Christian Mistakes

Christians never make mistakes! Do they? Surely not.
Recently I've been thinking about mistakes that we make. I feel that a lot of Christians feel that they should never make mistakes. At least not big ones anyway. Especially when it comes to public life and mistakes made in front of colleagues/ friends/ people that we know outside of Church. In Church we there is an element of openness on a scale that can't really be found anywhere else, hence Christians can mostly be very comfortable about making mistakes in front of fellow brothers and sisters. We accept each other (most of the time!) warts and all. I feel this is because we have had to come before God searching ourselves and understanding the "warts and all" that we have.

Outside Church there is a different story. I grew up in an environment that could be at times, quite literally, unforgiving. I made mistakes and I made choices that were unacceptable to some people so the concept of apologising and forgiveness that I built up were completely wrong. Apologising led to grovelling which led to desperation in my apologies. And forgiveness was given as a way of making me stop grovelling. The first time I understood truly, in human terms, what forgiveness was, was when I was in Barbados with a friend and his family;

My friend, his brother and I had headed down to the beach whilst his parents stayed back at the villa. We had left our phones behind as we were only a fifteen minute walk from the beach. It got to about 5 o'clock and we decided to head back. My friends brother ran off ahead to try and jump us on the way back, but we forgot to take a turn. So we ended up walking an hour back to the airport (the only place we could get our bearings from) and walking an hour back along a motorway so we could find the villa. 45 minutes after sun down we made it back home to parents who were never so relieved to see us alive. The embassy was just being dialled!! I remember apologising straight away to which the mum said "it's fine as long as your safe!". We were fed and watered and sent off to bed. The next morning I approached my friends mum again to apologise. Half way through she stopped me and said "It's OK. You have already apologised."
Mind! Blown!

That was the first time I had truly encountered what apologising and forgiveness truly meant. In my faith and my relationship with God I had experienced forgiveness but I didn't know what it truly meant as my understanding of what forgiveness needed was skewed. I kept on approaching God over and over again over the same thing, begging for forgiveness, but now I knew that it was done, finished, dealt with. Jesus said "It is finished" and I knew that God forgave straight away, without grovelling  or begging, when I came to him saying sorry with a sincere heart. This has been a major part of my faith and my life for the past 3 years.

Recently, however, I have encountered another hurdle. Making mistakes in the "real world". I suddenly feel a pressure to constantly do everything perfectly because I'm a Christian. I feel that I can't make mistakes that upset people or that appear to be arrogant/ rude/ thoughtless.

Upon reflection I feel that it is not making mistakes that define us or show us for who we are, but our response to mistakes.  That is where the crunch point is. We are all human, but it is our response to our humanity, that shows us to be good or not.