Pointing the Index Finger

Raising your index finger when a teacher asks a question is a good sign, a smart child. But pointing your index finger at someone else when a problem comes up can be an unseemly and irresponsible attitude.

Pointing the index finger can be good or bad, depending on where it is directed and what it means. Did you know that a wrongly pointed finger can kill another person’s character and future, and ours too?

As my wife and I have counseled married couples, we have found that someone who always points the finger while blaming their spouse will never be able to grow in their marriage. Their relationship will never reach what was its original purpose when they got married. The same is true of a person who never feels at fault or always blames others. A person like that will never be able to break out of their weakness.

Oh, wait, a person like that does not even realize that they have weaknesses.

By pointing at others, no matter how good our argument sounds, it means we have already handed over control of our lives to that person. Remote that moves us is no longer in our hands; instead, it is other people who have the power to determine what we will become. And if this happens, our actions will be caused by external things that come from other people’s responses and actions toward us. We will be completely irresponsible. Try to reflect in your heart, would we really allow those people to stir up our lives until they lose all shape? Would we really stay relaxed if other people could press the remote of our lives however they please?

Come, my friend, take back the remote over our lives. Two thousand years ago, Simon Peter wrote,

"Whoever wants to love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech. He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it." 1 Peter 3:10-11

In life we must be proactive, not passive, much less merely reactive. Taking responsibility can bring pain, that is true. But would we rather have the pain of changing or the pain of never changing? Would we not rather endure pain for a year or two in the process of being formed than suffer for decades because we never grow?

The moments I always look forward to in every counseling session are the moment of truth when someone says, “Now it really clicks for me. I’ve heard it many times before, but only now can I feel one hundred percent sure that I am the one who needs to change, not my wife, not anyone else.” A person with a statement like that is ready for a breakthrough in life. That person will see good days in life. That person will see that his wife or her husband is a good and wise person. He or she will have many plans for personal growth, become less inclined to correct others, and focus more on evaluating himself or herself.

A person with a statement like that is ready for a breakthrough in life. That person will see good days in life.

Starting today, examine to whom we have entrusted the remote of our lives all this time. They are the people we often blame, the ones we call ‘because of’, because of them we have become like this. They are the people who often trigger our weaknesses. Take the remote of our lives out of their hands or out of their words, out of their glances or the sneers of their mouths.

Stop pointing at them and focus on yourself. And starting today, say, “God has given me responsibility for my life! I am the one responsible now!”

Taken from an article on Pastor Togar Sianturi’s blog