Mistakes were made (but not by me) is a delightfully devastating book chronicling the human tendency to avoid responsibility, to self-justify, to make ourselves look good.
Seen in one way, it lays bare our compulsion to try to control our own sense of goodness.
Holiness, by contrast, consists in coming to realize that:
(1) we are, truly, not any better than anyone else and are quite capable of petty and destructive behavior.
(2) we are, in fact, very, very good… much more so than we could ever manufacture by ourselves, and that unique goodness is a wildly extravagant gift.
Seeing this frees us to avoid the exhausting dead end of a life lived out of the “mistakes were made but not by me” mantra.
So freed, we are able to see that (and talk about how) we participate in a system that is not functioning as well as it could. And then we can ask: “How can I help?” “How can I show up in generosity, bravery, and love to participate (better) in this system?”
The answer to these questions may likely consist in doing less things, but seeing more deeply.
Paul's Blog 