I have among my toys an item called the Chelsea Filter, from the time when I was a jeweler. It is a round object resembling a small magnifying glass and it contains a flat disc of dark green glass. Of course if one views something green with it, a green sapphire, for instance, it looks like a shadow. Most emeralds appear as shadows. The exception is the Muzo emerald that appears bright red. Now If I went about my life with Chelsea Filters in my eyeglasses I could spend my life never seeing anything green except the occasional Muzo emerald.
Let’s say my sin is green.
Now my neighbor goes about his life wearing rose colored glasses. His sin is rose colored. And yes of course he sees green so he is quite certain that he sees my sin. But since he sees it through rose colored glasses he doesn’t see it as green. So he doesn’t see my real sin. He sees his perception of it.
I, too, see his sin but since I’m looking through green glass so I don’t see its rose color, I see it a different way.
We are both about to throw stones at one another when we stumble upon the Muzo emerald. I say “stumbled” because it is huge.
Because of the presence of chromium in this particular emerald I see it as bright red. To me it is the same color as my sinful neighbor. To him it looks the color of me. We are no longer willing to start casting stones but rather to run from the thing as fast as possible.
But then our Guardian Angels smack us each on the back of the head and our glasses fall off.
We realize that we have discovered the most valuable emerald in the world, board the plane out of Bogata, and live in great wealth, as comrades, after all.
