A Word on Fault-Finding and Complaining

Sometimes reading from the masters is like taking medicine. Not the new fruit-flavored medicine that would taste great as an ice cream topping, but the old chalky stuff. The stuff you know is working because... it feels like it is. And why else would it taste like the Roman Catholic Church mixed with the hospital if it wasn't correcting you.

Since I had to take my medicine from CS Lewis and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I will happily share it with you as well.PS: These meds should be taken with humility and action.

C.S. Lewis:

Abstain from all thinking about other people's faults, unless your duties as a teacher or parent make it necessary to think about them. Whenever the thoughts come unnecessarily into one's mind, why not simply shove them away? And think of one's own faults instead? For there, with God's help, one can do something. Of all the awkward people in your house or job there is only one whom you can improve very much. That is the practical end at which to begin. - from God in the Dock

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (this one hangs in my office... it's why I'm rarely ever there):

A pastor should not complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men. - from Life Together