My Own Worst Critic

In September 2007, I took a new job as a web programmer. It was an exciting position, one full of opportunities to grow as a computer professional. It also came with a good increase in salary. I felt as though God had opened this door to me, and that he was molding my future. Three and a half months went by, and I felt as though things were going well. The people were all very nice, and I was learning new things and taking on more responsibilities. Yet it was not to be, for on the day after Christmas (four years ago exactly from the day of this entry, oddly enough), my employment there was terminated, effective immediately. I was given severence pay for the rest of the year (less than a week), told that I wasn't the right fit for the position, and sent on my way. I packed up my desk and went out to my car, and then did something I had not done for a good five years: I cried. It was not due to a fear of our financial situation. It was not due to a fear of a long, fruitless job search. No, it was due to something else entirely, something incalculable. It was a sense of failure. I had somehow not lived up to the company's expectations. God had granted me an opportunity, and I had blown it.

I am my own worst critic. I hate it when I fail or make mistakes. It's usually not about what I lost by failing (like the job), but it's the fact that I failed. The truth is the same whether an occupation, a task, a game, or anything else in life. I hold myself up to a high standard, and when I fail that standard, I hate myself for it.

The same is true concerning sin, for sin is simply missing the mark. It is falling short of the standard that God placed on our lives. It is failing Him. Sin is not always out of an evil heart, but out of a weak one. We try to be perfect, and yet we are merely human, and perfection is unobtainable. Sin is before us, and we can live our lives in such a way as to avoid it on many occasions, but not on every occasion. Sometimes, we trip and fall, for we lack the strength to endure at every moment.

I have many failures in my past, many times where I gave into sin, though I should have known better. Times when sin was before me, and I knew the wiser path, yet I chose to follow the foolish route. I looked into the eyes of sin, knowing the truth of it. I took the apple from the tree, knowing it to be forbidden, yet I sunk my teeth into it anyway. My eyes saw things it should not see, and I knew I could turn away, yet I chose to look on. I am a fool, and nothing more, and that will not change until the day I die.

This is a truth of the human existence. Yet I must remind myself of another, greater truth: God is not a critic. God will not condemn you for your failures, if you accept His love and His sacrifice. The love of God is eternal and knows not sin, for your sin is gone, washed away by the blood of Christ on the cross. God sees you for what you are: his child, his love, his beautiful creation. Your failures are gone. You may fail this day and the next, and every day onward, yet these things are not what God sees in you. You are loved, and no amount of failures can stop the unconditional, incomprehensible love of an unfathomable God. Do not hold on to your shortcomings, for God has already forgotten them, and when eternity comes, the mountains of failures will be lost, and Heaven will welcome you then as God already sees you now: a perfect, faultless, beautiful child of God.