When I was in college, it felt as though some of my relationships could be improved. Also, conversations with close family members often didn’t feel as happy or productive as they could be. Thinking it would help, I tried to defend myself by explaining to them how I felt about some personal struggles I faced. In retrospect, I can see that this came across as blaming others. I wasn’t owning up to issues that I could have been praying about but was actually perpetuating the disturbance I felt and negatively affecting those around me. But at the time, I was unaware of this and wondered why I kept hitting a wall in my communications with family and friends. 

One day while I was reading Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, the term self-justification hit me like a ton of bricks. The passage implied that this was a sin—an action or thought that would appear to pull us away from God.

I was shocked. Why is self-justification wrong? Don’t we need to defend or explain ourselves from time to time?