The Need to Be Right (or for Others to Be Wrong)

 Can we talk?

Is it just me, or does it seem that, in general, Christianity has evolved into a matter of who’s right and who’s wrong? Even among the theological elitists, there is almost a smugness in finding something "wrong" in someone else's witness. 

Maybe it’s always been that way. The New Testament Gospels, written in the last half of the first century partly responded to heresy. The epistles, written a generation or so earlier, even though they were primarily personal letters addressing practical questions, also addressed foundations of doctrine and confronted “false teachings.”

Peter and Paul, the primary influencers of the first generation of the church—Peter in Jerusalem among Jewish converts and Paul throughout Turkey, Greece and into Rome, working among Greco/Roman converts—carried on a bitter disagreement until it was resolved at the Jerusalem Council (cf. Acts 15). What we learn through their dispute and its resolution is that Christianity is adaptable; it touches people where they are with no prerequisite hoops to jump through in preparation to receive our “right” doctrine.

The infamous Inquisitions and Crusades of the Middle Ages, and even the Protestant Reformation itself, all were intended to punish heresy and infidelity and to extend “correct” doctrine.

So, maybe the greatest heritage of Christianity from the beginning is conflict over who gets it right and who gets it wrong.

More primal is the question of “ultimate reality” and my/our relationship with it: Who gets in and who gets thrown out. Calvinism, in particular, focused more on what is considered “wrong” than on what is considered “right.” The emphasis was on who gets in and who doesn’t, and Calvin made it pretty darn difficult to “get it.”

Bottom line, it all goes back to the Garden and the “fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Why would “the man” (adam in Hebrew) want to “know” good and evil? He was in paradise with everything provided, including a mutually gratifying mate.

But there was the tempter: “You’ll be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Hmmmm. "If I 'know,' I’ll be in control (like God). I can do good and avoid evil and thus, by my own initiative, can control my own destiny." But what happened instead was the introduction of doubt: “What if I get it wrong?”

From that moment (one understanding of original sin?), the history of humanity has been a desperate search for assurance that I’m getting it right. Faith says, “Just trust God’s word that you are loved and accepted.” But the opposite of Faith is not doubt. It’s knowledge. And it is knowledge that produces doubt, because with knowing comes unknowing--an awareness of the limits of our knowledge; thus, “What if I get it wrong?”

So, my hypothesis is that the right/wrong dichotomy that drives the divisiveness in humanity (including the church) is a manifestation of original sin: the need to know and the rejection of trust.

And one human myth says the way to be assured that “I’m right” is to label those who disagree with me as “wrong.”

What we learn through Luke 9:49-50[1], Mark 9:38-40[2], and Philippians 1:15-18[3] is that even those who teach a different doctrine are affirmed in their witness by both Jesus and Paul[4]; therefore, can be affirmed by us.

What if we simply live as if we truly believe what we say we believe, that “God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.” (John 3:17)? Did God fail in God’s purpose? Do we really believe that “through him” (Jesus) we are made at one (atoned) with God and with each other; indeed, with ourselves?

Was God only partially successful in God’s intention that “the world through him might be saved?” Could God not save some because God had set up rules that have to be followed—hoops through which we have to jump—as prerequisites to realizing success? Wouldn’t that put the burden on us, rather than on the grace of God? Or is grace selective? Does grace exclude? Is grace insufficient to cover all our faults and errors?

How would we relate to another person who disagrees with us if we experienced no need to prove him/her wrong? How would we relate if we had no need to prove ourselves right? How would we relate if we trusted that our relationship with God and our eternal destinies (and the other person’s relationship with God and eternal destiny) are functions of God’s grace and not of our being right?

At another level, when you judge whether another person’s faith is wrong, does that exercise bring you closer to God? Do you experience God’s presence in the act of assigning right/wrong absolutes on others—or yourself?

I suspect you’re somewhat like me: you’re more likely to feel a divine presence when you live and relate as if you truly believe what you say you believe, and exercise that belief, not through comparing doctrine or theology, but through an imitation of Jesus, who did not come to condemn the world…

That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

 

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[1] “John answered, ‘Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he does not follow with us.’ ⁵⁰But Jesus said to him, ‘Do not stop him, for whoever is not against you is for you.’” (NRSVUE)

[2] “John said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.’ ³⁹But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him, for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. ⁴⁰Whoever is not against us is for us.’” (NRSVUE)

[3]  “Some proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry but others from goodwill. ¹⁶These proclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defense of the gospel; ¹⁷the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment. ¹⁸What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true, and in that I rejoice.” (NRSVUE)

[4] A particularly cogent observation, since one recent right/wrong discussion regards the influence of Paul on current understandings of Jesus. Some say current Christianity is more a reflection of Paul than of Jesus, and that Paul misleads the faith (read: “is wrong”). I’m only just discovering that argument, and am not yet informed enough to weigh in.