A few years ago, an incident in our community stirred a debate in the local paper. A young farmer and his preschool age son were pulled over by the police for a minor violation, something along the lines of having a tail light out. When the man showed the officer his driver’s license, the officer noticed that it had expired within the past week. The man hadn’t renewed his license on time! So the officer informed him that he would not be allowed to drive home. His car was going to be towed away, and the policeman offered to call a taxi to take him and his child home. The man didn’t want a taxi, but when he asked the officer to call his wife to come get them, the officer refused and left the man by the side of the road with his young child.

There was a week-long debate in the local paper with letters to the editor and an editorial about how the situation was handled, and that debate spilled over into our own family. My wife thought that the officer should have showed mercy instead of following policy to the letter of the law, and that he should have called the man’s wife to come get them, rather than leaving someone with a young child stranded by the side of the road. But I was far less sympathetic—I felt that the entire situation could have been avoided if the man had simply renewed his license when he was supposed to.

My wife said that she could see something like that happening to me, since I have occasional absent-minded tendencies. I insisted, however, that the process was idiot proof, since a renewal notice is mailed out when your license is about to expire, thereby eliminating any excuse for him not to renew the license.

About a month later, our family flew back to Minnesota for a vacation. At the airport, we checked in at the rental car agency to pick up the car that we had reserved, and of course, I was asked for my driver’s license. After looking at my license, the agent said, “I’m sorry sir, but we can’t rent you the car unless you possess a valid driver’s license, and this license expired five years ago!”

It was classic irony! Apparently the process wasn’t totally idiot-proof! My wife wound up renting the car in her name and enjoyed a good chuckle about the situation. As soon as I got home I went down to the DMV, retook the test and got another license.

This experience illustrates how easy it can be to spot the faults and sins of others and be completely blind to our own sins, even when it is the same type of sin.

In 2 Samuel 12, King David was enraged by the prophet Nathan’s story of the rich man who had many flocks and herds, yet stole and killed the only lamb of a poor man. Yet David couldn’t see himself as being guilty of a similar, yet worse sin, when he committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband, Uriah, killed. The parallels between Nathan’s story and David’s actions seem obvious, but David didn’t get it immediately.

When we become irritated by the faults we see in others, it might do us well to ask ourselves a couple of questions:

Could I, like David, have somehow committed a similar sin that I’m still blind to? Am I oblivious to something that I’ve done that I still need to make amends for?

Could I be vulnerable to committing a similar sin in the future?

In Matthew 23, Jesus warns the scribes and Pharisees about hypocrisy. They had a tremendous ability to point out the sins of others, but tended to completely overlook faults in themselves.

An important Christian attribute is to examine ourselves and attempt to see ourselves as we really are; not self-righteously comparing ourselves to others, but striving to see ourselves as God sees us. When we see faults in others, let’s examine ourselves, make corrections and do our part to achieve the great potential for good that God sees in all of us.