Not Right

Their spirit is not right in them . . . 

 - From Habakkuk 2

This sounds very harsh. "Not right." How would you like someone to come along and say "You're not right"?

How about - "You don't look right."

You don't talk right.

You don't act right.

Right is the opposite of wrong. And I don't care who you are . . . nobody wants to be wrong. Everything we do, everything we say, is all because we believe we are right. Not - I hope I'm right. But rather, I know I'm right. 

There's a wonderful TED Talk by Kathryn Schulz, entitled On Being Wrong, and I highly recommend it.  She says "You do feel like something when you're being wrong. You feel like you're being right." Violent, inner city gangs, and organizations like ISIS, believe they are Right. They are driven  by a sense of mission, that the violence they do is towards some favorable outcome - - - an outcome that will mean success, plenty, and safety for themselves and the people they care about. They don't worry about injustice, or harm towards others, because in their minds, they're convinced that they're right.

Hitler was convinced that he was right. 

We can't just toss out platitudes about mental health, and getting help for others (throwing money at the problem). Evil itself believes it's right. In fact, Evil believes it's Good. When Cain took a rock and beat the life out of his brother Abel, he was propelled forward by his perception that social justice was lacking, and things needed to be righted.

I've heard the saying "You can't fix stupid." It's even harder, to fix someone that believes he's right. 

And there's no emotion more insidious, in convincing us we're right, than anger fed by moral indignation. The pathologically angry or violent person starts out under a delusion of being right. We all are deluded in our belief that we are so right. We're not. The person that disagrees with you is a gift. She is a gift that rounds out the jagged edges of your understanding. Her perspective complements yours. The answer is in the center of all of us. 

I love the music of Depeche Mode, the pioneering German pop-rock group that brought Electronica more into the mainstream. They have an ongoing theme of practical spirituality. They are on the right track in so many things. But they dismiss, knee-jerk, many prominent themes of Christianity that they do not understand. Their faith is progressive and refreshing, but only to a point. Their philosophy is held together by a flimsy thread that declines to listen, once the Christian message becomes uncomfortable. Without discomfort, there's no growth. And our progress toward ultimate Truth must be centered on an awareness that we are not right, not as much as we think. We must become better listeners, and affirmers of all others. 

If you were perfect, your understanding of everything would also be error-free, and I'd be a fool not to trust, and follow, your every word. But nobody's perfect. Our way out of our mess is a most treacherous path: we're going to have to listen to each other.

Because - ain't none of us right. Not one. Not a single one.

In the old family Bible owned by my Great-Grandmother, Rachel Winter Martin, is a list of her children and their birth details. She had nine that lived to adulthood, and four that, according to family lore, were stillborn. But in her Bible, she summarizes her children as follows "Nine children. Four not right."

These words may be chilling, if we ponder too closely. "Not right" means, "something was wrong." 

Habakkuk says that evil people are "not right." There's something wrong. 

We want to be right. Let's begin by admitting this: we're not.