We’ve all made that remark. We’ve listened to someone criticize the actions of another and thought to ourselves that the criticizer was just as guilty of the same fault as s/he found in someone else. It is quite easy for any one of us to be blind to our own faults, failings and shortcomings while being very aware of those of others, and sometimes being very verbal about it in the process.
That is not to say that just because each and every one of us comes up short when it comes to being the perfect person, one found without fault, just because there is no such person, none of that means that it is all right to ignore another’s faults and failures just as it is not all right for others to note ours. The fact that we are all imperfect does not give us license to be such.
If, as children, our parents did not point out our bad actions and simply let us be, we would assume that what we were doing was just fine and dandy. On the other hand, if they did point them out and we ignored them and then were punished for our continued bad behavior, then we were taught a lesson. We could have listened and learned or we could have not listened and learned the hard way. The choice was ours.
The saving grace in all this, if it indeed can be called grace, is that we are all in the same boat. We learn some lessons because we are willing to believe our teachers know what they are talking about and want to save us from certain pain and sufferings. We also, at times, need to suffer that pain in order to really learn the lesson our teachers were trying to get across but which we were too stubborn to believe and learn.
One of the great spiritual classics that I used to read in seminary was Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ. It was/is (you can still buy it on Amazon) filled with pithy and pointed sayings and observations about how to live a Christ-like life. As a young seminarian that is certainly something I wanted to do, that being the reason why I read it almost on a daily basis.
Whether my devotional reading made a difference in my life only others can tell because, again, each one of us is a rather poor judge of our own character. We often downplay both our good qualities and our bad. What I do know is that it was always a struggle to be the person I thought I wanted to be even as it was rather easy for me to judge that another was not acting as I thought he should.
When I made those judgments, I should have remembered what Thomas had written: “Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.” I could not back then and I still cannot today. It is no consolation that, again, there are many in the same boat as I. Thomas would probably say that we’re all in that same boat.
If there is any consolation, it is that we are still in the boat rowing, trying to become what we wish to be and that our boat mates are doing the same.
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