TAKING CORRECTION--DON'T JUSTIFY YOURSELF!
Maria 24         DO 1930          11/84

         1. WHEN YOU GET CORRECTED OR CHASTENED FOR SOMETHING & your leader who is giving the chastening doesn't have all the facts exactly right, then you may be tempted to latch on to one of those facts & refuse to accept this chastening or remonstrance because he's wrong in his facts.

         2. WHEN YOU DO THIS IT'S OBVIOUS THAT YOU'RE JUST LATCHING ON TO THIS MINOR TECHNICAL POINT THAT IS INCORRECT IN ORDER TO JUSTIFY YOURSELF! If you say, "Well, those details are not true, so therefore I refuse to accept your conclusions", you are saying that because you don't want to accept the truth. There very few times that people who are getting corrected are really sincere in saying, "Your facts wrong." You almost always do it to justify yourself! People do this time after time if they don't want to accept the truth & they don't want to accept the exposure!

         3. THE LORD MAY SHOW THE LEADER GENERALLY WHAT'S WRONG, but often he doesn't always know all the little infinitesimal details of exactly everything that's transpired. Maybe he says you criticised Johnny when actually you criticised David, & you'll think, "Well I didn't criticise Johnny so you're wrong!" He's suggesting you have a critical spirit, but you refuse to receive it because he got his facts wrong. But what does that matter, you still were critical!

         4. PEOPLE OFTEN DO THIS WITH DAD WHEN HE CHASTENS THEM IN THE LETTERS. People have tried to really weasel out of a spanking by saying, "Well, that specific point wasn't true". For example, the Lord will show Dad that someone is having problems & is having a real bad effect on a certain person but they'll say, "Well I didn't have a bad effect on that person." When in fact, they had a bad effect on practically everybody else in the Home, although maybe not so much on that particular one. So they say, "I didn't have a bad effect on that person, so I'm not going to accept what Dad says about me because it's wrong & it's false & I didn't do such & such!" Of course, that's ridiculous because it doesn't matter who they are affecting adversely, it's the fact, that they are causing problems that's being corrected.

         5. WHEN LEADERS DEAL WITH YOU ABOUT SOMETHING, IF YOU REALLY HAVE THE RIGHT SPIRIT, YOU'RE GOING TO OVERLOOK THE FACT THAT MAYBE SOME OF THE LITTLE DETAILS ARE WRONG. Before a leader corrects you he'll probably try to gather a few examples of various things you've done wrong to use as evidence, because if he doesn't use any evidence on you, then you're probably not going to accept it. They're not even going to have courage enough to talk to you or even try to correct you if they just get this big revelation out of the clear blue or they only have this feeling that you have a critical spirit, unless they have some specific examples of how it's manifested.

         6. IF THE LORD DOES GIVE YOU IN A BIG REVELATION, "So-&-so has a critical spirit, go & talk to them about it," then you should of course have the faith to go ahead even without the evidence, but it makes it a lot harder for you to deal with that person unless you do have some evidence, some specifics & some details, as it helps to have some specific examples from which they can see that they have erred. Even if your evidence is a little vague sometimes & you don't know the exact details, if you just have a little something maybe to start with, it helps. It helps you to have the courage or confidence to even talk to somebody about it.

         7. IF THE MAIN POINT THAT THE LEADER IS TRYING TO BRING OUT IS RIGHT & IT'S NEEDED & IT'S TRUE & the spirit of it is right & the main principle & precept is right, then what does it matter if the facts are a little bit wrong? The important thing is that the conclusion is right! It doesn't matter so much what facts bring you to the conclusion. The important thing is to get the right conclusion!

         8. WE ALL KNOW THAT EVERY ONCE IN AWHILE DAD GETS HIS DATES OR FIGURES MIXED UP. In fact, he wrote a whole Letter on the subject called "Thank God for the Good." (ML#1492) These little mistakes or slips of the tongue really have nothing to do with it & you should never use them to overlook the main issue! You should never start criticising & being picky over some details so that you miss the whole point of what's being brought out & the whole conclusion! You'd better remember that Dad's conclusions are always right & miraculously so a lot of times! He often has to base his conclusions from splotchy, spotty evidence, & often he doesn't have a lot to go on, but it's enough because the Lord shows him the right conclusion, & the Lord's conclusions are always right! My goodness, how can we expect Dad to know the exact little details of everything?--But he comes to the right conclusion & that's the important thing!

         9. THERE HAVE BEEN TIMES DAD HAS KNOWN THAT SOMETHING WAS WRONG WITH SOMEONE, BUT THE THING THAT WAS ACTUALLY WRONG WITH THEM was different than he originally thought. He thought one thing was wrong with a person, yet even though the person may not have had that exact problem, the Lord used it to cause Dad to start delving into the situation, which later showed that maybe that particular thing wasn't so wrong with the person, but something even bigger was!

