SELECTIVE HOLINESS: the plank-eye disease

“Proverbs 20:23 – “The Lord detests double standards; he is not pleased by dishonest scales.”

A double standard is born the moment my truth becomes a mirror for your faults but never for my own. It is the quiet hypocrisy of a heart that demands repentance from others while excusing itself.   In other words, I judge myself by my motives but others by their actions.  It is the subtle belief that righteousness is something I enforce outward, not something I embody inward.

When my truth applies only to you:

• I call your anger sin, but my anger “righteous.”
• I call your compromise rebellion, but my compromise “conviction.”
• I call your blind spots dangerous, but my blind spots “discernment.”

This is not truth — it is self‑protection dressed in moral language.

Jesus confronted this pattern again and again, in no uncertain language. He called it a plank in the eye, a whitened tomb, a cup washed on the outside but sour within.  He called those who practiced it vipers, snakes and false teachers.  Not because He despised sinners, but because He despised the illusion that some sinners are exempt from the very truth they preach.

A truth that only applies to others is not truth. It is a weapon. It is a shield. It is a way of avoiding the very transformation God longs to work in us.

Real truth — Christ‑shaped truth — begins with me. It confronts my motives before it critiques yours. It exposes my loyalties before it questions yours. It humbles me before it ever corrects you.

And when truth has done its work in me, I no longer need to wield it as a hammer. I can offer it as a light.  Because the moment truth becomes mutual — the moment it applies to both of us — it stops being a double standard and starts becoming the way of Christ.

Consider the following

1. If you were offended by the one Israeli soldier who was photographed smashing a statue of Jesus, but kept silent when 72,000 people were killed in Gaza, 4,000 thousand more in Lebanon and cities turned to rubble in Iran, your moral outrage is as selective as it is pathetic.
2. If you proudly associate with those who believe in family values and lobby against the gay agenda and the LGBTQ community, and yet, support Israel that is scheduled to host the largest LGBTQ+ festival in Middle East history, then your values are selective, and you suffer from intentional blindness
3. If you were offended by the scene at the Olympic Games where the LGBTQ community acted a scene of the Last Supper but laughed off Donald Trump’s meme depicting him as Christ, then it was never about God’s holiness in the first place. It was about your misplaced loyalty.
4. If you are an anti-abortion, pro-life activist but kept silent when 165 children were blasted into eternity in one single bomb attack in Iran, you suffer from an agenda-driven prejudice void of all compassion.
5. If you follow the Prince of Peace but support the lords of war, you live a life of inconceivable double-standards that has little to do with Christ but more to do with nationalism
6. If you applaud Israel for their heroic acts of “self-defence” but decry Hamas for their acts of “terrorism” when they too seek security and self-determination, your bias is more evident than you realise.
7. When you grieve deeply for tragedies that affect fellow Christians who look like you, vote like you, or worship like you — but remain unmoved by the suffering of Muslims or those outside your tribe, you are both denying and betraying the all-inclusive, tribeless Christ that you confess.
8. If you are a believer who love to quote scripture as the foundation for your support for Israel, but ignore the teachings of Christ when it confronts hatred, unforgiveness, fear and suspicion, the verses you use are nullified and made void by your own application.

Luke 6:42  How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.