"Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" (Matthew 7:3)
Some people have made a spiritual gift out of noticing what is wrong. Discernment is real, and a church with none of it will believe anything, and some things genuinely must be named. But there is a difference between discernment and fixation, and the difference shows in the face. A discerning person names a problem and then keeps loving. A fixated person names a problem and then keeps naming it, cannot sit in a room without cataloguing, and eventually cannot see anything else, so that the light genuinely present in that church cannot get past him, because he is standing directly in front of it.
The frightening part is that no one repents of a fixation while they are inside it. It does not feel like negativity from the inside. It feels like faithfulness. It feels like being the only one paying attention. And a person can spend a whole season certain he is guarding the truth while he is quietly becoming the shadow that falls across everyone near him. The repentance, when it comes, comes late, usually after he has cost someone something, often after he has driven off someone young who was watching how he treated people.
So ask the honest question, and do not answer it too quickly. Are you the discerning one, who names the wrong and goes on loving? Or have you become the shadow, the one through whom the light cannot pass? The test is not whether you are right about the fault. It is what noticing it has done to your capacity to love.
