“For we all stumble in many ways.”   James 3:2

My son came home recently after a long weekend of working at the Renaissance Faire where he serves as a Scottish bartender in one of the pubs. He shared the story of a young mother coming to the counter for some cold drinks. Her daughter, perhaps six years of age, looked up at my 6’ 2” son dressed in a kilt and puffy shirt, and said, “How long did it take you to grow your accent?”

Laughing as he looked down at the “wee lassie,” my son explained that he didn’t grow the accent, he was born with it. In truth, that was a wee bit of a mistake.  Accents, like language, are learned, whether as a native tongue or for an actor’s role.

What amazed me was that this insightful little girl had already discovered that to learn is to grow – and there may be no better learning tools on the road to wisdom and growth than mistakes.

Sadly, many of us are unable to acknowledge the inherent learning potential of error, while others, gripped by embarrassment or arrogance, fail to admit their mistakes and lose out on the opportunity for growth.

 It’s easy to understand why. We live in a culture that pounces on mistakes, making them the fodder of reality T.V., the conversations of talk radio and the chatter of our friends or co-workers. We tend to see our mistakes as signs that we are failures, often giving ourselves no room to be human.

Mistakes come in all sizes and shapes and motivation – honest mistakes, stupid mistakes, mistakes made through carelessness, indifference, ignorance or simply the creative need to try out something new or different. Imagine the world of art or science if there were never any mistakes. It was Thomas Edison who said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

How uninspiring and unfulfilling life would be if we always did our very best the first time, if there were never any room for improvement.

Looking back on the many mistakes of my lifetime, I was encouraged when I recently read a quote from Michael Jordan who is credited with saying, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost more than 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Imagine what an interview with the Apostle Peter would reveal. What would he say now about the mistakes he made while Jesus was with him in the world? Had he ever thought that Jesus could have chosen one of the other Apostles to feed his sheep, someone who had done things better, made fewer errors in judgment, someone who did not have the audacity to chastise the Lord or the cowardliness to deny him? What lessons had he learned from mistakes that must have pained his heart for the rest of his life?

Peter Drucker, one of the most influential thinkers on the subject of management practice in the 20th century, seems to have captured Jesus’ view on management preferences. In his 1954 landmark book, “The Practice of Management,” Drucker wrote: “Nobody learns except by making mistakes … The better a man is, the more mistakes he will make – for the more new things he will try. I would never promote a man into a top-level job who has not made mistakes, and big ones at that. Otherwise, he is sure to be mediocre. Worse still, not having made mistakes he will not have learned how to spot them early and how to correct them.”

As for Peter, I think he would acknowledge the sources of strength that comes from faith in Jesus is the perfect love that casts out fear. This is the power that emboldens us and enables us to live our lives without the fear of making a mistake.

And what better model is there for us than the brave, new Peter who, mistakes and all, stepped out of his comfort zone without fear and brought Christ to the world.

Mary Morrell serves as the managing editor of The Monitor.