The Mirror Before the Correction
Chapter 1: The Rule at the Dinner Table A father sits down at the dinner table after a long day and asks his teenage son to put away his phone. The son keeps glancing at the screen while his mother is talking, and the father finally says, “When someone is speaking to you, you need to show respect and listen.” The correction is reasonable. The son puts the phone face down, and for a moment the point seems settled. Less than a minute later, the father’s own phone lights up beside his plate. He picks it up, reads the message, and starts typing while his wife is answering a question he asked her. That small moment explains why what Jesus meant by judge not is so often missed. The problem is not that the father recognized disrespect. The problem is that he demanded a standard from someone else that he had not first applied to himself. That same tension appears in the Christian lesson of examining yourself before correcting others . Jesus did not tell people to stop noticing harmful behavio...