“Why is it so easy to see others’ sins and so difficult to see our own?” This is the rhetorical question with which Gayle ended her comment to my post titled ”Grudges”. At least I thought it was rhetorical until an answer kept flitting through my mind.

The answer is that children can be taught to focus on the sins of others by family members who discount how easily and deeply children absorb the spoken word. They can be voracious listeners with Velcro minds.

In my home, my parents usually talked to each other rather than to me. They lived by the old adage, “Children are to be seen and not heard.” As I look back, I don’t think that my parents saw me and they did not think that I heard them. Their conversations usually contained detailed descriptions of the faults of co-workers, relatives, neighbors and anyone and everyone who crossed their paths. Despite this, my parents were well liked. No one would ever guess what was said behind closed doors.

As I grew older I picked up on this habit. I inwardly critiqued everyone I met. No one went away without major flaws. The one exception was my future in-laws.

I first met them on an evening that Len and I had planned to go out but had not decided what to do. He suggested that we drop-in on his parents. His father came out of the T.V. room and his mother walked from the kitchen to greet us, towel in hand and hair in large rollers covered by a scarf. They appeared happy to see us and suggested that we play Scrabble. I sat at the table thinking, “No one can be this nice.” Len’s parents came pretty close to being perfect. They were good models for me.

Six years into my marriage to Len I became a Christian. One of the first things that God began to show me was my critical nature towards others. The faults that I searched for in others were now the sins that I saw in them. When I read Philippians 4:8 in the Bible, I knew that I had to change my mindset. In order to please God, my thoughts of others were to be on what was true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, of excellence and praise worthy. A tall order, especially for someone who spent her life tearing down people. Nevertheless, I worked with God on changing; and I did, only occasionally slipping into the sin of mentally criticizing others.

Another tool that I used for combating this sinful habit is called “empathetic repentance”. When focusing on a sin of another, ask God to show you when you have done similar or the same thing. Wait a few days. He will be faithful. Then confess and pray for yourself and the other to change

Having had this habit has made me sensitive to it being taught unintentionally to children. When a woman (I’ve never seen a man do this) is talking to me and the conversation turns to criticizing another person, even though a child is standing right there, I have learned to look at the child and ask to be introduced to him/her or, if I know the child, I ask a question relating to his/her life. The woman gets the message without my having to shout, “STOP, YOUR CHILD IS LISTENING!”

While our children were still in elementary school, a nationally known Christian, child psychologist held a meeting in our area. As we entered the auditorium we were asked to submit a piece of paper on which was to be written a behavior that we would like to change in one of our children. We were told that at the end of the scheduled teaching, the speaker would address as many problems as time would permit. I think that each desperate parent was hoping that their slip would be drawn.

Finally the slips were put in front of the speaker; but instead of drawing one at a time, he said, “Recall what you wrote down.” He paused for a few seconds and then said, ”It will be something that you do, only magnified in your child.” There was a massive groan from the audience. Just as others did, Len and I recognized that we had unintentionally taught our children our own negative behaviors and their performance of them reached new heights that we had never achieved.

If you are reading this and realize that you have passed a negative behavior onto a child, don’t despair. Confess it and, with God, change it in your life. Ultimately, as a child matures, it is no longer your responsibility to correct the behavior. It is his /her’s.