Take The Hit

Take the hit.

Stevie Wonder produced a song he co-wrote over 45 years ago that depicts the breakdown of a relationship.

The song is an account from the perspective of the person who wrecked the relationship. The song goes on to express how a number of things could be blamed for the breakdown, but at the end of it all the blame can be put nowhere else other than the one looking back from the reflection in the mirror.

Take the hit.

There’s an episode in the Bible where a prophet goes and delivers what he’s told to deliver by God and even resists political persuasion to disobey what he’s been told. Yet when this prophet comes across an older prophet who makes up something about an angel telling him to tell this prophet to contradict what God told him, this prophet disobeys what God says on the word of an older prophet. And the prophet faces severe consequences for that.

Now I could state all kinds of things about how unfair it was that this old prophet was the one who fooled and tricked the prophet. I could say that there were understandable pressures on the prophet, etc. Yet at the end of the day, who had the responsibility to be obedient to the instruction from God? Who was the one that disobeyed a given instruction?

Take the hit.

The blame culture has been very helpful in getting people to avoid taking responsibility for what they can and should do. If it wasn’t for the way I was brought up, if it wasn’t for what happened to me when I left home, if it wasn’t for the way the supposed work colleagues behaved, etc. Compelling and persuasive emotive efforts to shift responsibility away. Yet the more that is done, the more the inevitable is postponed. And the further that inevitable is postponed the more time is wasted.

Yeah, it takes a degree of sobriety, humilty and self-awareness to do it. In some cases it even takes a dose of wisdom and maturity. Yet for the sake of progress and true development, it has to be done.

Take the hit.

(Photo by Thomas Willmott on Unsplash)

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

C. L. J. Dryden