I am a dorky Christian, husband to my beautiful wife & best friend and father of three amazing children. In my spare time, I like to play guitar and coach little kids' baseball.
I use this website to log my random thoughts (which doesn't seem to be that frequent).
I am a designer, developer and web analyst for my company, Visual Notion.
Contact me if you need something.
It has always bugged me that the verse in Matthew 7:1 is often misquoted by people. Here's what it says: 1“Do not judge, or you too will be judged."
Then they conveniently ignore or purposefully leave out the context of verse one by leaving out verses 2-5 as they provide more insight and practicality:
2"For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3 "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
(Note: Now verses three through five balance it by touching on the hypocritical that prefer to constantly point out the mistakes of others, but what was on my mind pertains primarily to verses one through two.)
If you leave it at verse one, like most people prefer to do for their own "moral" protection, then they think they can silence you on your Biblical-based stance on an issue. They see this as a call to avoid accountability, which can be viewed as such if you leave out the other four verses.
This may sound silly, but most people can't fold down one finger on their hand without it also pulling another finger with it. Even if it is slight, they are linked together and affect one another. Go ahead and try it.
The same can be said of the Bible. You can't go around spouting one verse without "pulling" other verses with it that support what is being said (or disprove it if you're distorting it).
I once had a business owner quote Matthew 7:1 to me when I questioned their unethical business practices while using God to get business. They were indignant at the thought of anyone questioning the inconsistency in what they claimed with what they actually did.
Sadly, a lot of Christians don't want accountability because that means they would have to admit they aren't making the best choices and living their life inline with what Christ wants of us. They will pull out Matthew 7:1 to try and get people to turn a blind eye or they'll "judge" them too. This isn't at all helpful to growth in our relationship with Christ as they're taking it at putting an entirely negative slant on it.
You see, Jesus Christ's words in Matthew 7:1 are not a call to live a life without accountability. Quite the contrary, His words here are the beginning of the call to live a life of consistent accountability to one another. Verse two plainly says that the way we make judgements is the same way others will judge us and this is a good thing.
I'm to make sure I am representing Christ well in all I do; in judgements and decisions I make and how I treat people. If I hold you to Christ's standard of right and wrong, you better believe that I expect you to fully hold me to that exact same standard. This keeps me accountable and that's what I need to become more like Christ.
