“Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective pray of a righteous man can accomplish much.” (James 5:16)
A critical component of leadership is the willingness to accept responsibility for and face up to our own actions, failures, and limitations. A certain “Peanuts” cartoon illustrates this point in which Lucy once demanded that Linus change TV channels, threatening him with her fist if he didn’t. “What makes you think you can walk right in here and take over?” asks Linus. “These five fingers,” says Lucy. “Individually they’re nothing but when I curl them together like this into a single unit, they form a weapon that is terrible to behold.” “Which channel do you want?” asks Linus. Turning away, he looks at his fingers and asks, “Why can’t you guys get organized like that?”
Pastor, writer, and theologian John Killinger tells about the manager of a little league baseball team who was thoroughly disgusted with the center fielder’s performance. He ordered him to the dugout and assumed the position himself. The first ball that came into center field took a bad hop and hit the manager in the mouth. The next one was a high fly ball, which he lost in the glare of the sun – until it bounced off his forehead. The third was a hard line drive that he charged with outstretched arms. Unfortunately, it flew between his hands and smacked his eye. Furious, he ran back to the dugout, grabbed the center fielder by the uniform, and shouted, “You idiot! You’ve got center field so messed up that even I can’t do a thing with it.”
It isn’t easy to admit our mistakes. But if we always blame others for our own failures we will certainly lose respect from subordinates and destroy our own credibility. Throughout his letter, James has been telling us adapt an attitude of humility. For God, James says, opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). Therefore, he writes, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up” (James 4:10). Humility demands that we admit our faults, limitations, and failures – to ourselves and others. As leaders, we must accept responsibility for both our actions and failures, and for those of our subordinates. If we’re wrong, let’s admit it. Here, in this chapter James commands us, “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another that you may be healed” (James 5:16). Let’s confess our faults to one another and seek God’s strength in prayer to overcome our weaknesses and to be forged us into a team.
REFLECTION
- Are you ever afraid to admit your faults to others, afraid that you might appear weak or incompetent? But won’t acknowledging you own failures be a sign of professionalism – that you have self-awareness and objectivity?
- College football coach, Paul “Bear” Bryant used to tell his players, “If anything goes bad, then I did it. If anything goes semi-good, then we did it. If anything goes real good, then you did it.” And he became the winningest college football coach in America. Shouldn’t we be willing to admit failure and weakness?
