It's kind of funny the way the English language dates. How my pot (which is made from stainless steel) could call my kettle (which is constructed from high quality white plastic now beiged with age) black is a mystery that I'm sure my children could ponder without resolution for some time. Nevertheless, the saying persists as another one of those lousy arguments that get better with age.

It's right up there with “Get that log out of your own eye” and “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. Both of these (rather like our proverbial water boiling appliances) are excellent pieces of godly advice, but hopeless ethical arguments. Before you lynch me for speaking about the Bible like this, let me explain.

When Jesus encouraged his disciples to remove the log from their own eye, he was challenging them to give up their judgementalism. What is the problem with judgementalism? It's not the ethical criteria that is being applied, but the way that it allows the speaker to feel morally superior and thus avoid the implications of the truth for themselves (cf. Rom 2). When I call you greedy, you might well retort, “Get the log out of your own eye” because I need to see my own greed. But no matter how greedy I might be, that never removes the need for you to deal with your greed before God. In fact, by acknowledging that I have a log, you accept that the speck in your own eye is not so hot.

That is why the Lord Jesus, after telling the men intent on stoning the woman in John 8 not to be such arrogant idiots, he also tells the woman concerned to “sin no more” (v. 11). The men were guilty, and so was she; their sin didn't cancel out hers.

Unfortunately the charge of hypocrisy has become an ethical argument. We think that once we've told someone to “Get the log out of their own eye”, we've excused ourselves from sinfulness. If you call me a liar and I call you a hypocrite, I win every time—and everyone watching on will agree. Why?

It's because in our world—particularly in our world without God—the only condemnable sin is judgementalism. Lying isn't a problem; everyone does it all the time; it's the social lubricant that makes the world go round. The problem is taking the moral high ground by telling others which right and wrongs they should follow.

But in God's world, right and wrong belong to God, and accusing someone else of being as tarnished as you are doesn't remove the stain.

So the next time someone points out your sinfulness and you're tempted to talk about the blackness of pots, remember that it's not a moral argument. If God calls what you've been accused of sin, then wisdom won't cry ‘hypocrisy’; wisdom will humbly repent.

What does Proverbs say? “The ear that listens to life-giving reproof will dwell among the wise”—even if the reproof comes from hypocrites.

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