Don't Make Excuses for Yourself.

Matthew 7:3-5
3 "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? 4 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? 5 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.

Whenever I write a paper I do my best to proofread and catch my mistakes. Obviously, I could never be perfect, but I always try and do my best. There are certain items that we don't catch because we're so used to our own style of writing and sometime cliche language. Our conversational speech can sometimes slip into our writing...it's dangerous! Our mind often never sees it as incorrect; it almost blocks certain things out.

It's easier to read one of my peers' papers because it's a fresh perspective and a fresh read. It's not very hard to speak of the grammar and context issues to my peers. Often we insult others' work by nagging on them about every last error when we're not even that harsh to ourselves. That's just not right.

We're always told to put others before ourselves. Sometimes I believe we take that phrase too literally and we apply it in all aspects of life. In other words, think of others before oneself. We have to be careful with these phrases because there's ranking going on (you shouldn't necessarily see yourself to a lower degree than someone else). Take care of yourself too and just remember to balance it by doing kind deeds for others as you feel the need.

Therefore, we shouldn't put others mistakes before ours. That's not what we're told, is it? By doing this, it makes us look like disrespectful fools who are better than anyone else and in essence, this does not put others first at all.

From the Christian standpoint, it can be tricky to avoid pointing out other people's spiritual mistakes. Jesus tells us that we should examine our own weaknesses before we harp on weaknesses of others though. There are no excuses!

P.S. I can't believe today marks the eight year anniversary of 9/11. In much of the same way as described above, we shouldn't be quick to judge those who are of middle eastern descent. The ones involved in the terrorist attacks obviously made some very poor and cruel decisions, but don't we sometimes as well? Don't be a hypocrite!

God bless!