by Pastor Joel Lawler

"The more things change, the more they stay the same." I am not sure who said this but there is a lot of truth to it.

Jesus brother James was a pastor in the early days of the Christian church. It is believed that he had an unusual nickname. It was "old camel knees." He got this nickname because of the calluses that had built up on his knees from many hours of prayer. Whether this is the case or not, we can see that he was a truly wise man. He had the kind of wisdom that comes directly from God and is almost always accompanied by many hours in prayer.

The book in the New Testament of the Bible bears his name. It is a short book that can be read in about 30 minutes but it is packed full of tremendous insight. It was written as a letter to one of the churches of which James was a pastor.

The church to which James was writing had some serious problems that are addressed in his letter. One of them was that the church, at this time, was becoming judgmental. There were some people who believed that it was their job is to fix people, and they looked for those who needed to be "rebuked" or "corrected." This was a problem in the time that James lived and unfortunately, we have not learned a whole lot in the past two thousand years.

James said "Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it." The law that he is referring to is included in his letter. It is "Love your neighbor as yourself." In judging others, we are guilty of breaking the very laws that we hold others to.

The "Ink-blot Test" is a psychology/personality test. A patient will look at a series of cards with ink splatters and interpret what they see. Their psychologist will then use what the patient sees in the inkblots as a reflection of the patient's fantasies, personality, and their current mental

state. The ink-blots are not pictures of anything. They are simply black splattered on white paper. How someone perceives the ink says something about who they are. In the same way, the simple act of judging someone else, says more about who we are than it does about them. In judging others, we are trying to cover our own weaknesses. We have a deficiency, so rather than trying to correct it, we point out others weaknesses so that ours won't look so bad.

Jesus said "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

"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."

The truth is that we all have struggles and problems in our life. We need to focus on letting God heal and work in our own lives. From James' church to the churches of today, we need to apply this message and learn to love others. Fixing people is God's job. If we are honest, we will see that He still has plenty of work to do on us.
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