dangerous way to pray. And Jesus knows it:

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

Matthew 6:5-8 ESV

Jesus says that whoever is praying like this (and he basically describes the first 2 people I mentioned almost verbatim) already has what they’re looking for, and is steeped in deception. The “hypocrites” and the “Gentiles” are the people who pray start to finish with the goal of getting others’ to pay attention to them. In other words, they think their prayer is an opportunity for promotion. Ever met anybody like that? Heck – ever been that person?

These are the people who don’t actually listen to you to hear about you, they only ever care to talk about themselves. They need other people to like them so bad that they feel a compulsion to do and say things that force you to acknowledge them and what they’re doing. Or, out of the same root feelings, they do and say everything they can to get you to focus on something else besides them. This comes in all kinds of packages; from the wild and rambunctious attention-seeker to the anxiety-ridden introvert, every single one of us has been this person. We feel a pressure to perform, and unfortunately, our God-given, abundantly gracious method of communication with the Creator of the Universe gets caught in this crossfire.

But it’s normal for us to be this kind of person now. Romantic couples literally have brands for merch and social media marketing. Individuals, too. There’s a ton of people on social media now who are famous just because they’re famous, and the rest of us feel like we have to be like them, too. We are constantly promoting ourselves. We look around and try to make sense of the world around us based on what we see the people in our circles doing. We think, “Well, all of my best friends have a side-hustle and a personal brand and they’re launching their YouTube channel or podcast or clothing line and their Instagram stories look like so much fun; that’s what I need to be doing. When I get there, I’ll be doing well for myself.”

So we start using other people and things that were never meant for this to get there.

Including God. Including prayer.

Jesus isn’t having it, people. Quit acting like He’s okay with this type of Christianity. Quit playing games.

Don’t believe me? Let’s break down they way Jesus says we should pray:

“Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”

Matthew 6:9 ESV

Step 1: “Our”. Jesus assumes that we are praying together. If you get nothing else from this post, get this:

Fake friends promote, but real friends pray. But how do they pray? Clearly not the way we described earlier.

Step 2: “Hallowed be your name.” Hallowed means holy, which means separate or different. Translation? Recognize that God, your Father, is different and that’s good. Acknowledge it. Get your heart in line with it. Nothing else makes sense without it.

“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Matthew 6:10 ESV

Step 3: “Your kingdom…Your will.” Drag your need to promote yourself out into the light and slaughter it. Your heart needs what His heart wants. Get that, and you get life, basically. So step #3 is to line up with what God wants for you (I promise it’s better than your wildest imagination).

“Give us this day our daily bread,”

Matthew 6:11 ESV

Step 4: “Give us.” You have and know what we need, God; so we trust you’ll give it to us. Again, He knows better and we get our hearts in line with it.

“and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

Matthew 6:12 ESV

Step 5: “Forgive us.” You can’t truly ask for forgiveness without humility; check your pride at the door and own where you’ve messed up with others. I hope you’re noticing a trend here, because Jesus is definitely using one.

“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

Matthew 6:13 ESV

Step 6: “Lead us.” When’s the last time anybody in 2021 willingly asked somebody else to lead them?

Jesus is trying to over and over again, in every conceivable area of life, hammer this point home:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.”

Matthew 5:3 ESV

People who know they’re poor in spirit (AKA they need God, and can’t do life on their own) have no need to promote. They can pray for you, they can pray with you, and in doing so they can make sure your heart and theirs are lined up right next to what God wants for you; to prosper you and protect you, to give you a hope and a future, and to be treated by Him and by others like the image of God that you were made to be.

We gotta stop using our relationship with Jesus to impress other people; it’s making so many of us not want to go to church, and it’s causing us to do really stupid things in the name of God, all because we’re so afraid that somebody out there might not like us. Be honest. Be real. That starts with admitting your own inability to do life and it grows from there to the way you love the people around you.

Stop praying to promote yourself. Get in your prayer closet, plead for God to turn your heart to His, then get out there and live like it’s true with everybody else.

You’ll surprise yourself what kind of person you can be, and what kind of life you can live when this is true of you.

Real Friends Admit Their Faults

Have you ever failed to check yourself, and ended up wrecking yourself? I have. A lot.

Take, for example, the time I ruined our family vacation to the Grand Canyon. Standing on the south rim, soaking in the view and looking for a good spot to take a picture, I decided to drag up some past emotional baggage I had with my dad right there in front of God and everybody in my family. Tears were shed. Voices were raised. Car doors were slammed. Prairie dogs were frightened.

