A German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, has a famous line that
says, “out of the crooked timber, no straight thing was ever made.” The line
proves true, no one is perfect. All human life is a struggle to perfection. We
all fall short of the glorious victory over this struggle. We are crooked in
one way or another.
In our daily business we encounter people who we may
consider annoying, frustrating, upsetting, unreasonable and the list goes on
but before we condemn them and cast the first stone there is need to realize that
their crookedness serves as a mirror, reflecting who we are deep down in our
soul since we are all from the same crooked timber. We can only hold our
crookedness to be self-evidence that all men are created equal and endowed with
certain short-comings due to our humanness.
Our perverse tendency of holding others at a higher standard
than ourselves shifts our focus from the plank of wood in our eye to the peck
of wood in other people’s eyes and hence fail to acknowledge that we are all
humans carrying the marks of
imperfection that are deeply engraved in our DNA.
Of Course Iron sharpens iron, so man should never lay down
tools of sanding people to finer people. But sanding others should be done with
humility, meekness and sympathy being fully aware that we ourselves fall short
and are crooked.
In our eternal struggles to make our ways straight we can
only hope that by the end of our life we shall at least be perfect as our
father in heaven is perfect and who is the author and perfecter of our life.
