I read a post from Kristi recently. In it she discussed the weekly email when one of her children gets a grade under 80. I emailed her and shared my “did you do your best” standard with my kids.
I’m sure many of us have this problem but I set an impossible standard for myself. Perfection. Last year, in November, I dated my journal wrong. One day I dated it 2013 instead of 2014. This was the first time all year that I had used the wrong date. For several hours I was quite upset with myself. I might have been able to forgive myself if it had been earlier in the year – like the first two or three days of January but no more. But November! This is unforgivable. What kind of idiot makes this mistake? Oh, right, this kind of idiot. The mind is organized and should not make simple mistakes like this.
This of course reminds me of when I was a youth. I wanted to begin saying “either” with the emphasis on the “i” portion. I declared to my family this intention and for about three weeks I never faltered. Then one night at the dinner table I slipped and my family razzed me intensely. At the time this felt worse than it most likely was. It caused a pathway in the brain that nearly eliminated the possibility of making that mistake again. Even now I will only slip up when joking with my daughter. The boys in the house say it with the “correct” emphasis so we pick on each other nearly every time we say the word.
And those stories only scratch the surface of my depravity.
I like to use (consciously and unconsciously) mental degrading in my life to force me to strive for better. WOW! What a sickness. You did not achieve perfection, Paul, so either give up or try harder. Now I do not want to say that striving is bad because we need to be working out our salvation with awe and reverence but God has given us the opportunity to be seen as perfect through His son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. All we have to do is believe in Him as LORD and Savior. We should probably use the term believeth since it is a continual act of believing. It is easy to talk about and understand mentally but less so in application in my life.
It is even worse for some, who from society’s stand point are “closer” to God.
There are a lot of good questions that arise from these ideas. I love the term interrogation point. This just means the mind is wondering and I can publish this post.