My best friend, AKA my fiancee Steve, gave me this shirt shortly after we began our relationship. It took very little time for someone as perceptive as he is to discover how I think and to nudge me into being careful of it. And he got it. I love being right.
Now, there are reasons for this - old tapes of a life filled with congratulations of intelligence and, along with them, oneupsmanship from people driven to prove they were smarter than I was, but nevertheless, it was a worldview that poisoned my understanding of the world. It did. It led me to think being smart was enough and it's not. Not by a long shot. It made me stuck up, condescending, and devoid of empathy. And I missed some of the best parts of life.
Crosby, Stills, and Nash got it earlier than I did, but our shared understanding of attitude errors is neither new nor old. It's constant. Everybody does it at one time or another. And we're still doing it. It's pretty insidious, being right, and especially so when we apply it to our life in and attitude toward God.
Take the introduction to the sermon on the mount, for instance. Those Beatitudes we love so much, but really don't want to think about too deeply. The blessings that come with being poor in spirit, and in meekness, mercy and peacemaking and the rest. Do you know what you have to give up to do any of these things? The deceptive pleasure of being right.
Yup. Poverty of spirit is exactly the opposite of self congratulations and condescension. Meekness allows for strength, but strength under control, not strength unleashed and displayed. Mercy demands relinquishing that which we think we have a intrinsic right to. Peacemaking allows for other people's ideas to come before, or at least in conjunction with, our own. The result of all of these positions is community, not individualism. Not the relentless advancing of our own agenda or opinion. We have to relinquish the satisfaction of being right. Not give up our search for truth or drive for innovation, but make them obedient to God.
One of my college friends says that the moment one conversant thinks they are incontrovertibly right, the conversation is over. This has the ring of truth about it. And the damage done is even greater if one of the conversants is God.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness (not rightness) for they will be filled. - Matt 5:6 (Emphasis mine)
