Growing Together Through Our Faults

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Romans 3:23

Let’s be honest. We all have tendencies toward meanness, selfishness, envy, materialism, cruelty, dishonesty, lust, irresponsibility, and so on.

But here’s something you may not know: the more of these miserable parts we have – and the more we bring them into the open – the stronger our potential for goodness is.

Why?

Because our character is hammered out not in the absence of negative traits, but because of them.

Your struggle to overcome selfishness, for example, will make your generous spirit, once honed, far more prized, meaningful, and valuable than if it had come more easily or more naturally to you.

There is no virtue in not acting on a desire that doesn’t exist.

Yet so many, especially well-intentioned people, work diligently to block out or bury their baser parts from being known by other people.

They operate under the false assumption that if they ignore such bad tendencies, their dark side will disappear.

Of course that doesn’t work. Stronger people come to terms with their rotten parts, eventually learning why they have them, and most importantly, how to transform them as best they can.

As a very little dust will disorder a clock, and the least sand will obscure our sight, so the least grain of sin which is upon the heart will hinder its right motion toward God. –John Wesley

It all begins with an honest confession. “I’ve got to tell you, I really struggle with celebrating somebody else’s success,” we might say.

That’s all.

That is enough to test the waters with each other and seeing if we can risk going further.

The point is that we will never be known until we share the parts of our heart that hurt or the parts of our heart that hide. Either way it’s a risk.

Facing this danger is a prerequisite to being known. And ultimately it’s a requirement for being loved.