The Need to be Right

I’m struggling today with the need to be right. Well, not the need to be right, but the need to have someone acknowledge that I am right and they are wrong. Why is that so important to me? Is it a matter of pride? Selfishness? Arrogance? Insecurity?

I do know that it should not be important. If I am right, and have stated my case, that’s all I can do. It’s not as though I were in an official debating competition. It’s not up to me in everyday instances to change someone else’s mind. Well, sometimes it is, if the incorrect opinion might harm someone and my changing a mind might help. But that’s not an everyday thing.

More often than not, I know I’m not going to make a difference anyway by pushing the issue and pressing my point home. I’ve written about this before in my blog posts. Apparently it is a troublesome area of my character for me. After I’ve made myself tense, stressed-out, and upset over a conflict of this kind, once I’ve tried to calm myself down and look at it in a different light, some truths emerge.

Jesus himself did not push home the point that he was right. He suffered and died and still did not push the point when he knew that, at that time, it would not make any difference. He stated his case, and he let the rest up to the Father. Who am I to think I can do any differently? That helps me a lot, to realize that our greatest teacher, our Savior, gave me great examples to follow when I am in another situation of this kind. And there will be another time - that is just life.

Dear God, thank you for the excellent examples your son gave us, and fill me with all the strength and comfort and security in my faith in you, so that I might try to follow his example.