Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

“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.
“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

• Matthew 7:1-6

Yesterday’s post was a tough one for me.  My family and I could have gone down the racial divide path, hating all people of different color for what they did wrong to us.  We discussed it, and we rejected it.  We are a mixed family.  That would simply be stupid, but then, over the next couple of days, having not written a new post for a while, two things happened.  1) I read a post that I had written a couple of weeks ago and there were so many obvious typos that I was embarrassed. And 2) I started to turn right on red and then hit the brakes when people began flowing in that general direction, thus the traffic was about to become something other than “clear.”

For the second item, we were going grocery shopping, and I had to turn right at a normally busy intersection, just very few cars on that occasion.  I stopped.  I saw that the traffic light in all directions was red and that the on-coming cars were the next to get a green light.  Thus, within 2-3 seconds, the people in the oncoming left turn lane were about to get a protected left turn light.  I hesitated, but they did not move.  Then, thinking the other drivers to be asleep, I started to go, but they started to go also.  I stopped, since they had the right of way.  No harm done, a small false start with the tire not making half a rotation.

My wife started into a lecture about how I must be in some kind of all-fired hurry that I would risk wrecking the car.  I had no idea whether they had a red light or not or if they were about to go.  I should have waited for us to have a green light.

I laid out several verbal bullet points.

• I had observed the sequence of the lights at that intersection from all angles in the past.  If the lights were working properly, I knew that even though I could honestly not see the light, the light had a green arrow at that moment.  This is not in George Berkeley fashion, seeing it right this moment otherwise not existing, but in a more sane fashion of having seen the timing of the lights in the past.
• Yes, I do not know if the people in the other two cars were sleeping, eating a sandwich, texting, or spilling coffee on their lap, but they were stopped at a green light.
• The intersection had several lanes, six or seven.  I could have completed the right turn long before those cars got near that part of the intersection, even if they sped.
• And thinking of that, 999,999 out of a million drivers in the Pittsburgh area would have gone and gone extremely fast, over half of them never stopping for the red light in the first place.

My wife’s reply was, “You don’t know that either.  It might only be 999,998 and only a third never stopping.”

That brings me to using a colon instead of a quotation mark and typing “yo” instead of “you” which the computer autocorrected to “to” instead.

Typos come and typos go.  It seems at times that typos are like rabbits; they multiply faster than anything else on earth.

I was taught in a few technical writing courses that it is virtually impossible to find your own mistakes at times.  We will read what we thought we typed.  Of course, I took these courses before spell-check.  Good grief, before our company had word processors.  Autocorrect was a long way off in the future.  So, it was important to get what we wrote correct.  Otherwise, the secretary (and yes, they were called that back then) would have to completely retype the document because you spelled cat with two “Ts” and a “K.”  But you reread it ten times and never saw your mistake.

Okay, for some small corners of the USA, cat is often spelled with at least one “K” and multiple “Ts”.  I do not wish to offend.  And I have been to southern Indiana where former VP Dan Quayle is from, and the menus in several restaurants spelled potato and tomato with an “E” at the end.  Let’s give that one a rest!!!

No, I was disgusted with myself that I seemed to only find my mistakes after the world had read the post.  My wife used to edit my stuff, but I found more mistakes than she did, and she started getting frustrated, and begged to not have that responsibility anymore.  Thus, I have no one to proofread what I write.  I miss her editing.

I thought of making these two items as separate posts, and then I realized how one post answers the other.

Do I know if the driver was sleeping or not?  No.  There could have even been tampering of the controls of the light and the all-red condition may have been changed from 2 seconds to 10 seconds.  Doubtful, but possible.

Yet, for a brief moment, my wife and I had an argument over the speck in that guy’s eye, when I cannot see the planks in my own eyes.

So, thinking back to poor restaurant service, it is a slippery slope even getting upset over the poor service.  What pressures were those people under?  Then to create a color component when there was no color component is piling on even more planks in your own eye.  We discussed it and rejected it, but why did we ever think it?

There are far too many planks.  We get a lumber yard full of planks from politicians that want us divided instead of united, ensuring that they stay in power.  We get forests of lumber from the media that love spreading fear, because good news does not make them any money.  We have anti-vaxxers because they are afraid.  We have vaccinated people wearing masks because they are afraid.  And everyone hates everyone (with some exceptions) because they are afraid.

Why are we afraid?

Too many planks.

We need to turn off the media, turn the clock where we cannot see it, and spend time praying and in God’s Word.  Let’s start making sense about what we know to be true.  And then maybe, just maybe, the planks can start to fall from our eyes.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.