Does Christ Teach our Blindness is Structural?

Mat 7:3 And why do you see the mote in your brother's eye, but do not consider the beam that is in your own eye?
Mat 7:4 Or how do you say to you brother, Let me pull the mote out of you eye; and, behold, a beam [is] in you own eye?
Mat 7:5 You hypocrite, first cast the beam out of your own eye; and then you can see clearly to cast out the mote out of your brother's eye.

The Greek term translated as "mote" is karphos, which means "twig," "straw," or "chaff." The term translated as "beam" is dokos, which is a main bearing beam in a house that holds up the roof or floor or any beam or rafter. It is also the beam that bars a door.

Reading the English translation, I was always stuck by the extreme use of the term "beam" to describe something in a person's eye. Looking at the Greek, however, it seems clear that he chose the word (that is, its Aramaic equivelent) carefully.

The topic here is blindness, that is, our inability to see our own situation. While it is generally true that we see the flaws of others much more clearly than we see our own flaws, no matter what their relative sizes, by choosing the term dokos, Christ is telling us something more about our blindness. What we cannot see is the support that holds up our thinking. We are blind to it because it is the foundation of our viewpoint. It is buried deep in our assumptions. If we take away that beam, the entire stucture of the way of seeing the world collapses.

Christ is saying that our blindness is not a minor affliction, like a piece of chaff blown into our eye, but a structural defect. Even the meaning of dokos as a beam that bars the door makes sense. This defect that causes our blindness doesn't let anything new in.

The larger context of this chapter seven and this verse is society, that is, our relationships with other people. Christ starts by saying that we cannot judge other people. Now he is explaining why. Just like beams and building are human inventions, society is also a human invention and the flaws in our social structures are foundational. The ways we try to use society to correct our fellows are also flawed. Social judgments don't work because of a kind of structural blindness.

What is that blindness? Our inability to know what others are thinking is part of it. However, Christ is saying something more here: he is saying the problem is with our inability to see the flaws in our own thinking. Yes, we are aware of our own minds, but we cannot see the foundations of our thought, our subconscious is as hidden to us as the thoughts of other people.