It is easy to find fault. You’ve been trained in it! The refrain echoes through your mind:
“Find the flaw! Look quickly, there has to be something wrong with this, and something wrong with that. There is something wrong with everything. I must reveal flaws. Flaws must be ousted. Life is never good enough, not for long anyway. I’d better be quick at labeling fault. I can always suggest a fault. I’m good at it. I’m getting to be a master of it.”
There’s nothing wrong with the concept of making something better. However, finding fault tends to begin with tearing down rather than building up. Now, pardon Me for finding a fault. As a matter of fact, when you specialize in finding fault, you set a hard row for yourself. Finding fault pinches your nose and squints your eyes.
The other side of improving others or their work is that you become accustomed to being dissatisfied. Finding the fatal flaw may grow to be a way of life. The flaw is the part of life you pounce on. You have already engaged in other versions of the same story. There are better stories you can tell. Tell them.
Perhaps when you stumble on a flaw, you get excited about how smart you are! What a discoverer you are! How dedicated to truth you are! Nothing passes you by.
Beloveds, the sort of truth pointed out in the world isn’t exactly a revelation. It has been going on for some time. It’s not a novelty. It’s old hat, pretty boring and ho-hum. Faults are dime a dozen, yet you point with your index finger to the faults you spot. You don’t point to every cloud in the sky with amazement and find fault with clouds for being clouds! Why then exalt so many other handy faults because they do not follow a perfect symmetry? I wonder if you really believe that faults are spectacular.
Develop a knack for not giving faults so much attention.
It could perhaps be said that the greatest fault of all is pointing out faults. There really are other things to notice and talk about and discover.
Most of the time, what is judgment anyway but pointing out faults?
Judgment smashes something. Judgment goes on a rampage. Better to smash out finding faults. It is a mystery to Me why it seems so pleasurable to My children to be so discerning of faults. I don’t understand what great talent fault-finding takes that it makes anyone feel triumphant.
A teacher may find every fault in a student’s writing again and again without recognizing the honest heart that the child expresses. The teacher sees faults and may not look to note the importance of what something means to the child’s heart. Are spelling and punctuation and grammar so vital that a teacher will stomp on a child’s heart? What the child writes expresses his Being, but the feckless teacher, forgetting that writing has a purpose beyond conformity, perhaps chose correctness over the child himself.
This is because something away from the heart has been touted as more important and essential. The heart has been deposed somewhere out of sight, as though the intellect is supposed to reign supreme and the heart is to be the orphan who isn’t supposed to shine but rather be suppressed and kept away from the impressive friends of the intellect, shunted in some little closet or hallway in the back.
This is mis-justice. The heart has been found wanting. The heart, the core of all life, has been put aside, allowed out only at certain times, as if the heart were not the legitimate heir to My throne.