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Last Tuesday when I entered my workplace, I ran into one of my colleagues.

He burst out one phrase, “It is all your fault!”

“Sure” I smiled and responded. I know he was joking and we laughed after I responded. This is a kind of typical and funny greeting to start a day around here.

Seriously though, if you think it a little bit further; no one is perfect and as a result finding a fault from a person is relatively easy. Just open newspaper or internet, you can quickly glimpse through those flying scud missiles among Presidential candidates’ character, for example. But, how many of them would admit their faults? Probably very few, right? That’s reason we call it politics. Ironically, we seem to accept that politics is a way of life in our government. The chilling fact is this phenomenon is not a singular case. You can see it almost everywhere.  For those who are working under a corporation environment, you probably would understand what I was talking about.

To admit making mistakes is seldom a human nature, as we all know. I myself used to be a man of unwilling to admit mistakes I made. I find that this is rooted from my “pride”.  The consequence is it constantly causes me grief and troubles. As years went by, I ask our Lord to help me learn my lessons. Though I am making progress, there are still a lot of rooms left to be desired. I view this is an essential “molding process” that our Lord devised for us as apostle Paul indicated to us, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 因為他預先所知道的人 ，就預先定下效法他兒子的模樣 ，使他兒子在許多弟兄中作長子” (Romans 8:29)

Talking about finding fault with others, there is another spectrum that, I think, is important to us. Sometimes, our pride would mistake us that we are “somebody” – thinking that we have the right to judge others. This is a dangerous thought because only our Lord has the authority in judging. This is why our Lord Jesus taught us that, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 為什麼看見你弟兄眼中有刺，卻不想自己眼中有梁木呢” (Luke 6:41).

Dwight L Moody used to say, “Moses spent forty years in the king’s palace thinking that he was somebody; then he lived forty years in the wilderness finding out that without God he was a nobody; finally he spent forty more years discovering how a nobody with God can be a somebody” Therefore, my brothers and sisters, finding faults with others can only be helpful in edifying him / her when we are speaking truth in love, not in our prideful mind.

May our Lord grant us wisdom to differentiate what can be changed and what can’t be changed!