Everyone Is Having an Affair

She walked into my office and told me that she was sure her husband was having an affair with another man, but as she continued to pour out her reasons she believed this was true, she mentioned that her best friend was also having an affair.

By the end or our conversation, I concluded from her evidence that neither her friend nor her husband were in the midst of affairs.  Not that these others couldn't or would never have affairs (I have long since concluded that anyone can be dragged into affairs under the right circumstances).  It was just that she talked to me out of what I call "Looking through the Log."

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said:

“And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own?  How can you think of saying to your friend, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye?  Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye (Matthew 7:3-5).

When people have a log in their eyes, they only see the log and begin seeing it everywhere they go.  It turns out that the lady who told me about her husband and her friend had an affair with the man she accused her husband of having an affair with.  She was obsessing about affairs because she was struggling with guilt from having had an affair with her husband's friend. 

When Ted Haggard was filmed for a movie about Bible Camp, he railed against homosexuality because he was struggling with and giving himself over to homosexuality.  His standards told him that homosexuality was wrong, but he couldn't live up to his standards, so he fought it in others.  Jimmy Swaggart did the same with prostitutes and pornography.  While constantly railing against porn and fornication, he himself was steeped in it.  He likewise could not live up to his own standards for himself and fought it in others, even to the point of ruining another preacher's career who had issues with fornication far less intense than Jimmy's.

These are just a couple of examples of a pattern of behavior from many people who see in others the struggle they are dealing with themselves.  What they see may sometimes be real, but they just see it a lot more than people who aren't looking through some log in their eye.

Jesus' solution to this issue was to tell people to to stop judging and trying to help other people fix their problems until they first remove the problems they are dealing with. To put it another way, if all you see is people having affairs, deal first of all with the affair you had.  When your own issue is worked out, then you can help others deal with theirs.