THE SPLINTER AND THE LOG

Years ago, Pastor Bill Siebert told a story I find quite ageless in its scope and application (VC/7-10-1966).  He described Jim, a man he knew, that was suffering from high blood pressure. Jim felt good and looked perfectly fine, but he had a way of tossing common sense to the four winds and indulging himself on his wife’s good cooking.

The doctor warned Jim he was overweight he needed to exercise some precaution. Nonetheless, Jim loved to eat!  Jokingly, he occasionally remarked, “Oh, well, you only live here once, you might as well enjoy good food.”

But now,  Jim was dead at forty-five. As a leader of youth in the local church, it was Jim that reminded the youth of the bible teaching that raises the question that asks, “What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God and ye are not your own?” (I Cor. 6:19).

Jim was the leader of a teen-age group that decided to stop smoking. He said, “We have seen films on TV on lungs infected with cancer, and after talking it over we have decided to give it up. Since our parents don’t have the willpower to set us a good example by stopping smoking, we decided to set them one”

Seibert then added this observation: perhaps this will be necessary in the weight department as well! You see, Jim was but forty-five and just a week before his demise the pastor described him as “the salesman that looked more like an all-American halfback.”

Simultaneously, Jim’s two sons stood wide-eyed at poolside while dad vigorously swam the length of the local YMCA swimming pool several times.

It had only been a year since Jim and his family moved into the local community but that move had been a special blessing to the local church and to the Youth Group in particular. The Youth Group jumped from fifteen to sixty-five. That was the way it was with Jim said his boss. He described him as one with a magnetic personality - “He simply draws people to himself.”

Now Jim was dead! Pondering Jim’s departure, Seibert noted the inconsistency of quitting smoking and over-indulging with food and suggested his friend Jim had, in a very real sense, killed himself. He did it, “not with a gun or a rope around his neck” he had “committed suicide with a knife and a fork and his wife’s best cooking.”

It is too easy to emphasize a scripture teaching in one context and be very inconsistent in another context. Perhaps we all need to pray in this manner: Lord: give me the wisdom to live life consistently while also living it fully.

It is simple  to see the splinter in the other person’s eye but, oh so difficult, to see the log in our own eye. This is… walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com