Some people live in a state of continual complaint. They have mastered the art of fault-finding. Every-thing is wrong; nothing is right. I hope you haven’t fallen into this trap, because it may tell much more about you than you want other folks to know.
In J. C. and W. A. Hare’s Guesses at Truth, I found the following: “Do you wish to find out a person’s weak points? Note the failings he has the quickest eye for in others. They may not be the very failings he is himself conscious of; but they will be their next-door neighbors. No man keeps such a jealous lookout as a rival.”
And it was Byron who said:
Then farewell, Horace, whom I hated so, not for thy faults, but mine.
It is Leslie D. Weatherhead who comments about how we spoil the picture of ourselves by doing wrong; and then we cannot live with the picture we have made of ourselves. We live in insecurity and fear. A good conscience is the best security. If we are right with God, we can face life.
If by sin we undermine our security and self-esteem, we try to bluff ourselves and hide our conscience-distress by blaming others. Indeed, any psychologist who hears a patient constantly blaming another is usually justified in the guess that the patient is repressing his own sense of guilt. When a person feels secure in the love of God, he or she is notably forgiving and tolerant of others. Our criticism of others, especially those who seem hindrances or rivals, is frequently a projection of our dissatisfaction with ourselves.
It is obvious that we must all live with ourselves. But what misery it is when we discover that there is no divorce from self and that we are consigned to live our lives with a person we despise.
What we need is a new self through Christ. We need new hearts freed from the misery of constant fault-finding, lives freed from the continual search for the approval of others which we hope will counteract our disapproval of self.
“Thou, O Christ, art all I want.”