Now, don’t get me wrong; this conversation wasn’t just out of the blue. Some things had happened that day that reminded me of those emotions, and like the steely, self-controlled grown man that I was, I naturally just couldn’t help myself and overflowed with some nasty words. But if I had been a little more self-aware, a little less self-righteous, and a lot more considerate of the rest of my family, I don’t think I would’ve so quickly forgotten (or ignored?) my own failures, both that day and in the days of the past.

I’ve been writing a series here on friends; what is the best kind of friend to have? How can I be the best friend I can be? Jesus gave us a pretty good discourse on those questions called the Sermon on the Mount, and in today’s portion, He addresses checking yourself before you not just wreck yourself, but before you wreck others.

“Do not judge, so that you won’t be judged. For you will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others, and you will be measured by the same measure you use.”

Matthew 7:1-2 CSB

Jesus gets right to His point: the instant you start judging other people for their faults, you fling the door open for them to start judging you. Are you sure you can handle that? You do know that when you criticize them for what they said, they’re just going to turn around and dig into your life to find the last time you said the same thing? “You will be judged by the same standard with which judge others.“

This is why the Bible is so amazing – Jesus said these words over 2,000 years ago and they’re still insanely relevant today. Y’all, this happens to me always. I don’t think a week goes by where I don’t instinctively judge in my mind that I’m better than somebody else because of what they’re doing or saying. Now let me be clear: I hate that I am instinctively this way; it is not my goal and I do not value it highly in the slightest. But it is often my gut reaction, regardless whether I like it or not.

Jesus says I better be careful judging people like that; as soon as I do, I allow them to turn it around on me. So if I’m going to make a comment about somebody else’s faults, I DEFINITELY better have my own issues in that arena handled. But that’s what makes this such a complicated thing; there isn’t a person on earth who has all their problems under control. Our faults sabotage us all.

Jesus didn’t just want to make His points and move on. No, He always made sure that everyone who was listening would have no excuse for not understanding Him. So He gives an example to ensure He is as clear as possible:

“Why do you look at the splinter in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the beam of wood in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the splinter out of your eye,’ and look, there’s a beam of wood in your own eye?”

Matthew 7:3-4 CSB

Can you imagine somebody with a beam in their eye? How ridiculous would that be? A 10-foot long 2×4 just sitting there in your eye socket, bumping into everything and everyone, not to mention the damage it’s probably doing to your own eye. Crazy. But that’s exactly what Jesus is trying to say: your sin is obvious. You’re not fooling anybody when you act like you’ve never done anything wrong, or that you’re not currently doing something wrong. Your sin is just as bad as the next person’s. And most importantly, the only way to live a life that even hints that it’s not true is to straight up ignore that plank sticking out of your face. You can’t avoid your own faults and then turn around and try to fix everybody else’s. You need to acknowledge this. I need to acknowledge this. Otherwise, we’re all walking around with 2×4’s in our eyes destroying everything.

Think about it – you’ve probably been in this situation already, and I’m sure you’ve hated it. Let me help you see it better with a story.

As the oldest of 4 siblings, my behavior was constantly under scrutiny; from my parents as well all three of my younger sisters. When we were younger, one of my sisters and I shared a room at the end of a t-shaped hallway that you would enter at the center. From that entrance, which was probably not even 10 feet from the bedroom door, you could look across the dining room and into the living room to see the TV. So naturally, as a 6-year-old who definitely didn’t want to go to bed, it was super tempting for me to sneak down the hall and poke my head around the door frame of the hallway to see the TV. I watched a lot of Whose Line is it Anyway from that doorway. But without fail, nearly every single time I would sneak to the hall, my sister would eventually realize what I’d done, and sitting in her bed, with a sinister grin on her face, she would call out in a sing-song voice, “Bubby’s out of be-ed!” and I would sprint back to my bed to avoid getting in trouble. And I was fuming. Why? Because I knew that five minutes later, she would do the same exact thing. So naturally I’d call out the exact same accusation: “Sissy’s out of be-ed!” And around and around we we would go.

We hate when people call us out because who are they to tell us why we’re wrong? Did they just forget how bad they messed up yesterday? Who says they get to be the ones who criticize our behavior? This is Jesus’s point exactly. You can’t believe you’re actually somebody’s friend if all you ever do is avoid your own faults. Real friends don’t avoid their faults; fake friends do.

