Fault Finding Versus a Bulwark against Sin

I recently read a blog post about signs of pride. Most of them were useful, but one was said in a way that blots out a gigantic part of Christian love while highlighting another useful sign of pride. Well, this thing has been pervasive in many Christian groups, and I've never in my life seen the biblical method in action - it's blotted out in our practice. The sign of pride in view here is fault finding. A prideful heart indeed nitpicks others while ignoring sin in self. A biblical solution for that among Christians is to confess your own sin to the others. That will heal the nitpicking form of fault finding that Jesus touched on with the metaphor of the mote and beam. Telling sin to the other is, of course, a tender action of personal closeness. You can't do it if you suspect the other has the same sin, and you can't do it with the biblically unsaved. But oh how it helps! Yet this point about fault finding is very often used to blot out another gift of the Christian community, which is telling other people their sin. Are you reeling?

It's right. No, I didn't want this so bad as to make it up and try to force it into you to justify it or something. The Bible tells about it in the New Testament, after Christ's saving work started the Church. It's for us. If you see a Christian sibling in need, you should tell her what you see, because - HERE'S A MAJOR POINT - that other is a Christian who can take it! Just like you want to be free from all types of sin, then it's unloving for you to hold back in helping the other Christian. The World hates correction, but Christians who are thirsting after righteousness love it! Our flesh doesn't, but we serve Christ with our minds even while our bodies die because they're still overpowered by sin. Help your Christian sibling overpower their body with external help that's far better than counseling. Instead of being hateful in ways similar to what the beam-blinded Christian does all the time, practicing this is a part of the gentle love empowering caring Christians. There might be shouts, and dismay, mourning, crying, and all sorts of emotion, and even temporary misunderstanding in it's practice. But we can and do progress, and the misunderstanding doesn't always persist, like the understanding finally gained by a teenage daughter 20 years later. We've been trained by the World to think of overtly communicated negative emotion as a form of attack, but that lesson is Satanic, intended to subvert free expression of the soul, which is vital in seeing ourselves as we are so we can move forward to more of that right kind of strength we can and should be happy to use for great gain! Many Christians, though, think that telling another Christian that their sin is showing is a hateful practice, even though the Bible doesn't leave it open to any plausible interpretation, because God's Word goes so far as to clearly outline the steps to do it! So we know it's not hateful. It's loving. The Christian who doesn't want their own sin uncovered due to that inevitable pain that's experienced for awhile when it is uncovered, combined with the odd thought that love never causes pain to the loved one, creates a powerful motivation to skip this love, and those who do are also skipping vast reservoirs of help from the siblings, because if you don't think you should do it to them, then you don't think they should do it to you, and that's tragic!

Consider the prideful person in the congregation. Everyone can see it, except that pride's victim, himself. Why don't you help him avoid years of destruction from the pride, itself, as well as secondary effects from it's wicked weakening effect in the brother or sister you say you love? Hmm? Why don't you? Isn't it because you've been trained over and over again that doing this ignored biblical procedure is evil, falsely associated with the beam analogy? And you also don't tell the others your own sin in order that those who do know specific information about it and those who have the Holy Spirit's gift of helps can help you. Together, your flesh works with the fleshly teaching to rob you and yours in exquisitely sharp ways to the depths of your being, and you rely on that in the formation of your daily character!

Remember to tell the other your sin and get the beam out of your eye, first. Then remember to ignore the over-reacting lesson that we've all heard so much, and tell the other sibling their sin, too. Do it once alone, then if they don't stop, take one or two more Christians to witness the horror as you plead and explain, with prayer and in hope that they will see the light about that dark thing in their flesh which their mind is too weak to strongly enlighten alone. Finally, if they don't stop it or start it, depending on whether that sin is the committing or omitting type, then tell them openly in front of the whole congregation and absolutely shun them - kick them out - until they stop that sin. Don't talk to them about anything else, even if you see them in the street, because you'll be encouraging their attack on our God if you help them like siblings do. But remember to help them with the sin if they start to actually repent. There's an old trick of the flesh that pretends that for this very purpose of regaining congregational help, but it doesn't really repent. Don't fall for that. Shun them!

Pause here to consider how you interact with other Christians in general. Is it pleading, explaining, being short and direct, or how do you usually talk to all the other Christians in your congregations all the time? We should always live our lives with those siblings who are congregating with us through the normal living of our lives. Is that emphatic enough? Christianity is not a mantra! It's REAL, as in "Real Life", and our congregations are supposed to be opportunities to come together to plan how we will interact through the coming week. Get it? It's not just a show of reverence and a duty performed. That's vomitous! Live your life in your congregations of vetted biblical Christians (according to 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 and Romans 10:9-14a, to distinguish Church from World, regardless of antichrist trickery). How do you talk to people in the daily and weekly congregating groups of Christian siblings? Don't you believe they are your closest family, with your next closest being the vetted biblical Christians in the next congregation over and the ones you might happen to meet from a different country across the planet?

Dear siblings in our same Master Jesus, our shared Savior and God's Christ, do well. Don't be overtaken by sin, especially when you have Christians to help with loving communication in honest, everyday, real-life communion of souls, better than the relationships, such as they can be, that you have with any of your enemy Worldling co-workers or other acquaintances, regardless of the amount of communication you have with those, because the depth and width of communication you have with your siblings in Christ is outside the bounds of possibility with them. That's why you also shouldn't listen to the things the World tells itself all the time. Those surface-sweet sounding sayings of theirs often consist of some truth mixed with some lies, and they are poisonous thoughts that, according to the Scriptures, must be caught by our minds so we can force them to obey Master Jesus. We can and should speak to each other differently than we speak to the Worldlings, because we need each other, and because the World cannot use what corrects us like a back-brace, which, though painful, results in our terrific gladness!

Watch out for this kind of statement, dear siblings:

"The spiritually proud person shows it in his finding fault with other saints, that they are low in grace and how cold and dead they are, and are quick to discern and take notice of their deficiencies. The eminently humble Christian has so much to do at home and sees so much evil in his own that he is not apt to be very busy with other hearts." - Jonathan Edwards, "Undetected Spiritual Pride"