I messed up……what now?

We all make mistakes. (Yes……. me too)

We all do things that are wrong.

You know it, I know it, and so do others.

So does the one who put you here.

Screwing up is unfortunately so common, that it is statistically normal. We hate to admit it. But, you can’t honestly look at what’s going on in this world and deny this fundamental truth. As an aside, we are acutely aware of the errors of others………not so much with our own mistakes.

Today’s question is “what do we do with our mistakes?” I’ll save the mistakes of others for another day. They are far less dangerous as it turns out.

Our most common choices are:

Deny that we did it.

Ignore/forget it and move on.

Redefine it so that it is no longer wrong.

Admit it, explore it, learn from it, and seek forgiveness.

Here we go:

Deny it:

Surprisingly, this is very common. Have you ever been pulled over for speeding. The officer leans in and says “Sir, do you know how fast you were going?” Now you know you were doing 82 in a 70 mph zone…… you know because when you saw the blue light you looked at your speedometer. But, what did you say? The point is that it is very easy to deny an error to others…….it is impossible to deny it to yourself.

Ignore/forget it:

I call this plan B. When denying the error to ourself fails, we just stuff it down, try to forget it and move on. The more that we do this, the better we get at it. I know people who are incredibly skilled at moving on and leaving the wreckage behind. At least they think so. Have you ever been backpacking? I used to backpack………when I was younger. You load up about 50 pounds of gear in a pack and head down the trail. You walk all day and it feels pretty normal. Just before sunset, you shuck off the pack and suddenly you feel like you are walking on air. Only then do you sense the load that you have been carrying all day. Ignoring/forgetting is like that. We drag the burden of the mistake along…… we get used to it……. we begin to think that it is normal……. we don’t notice it so much…… until we finally let it go. But, make no mistake about it……it was there all along wearing us down.

Redefine it:

This is the modern way to solve the problem. We find an intellectual tool that allows us to change the wrong we have done into a right. I’m not going to delve into concrete examples here. My purpose is not to beat others up. I have enough problems of my own. The thing is that….. in our hearts….and it may be deeply burried…….. we still know that we are wrong. We have to continually expend emotional energy……every day……turning our wrong into a right. The deeper we have buried it and the greater the wrong, the harder we have to work……. the more often we have to reinforce our justification. There is a second problem with redefining. Because we have bought into the idea that what we are doing is right, we keep repeating the wrong……… and digging the hole deeper.

Admit/explore/learn/seek forgiveness:

At first this is tough. We have to identify and accept our failure. This is very hard on our self esteem. We hate the idea that we have been wrong……or even worse “bad”. Our society has decided that maintaining our self esteem is paramount. We have “gradeless” schools and “attendance awards” so that we can deny our failures…… so that we can believe that we are succeeding in the face of obvious evidence to the contrary. But, in our hearts, we still know. The wrongness is still there. The next step is to dispassionately analyze our error and the damage that we’ve done. The final step is to ask for forgiveness. The greatest gift of Christianity is that it gives us a tool for receiving forgiveness. When you do, it’s like dropping the 50 pound pack and walking on air.

This gift cost Christ a lot. It’s value is immense…… and it costs you next to nothing……except that you have to be humble enough to recognize it and to ask for it.

I can promise you………it’s worth it.