Mow your own lawn

It’s said that we should take caution when we point the finger in blame at someone else because there are four other ones that point back.  I wish I remembered this more … not the words of the saying, but the spirit of the saying.

I had an apt reminder this week while reading through Job 15 – 21, Psalms 52 – 58, and 2 Chronicles 22 – 28.  Yet another passage in the amazing book of Job.  Specifically, in chapter 19 … Job is responding to another well-intended but misfired bit of feedback from his friend Bildad.

Then Job spoke again:  “How long will you torture me?  How long will you try to crush me with your words?  You have already insulted me ten times.  You should be ashamed of treating me so badly.  Even if I have sinned, that is my concern, not yours.  You think you’re better than I am, using my humiliation as evidence of my sin.  But it is God who has wronged me, capturing me in his net.

As people in general … and yes, as Christians as well … we spend a lot of time picking apart the shortcomings, failures, and SIN of others.  Conveniently, we tend to forget our own.

It’s true that it’s a target-rich environment.  Let’s face it, there is an abundance of sinfulness and bad behavior out there … and some of it belongs to others, also.  And then top it off that we are presently in a culture (not just the US, either) that encapsulates some of that sinfulness and bad behavior as “choices,” “orientation,” “rights,” etc.  When it all comes down to it, it’s easy to begin to cherry-pick others and point out their failures.  And when you consider that we’re all equally messed up, it seems relatively logical that we’d look away from ourselves and at others if for no other reason than to make ourselves feel better about our wrongness.

It’s a lot like we have an overgrown, weed-laden, gopher-ridden lawn, but we spend all our time pointing at our neighbor’s lawn complaining about it.  We should just mow our own lawn.

Look at how Job rebuts Bildad … he says, “You should be ashamed of treating me so badly.  Even if I have sinned, that is my concern, not yours.  You think you’re better than I am, using my humiliation as evidence of my sin.”  Wow.  I have to confess, I spend an awful lot of time and energy taking pock shots at the sin of other people.  Let’s face it … we all do.

Driving on the freeway … I complain about the “idiots” that either drive too fast, too slow, too close, or too something.  How about my driving?  I get mad about how unreliable some people are.  Or, people who don’t tell the truth all the time.  Or, people who complain all the time.  Or … any number of things for which I point my finger at others.

Job’s point is right on.  We really should be ashamed of ourselves for picking on the sin of others.  We should be concerned about our own sin.  After all, we’re accountable to God for our sinful behavior, not the sinful behavior of other people.  When we berate someone for his or her failure, while ignoring our own, that’s the height of shamefulness in my estimation.

Now, this is not to say that we don’t lovingly counsel those within our sphere when they legitimately are sinful and falling short.  But the key is to check our motives in doing so.  Being a know-it-all, judgmental, or imbalanced in our criticism doesn’t help anything or anyone, and certainly isn’t loving in the way the Lord instructs us to be.

As Christians, in particular, we can spend a lot of time denigrating others in the name of promoting repentance.  All we accomplish is conveying knowingly or otherwise that we’re better than the other person.  Well, the fact is, God doesn’t grade on a curve.  ALL have sinned … there is NONE righteous … the Bible is clear on these things.  So guess what … we’re not better than anyone else.  All sin is wrong.  Someone else’s as well as ours.

There are no sins that are worse than others, despite our tendency to try to point out certain things that we think are worse than others.  Sexual sin is somehow declared worse than lying.  Homosexuality is somehow worse than adultery.  Murder is somehow worse than lying on our tax returns.  There are a number of other potential examples we could come up with.  But I think it’s a long stretch to argue that there is any Biblical basis for this assertion.  We all have the same terminal disease (sin) and we all need to One and Only Cure (Jesus).  Period.

If we’re going to worry about someone’s sin, let’s worry about our own.  All sin is sin.  We all have it.  We all have plenty of work to do on surrendering our own behaviors to God’s standard, with His help.  To point at the shortfalls of others without pointing at our own is the height of hypocrisy.  And by the way, hypocrisy is NOT something Christians have a corner of the market on these days … hypocrisy is alive and well in both Christian and non-Christian circles.  Anyone asserting otherwise is not being intellectually honest.

This week, let’s ask the Lord to convict us for our sin, and to convict us for any areas of anyone’s life that we’re quick to point out without taking the opportunity to see our own disobedience.  By all means, we still need to call sin, sin … even when it’s the sin of other people.  Just because someone else’s sin belongs to them doesn’t mean we don’t identify it as sin.  Just because WE sin, doesn’t cancel out or nullify the sin of others.  As my mom used to say when I was a kid (modified slightly) … “Two wrongs don’t make a right … but they do still make two wrongs.”  The key, remember, is to check our motives in all this.

It’s time we mow our own lawn.

Better yet, let’s ask the Master Lawn Mower to mow our lawn.

MR