         10. ONE SPECIFIC EXAMPLE WHICH HAPPENED RECENTLY WAS WITH JOSIAH & JEWEL & HIS INDEX TEAM. Dad thought Josiah had utterly failed on the Index & that he hadn't done it the right way. Well, he hadn't done it exactly the right way, so that was true, but it wasn't totally his fault, others were to blame as well! Dad was quite upset with him & he got most of the blame, whereas perhaps others should have gotten more of it since they too were at fault. But as it turned out later, it was a good thing that Dad was upset with him because the Lord was trying to cut him off from being in a WS unit! Even though he wasn't totally to blame, the Lord caused Dad to be upset which resulted in his losing his WS job & which put him back into the mainstream of the Family & the Fellowship structure where he didn't have to be selah any more. Once he was fellowshipping with the local Homes his leadership found out that he had terrible problems with drunkenness, cruelty to children & many other serious problems! Dad had no idea that Josiah had these problems, but the Lord led him to be very upset with Josiah over something that maybe wasn't so much Josiah's fault, just so these other much worse sins would be exposed.

         11. THE LORD LOVES JOSIAH & WANTED TO HELP HIM OVERCOME HIS PROBLEMS, but since we didn't know them & didn't see them, He had to have us release him from his job so he'd have to work under closer supervision, people who could see & take care of the problems, & they did! TTL! Josiah & Jewel are doing much better now & are learning many needed lessons.

         12. SO WHEN YOU'RE GETTING IT FROM YOUR LEADERS, EVEN IF THEY'RE MAYBE A LITTLE WRONG IN THEIR ANALYSIS, you'd better not start criticising them because their facts aren't right or they're accusing you of something falsely, you'd better start thinking that maybe they should be accusing you of something even worse! Don't get so self-righteous & blame them for a few discrepancies in the facts, because they probably should be accusing you of something a lot worse that maybe they don't even know about! Perhaps if they're accusing you for something of which you aren't to blame, at least not this time, maybe you are to blame for it a lot of other times &, like Dad said the policeman told Mom when she insisted she didn't run the stop sign, "Well, this is for all the times you have run the stop signs but you didn't get caught!"

         13. IT'S REALLY BAD TO CRITICISE PEOPLE FOR NOT HAVING THEIR FACTS OR THEIR EVIDENCE OR THEIR SPECIFICS EXACTLY RIGHT because we need to realise that that's not the most important thing, & even if a few minor details are wrong, the main point or the conclusion usually is pretty right! How can you expect people to know all the little details & all the facts? Even if they do, how can you expect them to remember them? They're not so involved in your personal business that they know what hour you do this & what hour you do that & exactly who you talk to behind somebody's back! Maybe they accuse you, so-called falsely, of talking about someone when it was actually somebody else you talked about, but that shouldn't make any difference whatsoever! This is good advice for people who have to get bawled out, not to justify themselves & say, "Well this fact wasn't right so you must be wrong in your conclusion."

         14. SOME PEOPLE EVEN TRY TO WEASEL OUT OF IT BY SAYING THAT SOMEONE ELSE TOLD THEM TO DO IT, but whether somebody tells you to do wrong or not, if you do wrong, you're just as much to blame! You can't blame them for your wrongdoing even though they told you to do wrong, because you know better! It's like Adam & Eve, even though Eve was partly to blame, that didn't excuse Adam! You can't really blame other people for making you do wrong because you know better & it isn't their fault that you did wrong even if they might have encouraged you to do it! If you get caught, the Lord's probably trying to deal with you & not them!

         15. SOMETIMES WE GET BAWLED OUT FOR THINGS THAT AREN'T OUR FAULT, but look how many times we don't get bawled out for things that are our fault, & that we should get bawled out for.

         16. AS DAD HAS SAID, THE LORD DOES TRICK US INTO THINGS SOMETIMES. It's like when we thought we were going to go to Latin America, the Lord tricked us into thinking that's where we were going to go, & that it was His Will that we go there, & then at the last minute the Lord switched our plans! It seems that the Lord sometimes tricks us into thinking someone made a mistake when maybe they didn't because there is no other way to bring out their problem. Maybe He sort of tricks you into even accusing them a little bit falsely on a particular point where maybe they weren't so guilty in order to bring out the important point or the important principles in which they are guilty!

         17. A LOT OF TIMES PEOPLE DISPLAY UN-CHRIST-LIKE BEHAVIOUR & YOU WANT TO CORRECT THEM ABOUT IT, but perhaps you don't exactly know what is wrong with them, so in order to find out you may start talking to them & you start probing & maybe you even accuse them, even in a questioning way, of some kind of activity that perhaps they're not guilty of. You know something's wrong but you don't know exactly what it is & so you may sort of accuse them of something that they're not really guilty of in the course of your probing, to try to figure out what is wrong with them so you can help them. Whether they get helped, a lot of times, really depends on whether they're open & receptive & are willing to perhaps be unjustifiably accused a little bit on a few things in order to get to the place where you can see what the real problem is & then you can work on helping them overcome it.

         18. IF YOU FEEL THAT YOU'RE BEING UNJUSTLY ACCUSED, you may want to look a little deeper & see if the Lord is trying to get through to you on some other more serious point of which you are very guilty. Don't be too quick to judge your leader for accusing you falsely, you'd better work on the beam in your own eye & not be so concerned about the mote in your brother's eye. Amen? Don't worry about the details, just receive & accept the main principle regardless of the minor details. GBY! ILY!