Being Wrong and Feeling Good About It

There’s no damage in being wrong,

It’s only our pride that’s harmed,

We have a beautiful song,

When with humility we’re armed.

***

Most issues of right and wrong are pretty insignificant. There’s generally a bigger picture and that relates to loving and respecting the people around us. Being wrong is so often an opportunity for love and respect.

So, this article is about pride.

We all suffer a little from overblown pride—that inability to acknowledge the truth, for it hurts too much in the instant of its release.

When we are trapped in our pride we find it almost impossible to love and respect people the way God would have us love and respect them.

Pride is that part of us that rallies in fear, because we feel we are giving up too much of ourselves. And whilst it is healthy to protect the dominion that God has entrusted us, it is just as healthy, if not more so, to discern where we have been negligent in the stewardship of our dominion; where we have reacted sharply in overprotection of that dominion of ours.

We all have a dominion—that place for which we are responsible and where we own things and where it is right to defend the things which God has placed into our hand. He has made us stewards and it’s right for us to discharge a certain ownership for these things.

But too often we get the balance wrong and when we are wrong on an issue, or even a little incorrect as we reflect, there is more to gain from being honest, even though the pain of admitting our error is quite raw.

Dealing with the rawness of pride, and telling on it, isn’t easy. We rally against the feeling of being hurt, not enjoying brutally honest feedback, for instance, and we justify our behaviour whilst condemning how others have behaved. Others always seem to be justifiably treated in a poor and graceless manner when we are in pride, whereas we will issue ourselves a special portion of leniency. Humility runs against that grain; it considers the other person better than us.

***

There is a tremendous freedom in knowing that being wrong won’t crush us, ever. In fact, when we can be openly and unashamedly wrong, we execute power of the living of our lives, we prove ‘real’, courageous, and even inspirational. And most of all when we are willingly wrong, we consider the other person better than ourselves—which is always their gift; a gift most wish to reciprocate.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.