Mea Culpa

Mea culpa is a Latin phrase that means "through my fault" and is an acknowledgement of having done wrong. ... The phrase comes from a prayer of confession of sinfulness.

I find myself weeping today. During prayer today our leader brought up Isaiah 58:8-10. Oh how heavy the hand of conviction can be when it is so well deserved. It is a lovely passage about how our light shall break through, God will be with us, His protection will follow us and He shall guide us… if…

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, 10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed…”

Four words hit me like a hammer blow. WITH THE POINTING FINGER. Oh God! How very easy it is to think we know the way things should go. Especially as women, (but men do it too) we are managers at heart and we have a felt need to say what we think and speak out the way things should really be going in any given situation. Notice I said felt need, not need. Need would be when you are in the company of the people making whatever decision you are reacting to. If you are in the very room as it is being decided and you have an opinion, then you need to speak up. Retrospective finger pointing is not a need it is a want and one we need to fight.

I am of course not talking about injustice. This is a different thing. I am talking about this:

“I really didn’t like that worship set today, what were they thinking?”

“I really don’t think the president should be handling (issue) in that way.”

“You would think (insert name here) would know better than to…”

“Why can’t the pastor preach on something different, I’m tired about hearing about…”

“I wish my neighbor would mow their lawn more often, it looks awful.”

“My company shouldn’t have furloughed those people, they should have…”

The Word makes it clear that we need to rid ourselves of this practice. Especially given that most of us are indulging in it behind closed doors and in the seeming anonymity of Facebook. Covid 19 has changed the landscape of our lives, but this does not give us license to point the finger at anyone, anywhere, at any time. It is not our job.

Since this started with my own conviction let me say it is my intended purpose to resign from the job as chief finger pointer. I hereby lay down my crown of blessed assurance that I know better.

God help me.