Correction

He who heeds instruction is on the path to life, but he who rejects reproof goes astray.

Proverbs 10:17

One of the most valuable lessons I learned in my adolescence was to love correction. It used to be pretty hard on me, and I was often (shamefully) reduced to tears simply by the fact that my father pointed out something I was doing wrong, even if no punishment were given. More than that, I felt, as many surely do, that there was nothing more loathsome than receiving rebuke from someone who notoriously struggled with and succumbed to the same sin. Neither could I stand it when I went to a friend for sympathy, to vent, only to find them refusing to take my side and instead correcting me for my wrongs in the situation - however minimal I perceived those wrongs to be.

But I only harmed myself by scorning correction. A wise man listens to advice and rebuke no matter what its source. To emerge from my old habits, I started to tell myself, when corrected, that I could use the correction as another opportunity to improve, notwithstanding the hypocrisy or clumsiness of the corrector. What were their sins to me? Similarly, I began to see that if I went to someone to air my grievances and found myself instead upbraided for my own wrongdoing, it was more important that I learn to correct my own mistakes than that my confidante agree with me about someone else's sin. Without regard to their lack of sympathy or lack of tact, if they had something valuable to say, I should have been ready to hear. It takes humility to do this - a humility I was sorely lacking - but now it has become my reflex to accept correction, even to yearn for it. If anything, I accept it too readily (such that my friends feel free to blame me for everything that goes wrong in their lives, since I will gladly take it).

Now the lesson I have to learn is on the other side of things - knowing when to give correction. The Scripture indicates nowhere that we are to have the same eagerness to give reproof as we ought to have to receive it. My father has consistently identified my choleric tendency to, without warrant, "make a federal case about everything" (which perhaps explains why I've become a lawyer). His path has been much wiser: he will only issue correction after the putative correctee has had some time for the sin to sit on his conscience. Only if the correctee's conscience proves defective, or unable to overcome his pride, will my father ever say something admonitory. He has earned a lot of credibility capital by correcting sparingly, and I hope to uphold the same integrity in my own life.