This is a massive reason why so many people get away with terrible behavior. Everybody is avoiding their faults, so whenever a friend of ours does something wrong, one of two things will happen: either we call them out and they turn it right back on us (which always results in more hurt, never in more help), or we say nothing at all because we know we have our own faults but we don’t do anything about them, and the abuse of human dignity continues.

So, what-are we stuck in this forever? Do we have any other options besides endless pain and division? Well, yes we do, but you’re probably not going to like it very much.

“Hypocrite! First take the beam of wood out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye.”

Matthew 7:5 CSB

Now look, I need to make sure we understand what Jesus is not saying here: He is not saying that we never call out our friends. Do you see that? Often, our friends do genuinely wrong things and need to be brought to reckon with it because they sure as heck aren’t going to do it on their own. Jesus knows this, but He also knows that our own failures in the areas we call others out on need to be addressed first, otherwise they’ll sabotage us before any good is ever done and everybody only ends up hurt. So He says to take care of your own problem, and then go for your friend’s. The order of events is the issue here. Avoiding our faults and jumping on others’ creates an attitude in our hearts that is destructive, and the only kind of destruction Jesus stands for is the destruction of sin and of destructive behavior like this.

Here’s why I don’t think you are going to like this very much: removing the plank from your own eye is a process that nobody envies going through, even though we all want the results it will bring. Here’s what I mean:

When I was 21, I fell off a 50-foot cliff in the Ozarks. Not a joke. It was awful; a concussion, 30 stitches in my forehead, broken elbow, shattered foot (the doctor said it literally looked like someone had crushed the top of my foot with a sledgehammer), and cuts, scrapes, and bruises all over my body. Legitimately the worst pain I have ever experienced in my life. When I fell, I was wearing Chacos (outdoors sandals), and the rock I hit cut a gash in my left heel so deep it needed staples instead of stitches. When I finally made it to the emergency room (nearly 4 hours after I fell), that gash was going to bleed so bad I’d have lifelong damage unless they did something fast. So they stapled it, with zero anesthetic and zero warning to me.

And I felt every single part of it.

To this day, I believe that 10 seconds of stapling was the most painful part of the entire experience, surgery and therapy included. But without it, my heel wouldn’t have just hurt me – it would’ve been detrimental. I don’t want to relive that for a second. But my body was broken, and it was in desperate need of repair. But the repair that it needed was unavoidably painful.

Our hearts (the center of your thoughts, actions, and emotions) are even worse off than my body was when I fell. Look what the Bible says about us:

“The heart is more deceitful than anything else,
and incurable—who can understand it?”

Jeremiah 17:9 CSB

“The fool says in his heart, ‘There’s no God.’
They are corrupt, and they do vile deeds.
There is no one who does good.
God looks down from heaven on the human race[a]
to see if there is one who is wise,
one who seeks God.
All have turned away;
all alike have become corrupt.
There is no one who does good,
not even one.”

Psalm 53:1-3 CSB

Ever had open-heart surgery? They literally have to break your rib cage open just to get to your heart in the first place, let alone all the stuff they have to cut and stitch and break and re-set to do the actual surgery. They have to put you under because it’s literally so painful that the shock alone could kill you before any bones broke all the way. When something is deeply connected to another thing and it shouldn’t be, removing it is not an easy or enjoyable process. It straight up hurts. Our sin is corrupting our hearts, but none of us want to walk through that pain, so we avoid it by ignoring our sin. But the very definition of sin is moral failure; an inability to hit the mark set for decent and right human behavior.

And we wonder why so many people are using others to feel better about themselves.

The only way to get the plank out of your eye is to quit avoiding it, admit that it’s there, and let the surgeon work. That’s it. There is no other way. You can’t be the friend God made you to be until you admit that you can’t do life alone. You need God because you are poor in spirit.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.”

Matthew 5:3 CSB

People who know that they’re poor in spirit check themselves first. They draw the circle around themselves and let God fix those things before they go around and start trying to fix everybody else. They’re real friends because the fact that they know their own faults and admit them makes them humble enough to ask others to help them fix their faults instead of avoiding them until somebody else has to point it out to them.

Fake friends avoid their faults, but real friends admit them. Do you want good friends? Be a good friend and realize you’re poor in spirit. It’ll drastically change the way you treat other people. There’s only one person in the history of the human race who did nothing wrong and could justifiably criticize others without having to check Himself, and He didn’t. He took that criticism and accusation on Himself and paid for all of it.

Real friends can admit their faults because they know Jesus already died for them.

So what kind of friend are you?