Earlier this week, Bethany was about to sit in her sister, Samantha's (who is almost nine months old) booster seat at the table to do some painting. Samantha had just finished eating, and a few remnants of her breakfast were still clinging to the chair. Bethany put her hand on the chair to climb up, and her faced turned to disgust. She said, "It's messy!" My wife, Jennifer, asked her, "Are you messy sometimes, too?" Bethany answered with a matter-of-fact tone, "No."
Certainly Samantha makes a mess when she eats. Jennifer and I have asked ourselves on several occasions if Bethany had been that messy when she started eating table food. But Bethany makes a mess when she eats, too. Not Samantha's a-tornado-just-hit-my-tray variety of mess, but a regular post-meal wipe-down of the table and the floor is required nonetheless. In Bethany's eyes, however, she does not make a mess. Perhaps that's because if we were to define "mess" by how the table, chair, tray, and floor look when Samantha's through eating, Bethany's assortment of raisin bran and pancakes on the floor and in her lap would not qualify as a "mess."
It's amazing how we look at others and see their messes, thinking that we are not messy at all. Of course, we are creatures who are adept at showing how we--by comparison--are not at all as messy as our neighbor. But it is more common that we do not see that we are messy at all, because we define "mess" by how our a-tornado-just-went-through-my-life neighbor's life looks. We are happy to define "mess" by pointing at someone else's mess, because if that's what a mess is, then we do not have one.
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? 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? 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.
Jesus in Matthew 7:3-5
