Some people feel like it’s their call in life to point out what is wrong in others. Modern-day scribes and Pharisees, we avoid them at all costs.

At times I can be one of them, if only on the inside.

Faultfinding is a ​“skill” I honed over the years. My judgment of others isn’t always verbalized, but boy do the thoughts get loud. 

Lately, I’m asking the Holy Spirit where this critical bent began and why it continues. My sense is that it’s a survival technique little-boy-me developed as a preemptive defense mechanism against the beast called Rejection. Whatever the cause, God is at work in me, offering awareness, healing, and training. And in good moments (far fewer than I desire) — when my body, heart, and mind are secure in the knowledge of God’s care — I don’t strongly feel the need to be right or correct everyone, mentally or verbally. 

But what about the times when someone does need to be corrected? Scripture is clear that there’s a time to ​“turn a sinner from the error of his way” (James 5:20). The key then is the spirit in which the correction is done. Do we have another’s best in mind?

In a remarkable talk on holiness featured on the podcast this week, Dallas Willard points out: ​“The problem is that if you [correct] in the wrong way you don’t give life to people, you kill them, because you don’t come to the heart level where there is hope of contacting God and getting a new life going.”

Are you familiar with François Fénelon? Now here is someone who met people at the heart level. His life and writings reveal a man whose righteousness exceeded that of the scribes and Pharisees. He offered advice and correction not because he needed to be right but because he loved those to whom he wrote. May it be so with us.