I MAY BE WRONG, BUT …

I MAY BE WRONG, BUT …

                How important is “being right”?  Can one be wrong, but right?  And, can one be right, but wrong?!  Sounds confusing?

                In math class, I remember getting credit for work shown on a complicated problem, even though one mistake doomed the final answer.  And, I also remember getting dings for not showing obvious steps which were skipped, even though I had the right answer?!  (I loved math!  It seemed to be the language of God, to me, in some strange way.)

                Science was, seemingly, less precise.  Long held axioms and conclusions were rejected by modern minds.  It was “obvious” to these new thinkers that man had evolved to higher enlightenment. 

                Philosophy?!  “two blind men in a dark room looking for a black cat, that’s not there …”  (I do like to read that stuff, though!)  Or, is that theology that I like to read?!  Both.

                (Still there?)  When children came along in our marriage, competing ideas were offered, unsolicited, on any number of child-rearing issues:  “don’t spank…”  “don’t count to three…”  “don’t feed them cereal…”  There IS more than one way to do parenting!

                Now, let’s talk Jesus.  Should one “spank” or “distract”?  Oops, that was last paragraph.  So many groups.  So many doctrines.  So many positions.  Calvinists.   Arminians. Wesleyans.  Catholics.  Baptists.  Who’s “right”?!  Who can stand before God and man and declare, “I am right!”?  Not me.

                I have concluded that the only way to be right is to confess, humbly, honestly, that one is wrong!  Much like the tax-collector (Luke 18), one can only fall down and beg for mercy!  In effect, the weary pursuit of being “right” ends with recognizing and acknowledging that one is “wrong”!  (I certainly hope that I am not wrong about this?!)

                How much room is there in the “wrong” box?!  More than in the “right” box (es)!  And, in the “wrong” box, strange things sometimes begin to happen – patience, mercy, love begin to flourish?  Meanwhile, seemingly, in the “right” box there is an odor of condemnation, doubt, insecurity?  The walls on the “wrong” box seem to move and accommodate.  Yet, the walls of the “right” box get thicker, stronger, higher, no way in, no way out?!

                Homosexuals?  Homophobes?  Drunks?  Gluttons?  Bums?  Workaholics?  Racists?  Thugs?  Addicts?  Womanizers?  …  In which box are they?  BOTH! (imho)  Which box is helping them become more like Jesus?  (your answer may reveal more about yourself than it does anything else?!)

                We try to put Jesus in a box and then depend on the box; and defend it, to the death – of our … 

It’s about Jesus, not the box!  “Jesus, have mercy on me, the sinner!”

maybe it is more about service than certainty?  

 

Besides, Jesus is out of the box!