Confession…
my favorite part of being wrong is when I admit it out loud.
That may seem like the average person’s least favorite moment.
Let me explain why I feel the opposite about it.
When you’re wrong, there’s usually someone who is passionately trying to point it out to you. Perhaps they’re on a mission to highlight what is plain to them that you’ve somehow been blind to. They’re attempting to get you to be mature or responsible about something you may have been immature or shortsighted about.
This tends to amplify when they feel you wronged them.
On your end, it’s likely not easy to admit that you missed something or made another person feel awkward. This is why when you actually do own it as a genuine step of maturity to the situation or the relationship… something amazing and unexpected happens.
The other person is also now tasked to choose if they’re going to be mature or immature in response to your response.
Again, this individual was on a quest to point out something you missed. In doing so, they situationally claimed the high ground – perhaps for all the right reasons, or maybe for the wrong reasons. They may not have even expected you to own it.
Only… you did. They had a great point. You confessed it, along with a desire to grow.
This is where it’s revealed if that person truly is a friend who will stick with you into the next curve or simply was a critic who wanted to lay a zinger on you. You once were being small in not owning something big, and now that person has to decide what they’re going to do with your mature ability to own your immaturity.
Unfortunately, this is where many conscious accusers become unconsciously divided.
- They have nothing new left to say… yet they don’t know what to now do with any remnants of the unspoken negativity they felt toward you seconds earlier.
- They have nothing left to point out… yet find themselves still wanting to be a critical spirit when they generally look at you.
- They have nothing left to get you to admit… yet find themselves wanting to become your personal “life coach” and show you other things you’ve been blind to.
I adore this moment, not because I’m waiting to see if the accuser will be hypocritical… but because what once was a one-sided pursuit in my direction gets to be a defining moment in every direction of the relationship.
Will the person who felt you were wayward choose to let it go and walk into the future with you?
(By the way – think about how you handle this when you’re the one trying to expose another person to something they’re blind to.)
The reason this is a defining moment?
Because it shows what the relationship is really made of and if two Christ-followers will keep following Christ together. Jesus said in the Lord’s Prayer that we should pray for forgiveness from God that is equal to the way we’ve forgiven other people who have wronged us:
“Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12)
So the best part about being wrong?
It’s an opportunity for everyone involved to put Jesus on display in what happens next between those involved.
Then again…
I could be wrong.