I don't want to want to be right anymore.

Everybody wants to be right. Even the people who say there is no such thing as right want to be right about that.


It's just part of us, this inescapable need, and it's to blame for so much of our bad behavior as humans. What else could cause us to be so stuck in our ways and so blind to others and their perspectives? What else could make us so argumentative and divisive? Why else would we need to be so defensive of our own positions? We're all just fighting to keep our world vision intact, to keep our way of living from crumbling. We all need so badly to be right because what if we're wrong? 


And the terrifying thing for me, in all my wanting to be right, is that I don't really know that I believe that I can be. Scratch that-- I don't think it's possible to be right. I really don't. At least, I don't think it's possible to be completely right.


Example: I love to read books, and for some reason I also like to read comments written online by people I don't know about books that I love. Sometimes before I buy a book and often after I've already read it, I read book reviews by other authors, publications, bloggers, and even random people on Amazon. In fact, probably most of the reviews I read are from random people on Amazon. And it always, always, always disappoints me, and maybe I should just never read the reviews on Amazon or even from more traceable and reliable sources, but I think one of the reasons I'm so attracted to them is my drive, my desire to be right, my need to be validated in my opinions by matching opinions of others. And it's crazy because it's never going to happen, but something in me, when I read a book that makes me go, "Oh, yes, this is it. This is exactly right." feels like, in order for that to be true, the complete rightness of it has to be apparent to everyone or it is somehow less right.


More Specific Example: Just tonight, I read a tweet about a children's Bible, was intrigued, looked it up on Amazon, read a sample of it, and was flabbergasted. It's gorgeous. It's amazing. I made Jason listen to me read everything available in the sample. I swooned. I announced I was going to order it for our kids someday. Then I announced I was going to order it for me right now! Then I noticed it was recommended highly by a Christian writer whose books have made a profound impact on me and whom I respect, a Christian writer who's fairly conservative, too, so not even one who would be suspected of recommending something "liberal" and "heretical" like most of the stuff I like to read. And I was further wooed because not only does this book that I have just sampled match everything in my heart, not only has it resonated deeply with me in a very short amount of time, but a very respectable Christian author likes it too. Validation of rightness, bingo. And then what do I do? I read a few 5 star reviews, then a 3 star. Then, like a moron, I click on the 1 star reviews and read almost all of them. Why? Why? Well, I do in a way out of curiosity, and I could do it to want to find ways to discredit them to further enhance my feeling of rightness, but mostly I think I do it because I'm scared that I'm not right. I think I want to be so certain so zealously that I am scared to be zealously certain of the wrong thing. Make sense? Part of the obsession with being right is making sure the right you're obsessed about is right. And I want to read those 1 star reviews and the negative blog posts and everything else because what if they are the ones that are right? And what if reading those would show me the error in what I previously thought was right?


And, you see, there is no end to this. There will always be 1 star reviews. There will always be people who think John Mayer is a jerk and his music sucks and that Taylor Swift is shallow and can't sing, and those opinions will always hurt me a little, even though I really shouldn't take them personally, because hearing someone else's right that's different from mine makes my right feel less right, even if it's right to me.


And I will keep on singing along with John Mayer and Taylor Swift as long as they keep making music, and those issues are just opinions anyway.


But what about being right about who God is? What about being right about what matters in life? What about being right about the purpose of even living and waking up every day?


Just deeper versions of the Taylor Swift conundrum? I don't think so. I think it matters to be right. Only I kinda don't. Well, it's both. Because here's the paradox. Here's where I am right now, and I'm happy to hear from you if you have corrections, but here's where I am:


I think the paradox is that the only right is God, and He is the only one who will ever be right about Himself, so the only thing I can ever be right about in my whole life is knowing that He is right, and even then, the right that I have will only be a regular one, not an italics one because I still won't be fully right about Him because it's too much for me.


And I think I just have to be okay with that.


I think a lot of Christians will disagree with that. I think most of what I hear from the Christian sector says that it's vital to be right about a lot of things. And that there is a definite right way to know and think and do all those things that it's important to be right about.


But, I'm sorry, guys. I'm sorry, me. I just don't think so.


I don't think I'm ever gonna be right. And that doesn't mean I don't believe there is right. I just don't think I'm ever gonna be it. And it's kinda awesome to admit. Because I don't want to want to be right anymore.


I just want right.