Planks and Specks

Making sense of the world around us is sometimes a dizzyingly overwhelming task. I for one rely upon intuition a lot. I’m a Myers-Briggs ENFP, which basically means I do a lot of feeling out rather than leaning upon logic. Feelings are an important part of being human and are integral when making sense of the world around us. But what happens when feelings, which can be so unreliable at times, lead us up the garden path?

Every human being has the desire to create order, to make sense of even the smallest part of our world so that we create safety, somewhere to rest our minds. One of the ways we do this is by evaluating the world around us and making small, sometimes subconscious judgment calls, filing things away in our minds, and creating a system by which we can understand our world and our role within it.

By default, we are viewing things from our own lens, from our own bias, and we’re organizing, evaluating, and arranging the rest of the world around us. I think that’s natural. But it can hold a dangerous curve ball, and I’ve been personally experiencing this as a fresh missionary in Budapest.

Naturally, we can find it easier to see the flaws in those around us, who are not fitting our ‘code of living’ or our ‘way of doing things’ and we can file that away under ‘wrong’ or ‘flawed’. From there, it’s a lot easier to try and address the flaws we see in the people around us in order to create some semblance of order than it is to look at our own shortcomings. Why? Because by admitting we have flaws, we are then forced to reevaluate the entire viewpoint we have of the world. And that is truly unsettling. It’s much easier to point at the mistake in others and ask them to remedy it than it is to sit in honest thoughtfulness and prayerfully consider if our viewpoint of the world around us is wrong.

Here’s a quote from Jesus that is quite popular but might often be misread.

And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye.

I find it interesting that Jesus does not encourage us to leave the speck in our brother’s eye. He simply gives us the order of a thing. Sort out your own issues before you go pointing out other people’s issues. Correct the order of your actions to first address your own clarity of view, so that we have clarity when we go to help out our friends with their flaws. When reading this quote in the past, I misunderstood it and thought we should leave people to sort their own issues and we should focus on ours. But no. There is a time and place for correction. But correction should only come when you’ve dealt with your own partiality or biases. Only then can we be sure that it is a truly sound correction.

I might be like a lot of other Enneagram 4’s here, where I feel I have the ability to be completely honest about my own flaws. I think I have the ability to look a personal flaw squarely in the eye. What I find trickier is knowing how to adequately correct it, so that I can move forward and stop going around in circles. I need that sound correction from someone who can see clearly enough to guide me forward on a corrective path.

But the bigger adjustment has been learning that while in this new phase of life here on the other side of the world, I have planks in my viewpoint that need to be removed before I can go around correcting others. And that’s the more painful work; keeping my mouth shut and dealing with my own biases and prejudices before I go around correcting others.

My friends can probably attest to how much I’ve been failing at this. I’ve been ‘verbally processing’ all over the place, making judgment calls, and generally causing havoc. What I would GIVE to fast forward this part of life and skip ahead to the part where I can confidently march around, assured of my place here and my viewpoint of the world.

In the meantime, what I can recommend to those of you on a similar path, is to surround yourself in silent spaces where you can honestly reflect. But also, it’s equally important to hunt out those people in your world that have taken the time to remove their planks, and can adequately guide you in how to remove yours. Find those people and hold them close. It’s gonna be a painful journey, but I can assure you that after 10 months of hard slog, it’s starting to feel like it just might be worth it all in the end.