What's Wrong With Me?

Yesterday my wife’s Facebooks status was quite funny. It read: Am I just retarded and no one is telling me?

Of course being retarded isn’t funny, but the idea that there could me something wrong with us, and everyone is avoiding telling us, is kind of humorous.

Maybe what she was really asking was this: Is there something wrong with me and no one is telling me?

If we were facing a physical illness, we would want straightforward answers from a professional. We would want a doctor to diagnose a medical condition, early on, before the negative effects worsened.

Beyond medical advice, sometimes we are reluctant to take advice, and, in a politically correct world, we are hesitant to give it.

When did we grow out of the need for correction in our lives? As a child, our parents were very quick to give us “constructive criticism”. Our mothers often told us to “stop chewing with our mouths open”, or “take a bath because your hair stinks”, or even” throw away that awful shirt”. Our teachers also were quick to point out the mistakes we made on every assignment we turned in. Our coaches or directors sometimes yelled at us when we were doing something wrong.

Now that we are adults we take it personally when someone points out a mistake. We “get defensive” when someone attempts to correct us. Nowadays even judges, in courtrooms, have a difficult time getting the corrective message across to the individual, and eventually send many people, unwilling to change, to a “correction facility”.

Recently I finished participating in a community theater production of The Music Man. It was my first community theater experience and one thing that I found very interesting was the directors “notes” at the end of every rehearsal. At first I took the directors notes very personal. I was “easily offended” by the notion that they were right and I was wrong. But over time I implemented their constructive criticism and changed what I was doing on stage. And, in the end, it was an improvement.

We all need to change something. We just can’t always expect someone else to point it out.

It’s hard to admit when we are wrong, hard to admit we are sinning, and hard to admit we need to change. The mote and beam parable begins to seem more applicable when we use modern day terms.

God loves us unconditionally and He is all knowing. He would be a great source of insight into what we need to fix and change. The scriptures are powerful because they are filled with counsel, admonitions, and instruction. These “directors notes” are applicable to all of us and are less confrontational than talking to a spouse, bishop, or even a shrink.

Change one word in the following verse and you are on your way to figuring out how to fix what is wrong:

“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not to thine own understanding; in all they ways acknowledge Him, and He shall correct thy paths.”

Sometimes the Lord chastens us to get us to change. But He loves us and that is why He gives us these “notes”.