You know that feeling you get, when you are confronted because you did something wrong? It’s the “fml” feeling (I just learned what that means: it describes the feeling of intervention/attention/embarrassment perfectly when our shortcomings are directly confronted). I think the worst type of confrontation is that which you have with somebody you deem as being similar to yourself; that is, the person giving you a hard time and bringing up something you don’t want to face is no different than you are, ethically and professional and personally. At the very least, you want somebody better than yourself to beat you up verbally or physically about a crime you’ve committed.
Let a righteous man strike meit is a kindness; let him rebuke meit is oil for my head; let my head not refuse it. Yet my prayer is continually against their evil deeds. – Psalm 141:5The writer of this Psalm was no different. He was confronted all the time, about his mistakes and things that he could do better. He hated it when people who were worse than he was, would come and give him advice. He hated it even more when the very same people whom he “played” and got involved with, came back and lectured him. He says, rather, “I want somebody I respect to confront me. I want somebody better than me, to correct my mistakes.” He wanted somebody he could lean on and learn from. Somebody to make him better. The greatest problem in our society and in our culture, is that we turn away from those on whom we can lean. We avoid people who are better than us. We don’t want to become better, we just want to be. So we get wrapped up with people who are just as messed-up as we are and we all go nowhere together. When we have a “righteous,” virtuous and respected individual discipline us, he or she does so out of kindness: the intention is good. Likewise, we want somebody that we respect to tell us off when we are wrong, because we expect that this person does so to make us more whole. The question remains: can we accept the rebuke of somebody who is better than us in either virtue or standing? The second question is, whether or not we are willing to see past their shortcomings and pray for their mistakes. We all need righteous confrontations to make us godlier, but we have to be willing to receive it. The Holy Spirit, in His righteousness, strikes our consciences and we are compelled to receive it. We change our behaviors and act differently because of it. However, we need people in our lives to strike our egos and tell us that we are wrong to make us better; because, without that, we are defenseless and will be trapped by our own missteps. Find somebody to righteously confront you today.
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