Suppose you invited me to your house for dinner. You send a personalized invitation and the invitation says that I will be picked up by a limo.
When I arrive at the house, I’m treated like an honored guest. An attendant takes my coat and I’m shown into the living room. There’s punch with sherbet in it and hors d’oeuvres. There’s a tray of dainty delicacies to nibble on.
Then the meal begins, and what a spread of food! There’s a shrimp cocktail with that spicy sauce. There’s a bowl of homemade lentil soup. Then there’s a salad – fresh greens, tomatoes, cauliflower, iceberg lettuce and it’s topped with blue cheese dressing with chunks of real blue cheese.
Next there’s a crystal glass with some sherbet. All the great chefs serve sherbet at that point to clear the palate so you can taste what’s coming next.
Then comes the main course, a thick cut a roast beef that’s prepared the way I like it – medium, pink on the inside. There are bacon bits and sour cream for the baked potatoes, buttered baby carrots, sweet snow peas and candied yams covered with brown sugar sauce and home made rolls fresh out of the oven.
Then there’s dessert and coffee – hot, deep-dish Dutch Apple pie with a scoop of ice cream. And then just in case that isn’t enough, there is a black forest cake loaded with cream and cherries.
That would be some meal! I could enjoy that just about now! You can arrange an evening for me just like that any time you want to.
Oh, there was one thing I forget to mention. On the side of my dinner plate, along with the roast beef, you had the nerve to serve some red beets. Now serving red beets has to be the greatest insult on the face of the earth. I know God created a perfect world and he said everything was good. God never made a mistake, but if he ever came close, it was when he made beets.
You need to know that I eat everything and I enjoy everything. I’ve had snake, squid, calf’s brain, octopus and broccoli. I eat everything. But I hate beets and to think that you had the nerve to spoil a great meal and insult me by serving beets!
How would you feel, if I said something like this, ”You’ve insulted and offended me! The nerve of serving beets! You know I don’t like beets and you know that no one in his right mind would like beets!”
Suppose I went out the door steaming mad about the beets. How would you feel if I never said a good thing about the rest of the meal? Suppose when I see our friends the next day, all I talk about are the beets that you served me.
Faultfinding is just like that. It’s destructive, devastating and demoralizing. It fractures relationships and destroys churches. It distorts reality. And it’s usually about unimportant things.
A QUESTION ABOUT FAULTFINDING
One day Jesus used a humorous story to illustrate an important truth. It really is quite a funny parable about a man with a piece of wood stuck in his eye. Try to picture a man walking around a crowded shopping mall with an 8′ length of 2″ X 8″ protruding from his eye. You can imagine him weaving his way through the crowd.
Suddenly he sees a friend and stops to talk with him, but he can’t get too close as the plank in his own eye keeps getting in the way. After greeting one another, the man with the plank of wood in his eye notices the other man has a tiny speck of dust in his eye. Perhaps a gust of wind blew in his face as he was walking from his car.
The man with the wooden plank in his eye says, “Excuse me friend. There’s something in your eye! You need to be careful. I’d be ashamed to go around with dust in my eye. It must be terrible to have a speck of dust in your eye. Let me help you take it out!”
All the time he’s speaking, this big piece of lumber is hanging out out his own face. He can hardly keep his balance, let alone see straight, yet he wants to remove the speck from his friend’s eye.
Jesus asked a powerful question. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye? (Matthew 7:3). Jesus was zeroing in on people who constantly find fault by showing how hurtful and foolish it is todo so. Jesus was pointing out people who can ignore 1,000 things that are right, but are fixated on one little thing that is wrong. Jesus was coming down hard on people who ignore their own problems, but who are merciless in their treatment of others. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye?
Jesus wanted to know what it is that makes some people look for small particles of dust in others. He wanted to know why some folk develop the habit of looking for specks in others.
Well, why do people with logs sticking out their eyes look for people with dust in their eyes?
FIVE REASONS WE FIND FAULT
I soothe my own conscience. Faultfinders are saying, “See, I’m not the only one who’s not perfect.”
I think I will build myself up by tearing someone else down. Some people think that if they can point out the faults in others, people will think better of them. This is always counter-productive.
I have an envious or jealous spirit. One soloist can be critical of another soloist for a minor mistake, when the rest of the solo was fantastic. In the process of faultfinding, they miss all the good and only see one little mistake.
