‘Why I’m giving up the right to be right’

Unless you’re a member of the debating society - I'd argue that arguing is a waste of time

I was going to start this piece by asking if you’ve ever read something that has annoyed you…but two years into The Pandemic, of course you have. Race and gender relations have also taken a huge hit in recent months so if even if you’re not fussed about COVID-related content (in which case well done you), you’ll find something in the public arena to p*ss you off. Last year I started preceding every conversation with, “I’ve stopped watching the news”, which helped me avoid rants about what’s going on in the rest of the world and potentially getting offended by someone else’s take on it. 

But for the most part, when you’re a Christian you can get sucked into the thinking that all Christians will think the same as you (LOL), and make the rookie error of declaring your view on a controversial topic on the assumption that your friend/partner/colleague/victim will agree with you. I say this freely because it is the mistake I made the other day. I was having a heated conversation with a friend  and at some point I took a step back and wondered, am I arguing my point because I think it’s important I get it across, or do I just want to be right?? 

My friend told me that I get easily offended, a statement which annoyingly had me concur by virtue of my reaction. I’ve written about the ways in which societal attitudes have me seething as both a woman and a black woman. And I’m not saying that getting offended and “fighting” back is a bad thing, but to what end? The latest thing to get on my nerves was a Tweet where yet another man was sharing his views on what women should be doing with their bodies. Excellent. Perfect fodder for my already disparaging opinion on men in the Church banging on about what everyone else is doing and failing to focus on their own issues. As part of my job as head of a women’s brand for a Christian media company, I wrote this post as a response to it. Quite a few people I know read it and affirmed me by their response but one friend dared to disagree and that’s when I got seriously offended…

Initially I went into instant “how dare you” mode and argued my case as if I were presenting a hard-won thesis - and with a lot more effort than I put into my university dissertation years ago. In this case I cited case studies and Bible scriptures because, surely you can’t argue with those. But then my friend explained why he took a different position to what I thought was the only one. He told me that he used to argue hard and fast on anything that came up on a number of topics he was passionate about. He said for years he had refused to accept he could ever be in the wrong or perhaps even a little misinformed about a subject. It took a real awakening of wisdom for him to realise that he was stuck in his own self-proclaimed knowledge and that he would learn a lot more by trying to see where the other person was coming from. So when I put forward what was essentially just my opinion, he refused to buy straight into what I thought would be a commonplace narrative and he asked me some difficult questions about why I felt the way I did.

A colleague of mine told me that he has a motto in his family: “Give up the right to be right” and I love that. There is already so much division in the world at the moment and we have somehow fallen into the thinking that if someone doesn’t agree with you then they should be argued into submission and then if the lady still isn’t turning (obscure Thatcher reference), cancelled.

I’d like to say that isn’t the case in the Christian world but of course it is. Yes Christians are called to walk in love but we are human and so often we walk in the same trash behaviour as the rest of society. There are many passages in the New Testament that show evidence to the fact that even the Christians close to Jesus and the era of His teachings while on earth, found themselves in conflict. Paul was often in effect telling them to calm down and reminded them what was important - often not the thing they were arguing about. (Also, Romans 12:18 - let’s all just chill out)

The danger in thinking you are always right is that you start to develop a side of hubris which is just a slide away from a complete fall from grace. Mum had my sister and I attend our school’s debating society so we could learn to coherently get our points across, but debating is a friendly exchange of opinions to see if there could be a considered outcome of those present (granted this is my personal definition not a wiki one), not a war of them. I can be quite opinionated at times but this experience has forced me to focus on the intention behind my words and honestly, if it’s worth getting into an argument just to come out on top. 

Doll x