“Lo, I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
— Matthew 25:40
Every so often, a preacher, politician, or professional defender of “family values” climbs onto a moral soapbox so tall you half expect them to need supplemental oxygen. From that lofty perch, they survey the nation, warning about the moral decay of the culture and the sins of everyone who does not share their particular version of righteousness.
Then, sooner or later, the news breaks.
Another scandal. Another affair. Another abuse of power. Another self-appointed guardian of morality discovered doing the very things he spent years condemning from the pulpit or the campaign stage.
By now, the pattern is familiar enough that it almost feels like part of the choreography.
Before anyone gets too smug about it, let us remember a basic theological truth. According to the Epistle to the Romans, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
All means all.
Conservatives. Progressives. Preachers. Politicians. Neighbors. Every last one of us.
The problem is not that some of the loudest moral scolds turn out to be sinners. That would simply make them human, just like the rest of us.
The real problem is the breathtaking hypocrisy of building an entire public identity around moral superiority while quietly dragging around a wheelbarrow full of unconfessed sins.
Scripture actually has something to say about that, too.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus Christ asks a question that has echoed across two thousand years: “Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but fail to notice the log in your own?”
A speck. A log.
It is a wonderfully vivid image. One person squinting at a tiny fleck of dust while a full-sized timber is sticking out of their own eye.
If we are honest, modern American politics sometimes looks exactly like that.
Over the past several decades, a particular brand of fundamentalist political Christianity has presented itself as the sole guardian of morality in this country. Entire movements have been built around the promise of restoring virtue to public life.
And, not coincidentally, those movements have also become extremely effective fundraising machines.
Modern religion, when fused with politics and media, can generate enormous amounts of money and power. The formula is simple. Raise the alarm about moral collapse. Frame political opponents as enemies of faith. Invoke God and scripture to rally the faithful.
Then pass the plate.
The louder the outrage, the more the donations flow.
The more the crowd is told that “they” are destroying the country, the more energized the base becomes.
And the more energized the base becomes, the more money and influence circulate through the system.
But if we pause long enough to consider the teachings of Jesus Christ, the model begins to look very different.
Jesus did not divide the world into righteous insiders and sinful outsiders to build a political following. He did not preach rage against neighbors. He did not turn faith into a fundraising strategy.
In fact, he warned repeatedly about religious leaders who used faith as a tool for status and influence. In the Gospel of Matthew, he famously drove the money changers from the temple, condemning those who had turned sacred space into a marketplace.
It is hard to imagine a clearer warning.
Faith is meant to humble us, not weaponize us.
Yet today, the name of God is invoked at rallies, in fundraising emails, and across cable television as a political branding strategy. Jesus becomes a mascot for tribal politics. Scripture becomes a prop.
Meanwhile, communities fracture. Neighbors become enemies. Entire groups of Americans are cast as threats to faith and country.
All in the name of righteousness.
Which brings us back to that ancient piece of wisdom.
Before we go hunting for specks in someone else’s eye, we might want to deal with the logs in our own. Especially when those logs are attached to a microphone, a political machine, and a very profitable collection plate.
But there is an even deeper truth beneath all of this.
People are just people.
We rise to astonishing heights of compassion, courage, and grace. And we are also capable of sinking to remarkable depths of selfishness, pride, and hypocrisy. Both possibilities live within us. That is simply the human condition.
Faith traditions have always understood this. It is why the Epistle to the Romans reminds us that all fall short. It is why humility sits at the center of Jesus Christ’s teachings. The point was never that some of us are righteous while others are irredeemable. The point was that every one of us is unfinished.
We stumble.
We learn.
We fall.
We rise again.
However, one understands God or the divine, most faiths share a similar idea. The Creator did not make human beings perfect. Instead, we were given something more difficult and more beautiful: the capacity to grow.
We are given ways to learn, to love, to serve, to forgive, and to try again when we fail.
Grace may be eternal. But the journey toward it is the challenge.
That journey demands humility. It asks us to spend less time condemning others and more time examining ourselves. It calls us to build communities rather than fracture them, to lift people up rather than profit from their fears.
In other words, it asks us to put down the moral megaphone, step away from the marketplace, and remember that the work of faith was never about power.
It was about becoming better human beings together.
And that, log or no log, is a calling big enough for all of us.
Why Eye Write 