I feel guilt. A former Sunday school teacher might criticize a new teacher even though he himself was dismissed for a poor teaching record.
It’s a bad habit. Some people just develop a bad habit of nit-picking and finding fault, setting themselves up as authorities on everything and acting as if they are God-appointed speck inspectors.
I’ve gone out of church after a wonderful service, and a Sunday school teacher confronts me. He doesn’t say anything about the service but you can just see the fumes coming out his ears. He blurts out, “Someone keeps stealing the chalk from my classroom.”
FAULTFINDING IS SERIOUS
Faultfinding is not a minor vice. Jesus treated it as something serious, something with grave consequences.
Jesus asked another question. 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? (Matthew 7:4).
Jesus was telling them to realize how serious faultfinding is.
Faultfinding hurts the person with whom we find fault.
When you find fault with someone, you hurt that person deeply. In the parable, Jesus told them to imagine the man with a piece of lumber in his eye trying to get close enough to his friend to remove the speck of dust from his eye. Each time he moves in to do the surgery, he bashes his friend with the piece of lumber so that the damage done by the piece of lumber is far greater than the damage being done by the tiny speck of dust!
Further, the man with the piece of lumber in his eye can’t see straight. The wood in his eye distorts his vision. Eye surgery is very delicate. I wouldn’t want someone with lumber sticking out his eye doing eye surgery on me! Surgeons who do eye surgery have to see clearly themselves.
Faultfinding hurts the faultfinder.
Faultfinders have difficulty making friends. They have few lasting friends. They repel people.
Faultfinders get a reputation as poor fact finders because they have a distorted view of everything. They major on minors, looking at what’s secondary and forgetting what’s paramount.
Faultfinders are a poor source of information. I take the opinions of faultfinders with a grain of salt. They are unreliable.
Do you remember the children’s nursery rhyme about a cat that visited the queen in London, England?
“Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?”
“I’ve been to London to visit the queen.”
“Pussycat, pussycat, what did you there?”
“I frightened a mouse, right under her chair!”
That piece of English literature carries a great truth. This cool cat went to London, one of the great cities of the world. There is Buckingham Palace, Trafalger Square, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Picadilly Circus, 10 Downing Street and so much more. And what did this cat see? A mouse! The cat failed to see the greatness of the city and the audience with the queen and was only interested in a mouse.
That’s what faultfinders are like. A faultfinder never gets all the facts straight. Faultfinders are blind to their own condition. And they miss all the good.
The story Jesus told is both humorous and tragic. It’s funny trying to picture this man with the lumber coming out his face as he tries to extract a speck from his friend. It’s funny, until you realize he’s serious. This man is totally blind to his own condition.
This is one of the characteristics of faultfinders; they minimize or overlook altogether their own faults and magnify the faults of others. I’ve met quite a few faultfinders and I’ve noticed that every faultfinder is blind to his own condition.
Faultfinders are rarely happy people. I’ve never met a happy faultfinder. Faultfinding robs you of your joy.
Faultfinders lose their usefulness. Faultfinders usually sit on the sidelines. They are like bald-headed men who tell you how to grow hair. They have all the answers but never do much themselves.
Faultfinding hurts our relationship with God.
Most importantly, faultfinding hurts our relationship with God.
Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. (Matthew 7:1).
Faultfinders will be judged by other people. There’s a law of sowing and reaping. More importantly, God deals with faultfinders. They lose God’s blessing and their freedom in worship. Faultfinders put themselves in spiritual bondage and curtail the flow of the Spirit of God.
THE SOLUTION FOR FAULTFINDING
You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye. (Matthew 7:5). Jesus was clear about the solution. He said we’re to recognize we are hypocrites and take the lumber out of our own eyes.
Jesus was talking about repentance and changing ourselves before we attempt to change others.
There are lessons here for every sphere of life – family life, relationships and church life.
Yes, it can even happen when you come to church. Everything in the service is just great – a beautiful worship time, an exciting passage of scripture read and a great sermon. But the only thing you can talk about is the volume level of the music when the choir sang and the musicians played. You forget everything else and get all exercised about one little thing that really isn’t that important.
Discipline yourself to see the good and great in everything. Leave the minor faults to someone else!
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