Twelve Rules of Perspective

Actually there is only one rule, but it has 12 parts or applications. Here is the rule as Yeshua stated it.

“Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3)

This has to do with our “eye;” that is, how we see things. Each person has a different perspective. What one sees as big, another sees as small and vice versa.

I have titled this the rule of “shekel and shemesh.” A shekel is the Israeli coin; shemesh is Hebrew for the sun. If you hold up a shekel at arm’s length it seems to be the same size as the sun; although obviously in actual size, the sun is infinitely immeasurably larger.

This principle of optic perspective is simply that what is closer to you seems bigger; what is farther from you seems smaller.

How does this work out in interpersonal communication and relationships?

Here is where I see twelve applications of perspective:

1. Anything you do right seems enormous to you

2. Anything you do right seems tiny to someone else

3. Anything someone else does right seems tiny to you

4. Anything someone else does right seems enormous to him

5. Whatever difficulty you have to face seems enormous to you

6. Whatever difficulty you have to face seems tiny to someone else

7. Whatever difficulty someone else has to face seems tiny to you.

8. Whatever difficulty someone else has to face seems enormous to him

9. Whatever you do wrong seems insignificant to you

10. Whatever you do wrong seems enormous to someone else

11. Whatever someone else does wrong seems enormous to you

12. Whatever someone else does wrong seems insignificant to him

This can greatly frustrate our efforts to communicate. You think that the other person is lying or that he doesn’t honor you. But being frustrated doesn’t help. You have to take into account that the other person’s perspective on the same situation is necessarily different from yours.

To go back to Yeshua’s parable: your beam is someone else’s speck; your speck is someone else’s beam. It may be an optical illusion. But how it appears optically is mathematically proportional in the “distance to size” ratio. It may be just optics (perspective), but that is the science of optics.

Hopefully this list of perspectives can help us to prepare for the astonishing variety of “disconnects” we are liable to experience in human interactions, and help us to apply Yeshua’s conclusion:

“You hypocrite, first take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.” (Luke 7:5)