Pearls and Pigs

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say, “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 the other person’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 then turn and tear you to pieces.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ­­__Matthew 7:3-7__

You don’t generally find a lot of people throwing fine jewelry into hog troughs, nor allowing Fido the opportunity to gnaw on your Bible. So that makes these very strange words of Jesus somewhat difficult to wrap our minds around. This passage falls near the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ vision for a world where the Kingdom of god is preeminent in the lives of individual followers. In a word, this is how we live the Kingdom in the everyday. If that is the case indeed then this whole pearls-and-hogs passage has to fit within that framework. The question to ask then is: what is this trying to tell me about the Kingdom life?

I’m a big believer in letting the context and/or placement of a passage help with the interpretation of said passage. The gospel writers were exceedingly strategic and intentional with the arrangement of Jesus’ life and teachings. Writing to specific audiences in antiquity they arranged, summarized, emphasized and edited various details for their specific audiences. For example, Matthew’s use of the phrase “kingdom of heaven” versus “kingdom of God” found in Mark. Mark and John give no mention to the birth of Jesus, while Matthew and Luke give several opening chapters over to the subject. The Sermon on the Mount appears in Matthew alone, with an abbreviated version in Luke, known as the Sermon on the Plain. And on and on the examples go. Here our passage finds itself wedged between Jesus’ admonition to not judge other’s problems before we deal with our own (plank in the eye/speck in the eye) and his appeal for us to “ask, seek and knock.”

We are hopefully all aware that a kingdom life is one that is free from passing unfair, unfounded judgment upon the supposed enormity of someone else’s problems. We know this but don’t practice it as often as Christ would intend. It’s much easier to focus on the “massiveness” of “their” problem (which is probably a “speck”) then on the “minor issue” that we have (which is probably a “plank”). The trouble isn’t just that we are passing judgment on another’s problems without seeing our own. What’s worse is in our arrogance we throw the solution at them when they simply aren’t in a place to hear it. We pass on our judgment of their condition and quickly follow up with the antidote to that condition.

Dallas Willard’s exceptional book The Divine Conspiracy is especially insightful on this subject. I’ll quote liberally from it because he says it better than I can.

The problem with pearls for pigs is not that the pigs are not worthy. It is not worthiness that is in question here at all, but helpfulness. Pigs cannot digest pearls, cannot nourish themselves upon them. Likewise for a dog with a Bible or a crucifix. The dog cannot eat it. The reason these animals will finally “turn and rend you,” when you one day step up to them with another load of Bibles or pearls, is that you at least are edible…. And what a picture this is of our efforts to correct and control others by pouring our good things, often truly precious things, upon them—things that they nevertheless simply cannot ingest and use to nourish themselves. Often we do not even listen to them. We ‘know’ without listening…. The point is not the waste of the ‘pearl’ but that the person given the pearl is not helped (pgs. 228-229).

Remember: we are asking what this has to do with being a follower of Jesus’ way of living. This passage isn’t about them—the swine or the dogs—but about those of us throwing our pearls and holy things to unwilling recipients. We simply aren’t being helpful when we offer these precious things and they aren’t in a position to receive nourishment from them.

Singer/songwriter Don Chaffer penned a song called Long on Diagnosis, Short of Cure. Besides being a ridiculously magnificent song it strikes at the heart of what we do so often: diagnose the problem and offer the wrong cure. We treat them for a head cold while they bleed to death from internal injuries. We half-listen to the problems of others, ready to fire away with our trite, hackneyed clichés: “just trust God to provide”; “just have faith”; “Jesus is the answer”; “let go and let God.” We don’t hear the hurt, the desperation, the angst, anger and bitterness that lay deep behind the words, and, in our ignorance, we offer them the wrong medicine. Do this enough and eventually you will become the target, they will, as Jesus says, “turn and tear you to pieces.”

Part 2 coming soon...

shalom, matt