Why Is It So Much Easier to See Everyone Else's Sin?

Amos 1-2 and the uncomfortable gift of looking in the mirror

By Pastor John Erickson

I think most of us can identify someone else's problem remarkably quickly.

Somebody behaves badly, makes a foolish choice, or says something we disagree with, and suddenly we become expert spiritual diagnosticians. We know what's wrong, how they got there, and what they ought to do about it.

Meanwhile, the very same level of insight applied to our own hearts? That can be a little harder to come by.

Amos knew his audience. And the way he begins his book is almost brilliant in how uncomfortable it becomes.

Finally, somebody is calling them out

Amos starts with judgments against nations surrounding Israel. Damascus. Gaza. Tyre. Edom. Ammon. Moab.

He names cruelty in war, the trafficking of people, broken trust, violence, and exploitation.

I can almost imagine his listeners nodding along. Yes! Exactly. Somebody ought to say something about those people.

And they weren't necessarily wrong about the evils being condemned. Human trafficking is evil. Cruelty is evil. The abuse of power is evil.

The trouble comes when we assume that seeing evil clearly in other people means we have nothing left to examine in ourselves.

The circle gets smaller

The prophet turns toward Judah, Israel's own kin. Then, finally, he turns toward Israel itself.

This is where the applause probably stops.

Amos 2:6 confronts Israel for selling the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals. The picture is of people treated as commodities. Their dignity is measured against somebody else's convenience or profit.

Israel had rules intended to protect people without resources. Its own story began with God rescuing a people from slavery. Yet the rescued had learned to participate in the very oppression from which they had once been delivered.

And all the while, they still considered themselves God's people.

That is the heart of the problem. Religious identity had become a shield against self-examination.

The plank and the speck

Jesus uses an almost ridiculous picture in Matthew 7. A person notices a speck of sawdust in somebody else's eye while walking around with a plank sticking out of their own.

You can't help but laugh at that image. How are you going to do delicate eye surgery when you can't even get through the doorway?

But Jesus isn't saying we should never address something harmful. He says to deal with our own problem first so we can see clearly enough to help someone else.

That sounds so reasonable until it's our plank he's talking about.

It is easier to speak boldly about the failures of the world than to ask whether our own decisions reflect the character of Jesus.

I feel that tension strongly. I can get angry when I see Christians loudly condemning everyone around them while ignoring the parts of Scripture that challenge their own behavior. I expect those of us who claim to follow Jesus to live differently.

But Amos does not let me stop with my frustration at other Christians. If I finish the passage with a longer list of people who disappoint me and no honest examination of myself, I have managed to repeat the very problem I am criticizing.

Remember where you came from

There is another layer to Israel's story. They had forgotten their history.

They were once slaves in Egypt, people with little power and no ability to rescue themselves. God delivered them and taught them to become a different sort of society-one attentive to the poor, the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan.

That memory should have produced compassion.

Instead, some of the very people who received mercy were now withholding mercy from others.

This can happen to Christians, too. We know the language of grace, but we can begin relating to the world as if we've forgotten how much grace we needed ourselves.

We start dividing people into the deserving and undeserving, the respectable and unacceptable. We forget that our salvation wasn't a reward for having everything together.

Revival starts closer to home

When you see something wrong in the world, caring about it isn't the problem. In fact, God cares deeply about justice.

The question is what happens next.

Do we immediately begin pointing across the room? Or do we ask the Holy Spirit to show us where we need to change?

Am I generous with what I have? Do I speak about people with dignity? Have I made my convenience more important than someone else's well-being? Is there a relationship in which I need to repent rather than prove I'm right?

We should absolutely work to make the world better. But that work becomes distorted when we refuse to let Jesus work on us.

God's word is not just a spotlight we shine on everybody else. Sometimes it is a mirror we would prefer to put back in the drawer.

Before we ask God to fix those people, perhaps we should start with a more dangerous prayer:

Lord, show me where I need your grace today.