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After responding to a comment from my friend Charles on my previous blog post, I was reminded of a conversation I had that was about making wrong/bad decisions and failure. I figured I’d post some thoughts and see how everyone responds.

When it comes to making choices as a Christian, I am not one to really put a lot of merit into the choices made by others. It’s way too easy to be pious and superior and say that anything going against God’s standards/commandments is a sin and I as a right-standing Christian must rebuke (speak against or reprimand) them. The first error in this is that I am not right-standing and am in absolutely no position to judge anyone. Second, I believe that as humans we will be subject to making mistakes and should be allowed the opportunity to learn from them. As a child, hearing from a parent not to touch a hot stove sounds reasonable, however some inherent part of us will want to know what it is like to touch that hot stove. If the child goes against his/her better judgement and touches the hot stove and gets burned, now the sensation of pain will be a stronger deterrent to ever repeating that action than the spoken words of their parent.

Pastor Steven Furtick wrote in his blog:

“I don’t mind those I lead making mistakes. In fact, I prefer it. If they’re not making mistakes, they’re probably not playing to win.

I just want you to make new mistakes. Different mistakes than you made last time. Mistakes that reveal a new level of effort, or a new frontier of endeavor.”

I agree with that. Mistakes are inevitable. People should be encouraged to challenge themselves and be open to make mistakes. It’s through those mistakes that we can reflect and learn what not to do and seek ways to make better choices in the future. However, let me state clearly that I don’t condone people making decisions to experiment with illegal drugs or dangerous sex practices just for the sake of seeing whether they like the experience, and if not, chalking it up to a bad choice not to be repeated again.

I’ve had many successes in life and lots of days to enjoy the fruit of my labor, but in retrospect, I wouldn’t have been able to know even a small percentage of that unless I had failed miserably or learned the hard way during the journey of life. For those of you in my generation, I’m kinda of an example of one who learned from the streets and not through countless college degrees; a student of the school of hard knocks

As Christians, we live under grace, therefore we should offer grace to others, just as God offered it to us.

Hebrews 4:16- Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Are there mistakes in your past that keep repeating themselves? Mistakes that were never overcome with a positive experience? No matter how long ago it was, it’s never too late to turn it around! Don’t be hard on yourself or be quick to condemn others for making a wrong or bad choice. We all have done it, and we’ll all continue to do it.