When Everything Goes Wrong

A Christian Man's Guide to Taking Ownership

No one wants to take responsibility lately. Everyone is playing the blame game or making excuses for why it’s not their fault. But to be a biblical man, we must own up to our mistakes and take responsibility without excuses.

This is something God allowed me to experience firsthand this week. At my day job I wrote some code and then we found out that we were getting “scraped” at the same time every day. It was costing us a lot of storage space. So, I was tasked with mitigating this “bad actor” with more code.

So I did. But…

I made a mistake. Part of my code was in the wrong spot and in my rushed effort to get this new code into use by our apps and website I did not see it. I even forgot to check the apps after I added the new code to make sure they did not break. All my mind was thinking about was our storage space. Were we going to go over? Will all the alarms sound once the “bad actor” started scraping our data again?

For what it’s worth, the storage updates worked beautifully. No outages, no alarms, and everything hanging at a nice percentage of usage. But the apps, those apps I forgot to check were picking up on the fake data I was sending the “bad actor”. So naturally, users of the app started to complain, then the president of the company noticed, then the vice presidents who run my department triggered what is called a “sev 1”. The scale is from 1 to 5 and 1 is the worst.

Fortunately my boss was able to roll back the code (I was giving my kids a bath when all this was happening) and the apps started working as usual. I had known none of this even happened until I sat on the couch to open up my read-it-later app to catch up on some articles I saved. That’s when I saw the text from my boss.

“Your code caused a sev 1. We’ll go over the details in the morning.”

My boss never sends text messages. Everything happens in our company chat app. This was serious and from that point on I could think of nothing else. I spent the rest of my night looking at my code trying to see what was wrong and thinking about what I’ll have to deal with in the morning. I knew that these things happen and that almost every software engineer at a high level has caused an incident at this level. But my anxiety was through the roof even after I woke up.

Then my work day started. My boss was already online even though his work day starts an hour after mine due to time zones. He sent me a message with a link to a video chat so I took a deep breath and dove in.

“This is a serious mess up,” he told me.

“I know,” I said.

I was determined to take responsibility and not make excuses. I knew that’s what a biblical man does. So I dug in and started down the process of documenting everything and fixing the code. Spending hours reading chats, logs, and incident report examples. I did my best to take as much of this off my boss’s plate as possible by filling out everything so verbose that he’d want to take stuff out.

By the end of the day I could tell he was back to his calm, normal self. I had the document 80% completed and my code was fixed. Taking responsibility takes guts but it’s worth it at the end. Not only are you following God’s design for you but you’ll gain respect from those around you.

Three Things To Do When You Make a Mistake

Fix It:

When you make a mistake, your first priority should be stopping the damage and making it right. In my case, this meant immediately diving into the code to find and fix the error, but it applies to any situation. Whether it’s a work mistake, relationship problem, or personal failure, take swift action to correct course.

Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. - Proverbs 28:13

Don’t wait for someone else to clean up your mess. Jump in and start working on solutions before you’re asked. This shows leadership and maturity, qualities that God calls us to develop as men.

Admit It:

When you’ve messed up, resist the urge to soften the blow or make excuses. A godly man speaks truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. After David’s night with Bathsheba, he didn’t try to rationalize his sin when Nathan confronted him—he admitted it (2 Samuel 12:13).

In my situation, I could have blamed the tight deadline or argued that the storage issue was more critical. Instead, I acknowledged the mistake directly to my boss. Clear admission of fault isn’t weakness, it’s strength. It shows you understand the weight of your actions and respect those affected enough to be honest with them.

Own It:

Taking ownership goes beyond admitting the mistake - it means carrying the burden of fixing it and preventing it from happening again. This is where many men fall short today. They’ll admit fault but expect others to handle the consequences.

For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. For each will have to bear his own load. - Galatians 6:3-5

I spent hours documenting the incident, reviewing logs, and improving our testing procedures. This wasn’t just about fixing the immediate problem - it was about showing my team I took full responsibility for my actions.

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