Missteps happen so easily. While at work Madeline received word that her unsaved mother had been taken to the hospital with chest pains. Quickly Madeline e-mailed her pastor and her deacon to inform them, as she had been praying that her mother would respond to the gospel. As Madeline and her husband, Lou, waited at the hospital, they kept watching the door for their pastor or deacon to enter. The hours ticked by, but no visitors came. When the door finally opened, the doctor entered with a somber look on his face. Lou and Madeline knew that their mother had died. The news hit them hard. After signing the necessary paperwork, they headed home. By that time their grief had turned to anger. How could our pastor and deacon have been so heartless? Where were they? They always told us to call and they would come. Where were they when we needed them the most?

Later that night Madeline learned from a friend that the pastor and deacon had been at a local café drinking coffee that afternoon. Madeline phoned the pastor’s wife and unloaded her anger.

What Madeline and Lou didn’t realize was that earlier that day the pastor and deacon had installed a new spam blocker on the church’s computer. Unfortunately, the new spam blocker had identified Madeline’s e-mail with her work logo as junk mail, causing the urgent message to go into the junk folder. As result of the error, matters went from bad to worse with relationships in the church.

Where would you say the blame should lie? In hindsight, all parties may have been at fault to some extent. Too frequently, mishaps such as these disrupt unity among the brethren and divide churches. Often these problems require complicated processes to untangle the series of missteps. At the risk of oversimplifying situations of this type, my observation is that individuals often overlook using a simple peacemaking practice.

Some time ago I encountered a quote from Sydney J. Harris, a newspaper journalist, born in London, England, who lived and worked for much of his life in Chicago. I do not know anything of Mr. Harris’s relationship with the Lord. He did manage to make a rather profound comment that caught my eye. He wrote, “We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice–that is, until we have stopped saying, ‘It got lost,’ and say, ‘I lost it.’ ”

Too many times I have been guilty of attempting to transfer responsibility for my own shortcomings onto someone else–acting like a child instead of an adult. Why do I have such a hard time admitting my faults and acknowledging my mistakes?

Since the very first sin, mankind has been trying to shift the blame to someone else. We prefer to cover up our failures. We concoct elaborate explanations to conceal our flaws. Whether at home with our spouse or children, at the store with a merchant, on the job with a colleague, or even at church with a brother or sister in the Lord, we have a tendency to point the finger of blame at the other person. We start huffing and puffing, raising our voices, getting red in the face, and making rash statements and threats, all of which serve only to escalate situations.

How often have you heard someone simply say, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. I should not have said what I said or done what I did”? More importantly, how often have we been willing to make those self-deprecating statements? Too often our pride and stubbornness keep us from acknowledging our faults.

I find it intriguing that Paul used the language of maturing from childhood to adulthood when dealing with the problems of a badly divided church. “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things” (1 Corinthians 13:11). Maybe it is time we quit saying what a child would say, “It got lost” and start admitting what an adult would say, “I lost it.”

John Greening is national representative of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches