Though the Lord is great, he cares for the humble, but he keeps his distance from the proud. Psalm 138:6

 

Some people need to be right all the time.  Are you one of them?

When Margot was in high school, her family gave her a poster that featured a large, fluffy white cat lounging on a chair, wearing round, wire-rimmed glasses. The caption read:  Everybody has a right to my opinion!

It’s not just Margot. All of humanity is prone to pride. We’re quick to assume that we’re constantly right and assume we know best. God finds pride distasteful. The Psalms say, “Though the Lord is great, he cares for the humble, but he keeps his distance from the proud.” Arrogance leads us into all kinds of evil (Proverbs 8:13), where being aware of our limitations leads us to receive God’s help and strength (1 Peter 5:5).

The first step in moving away from the pride and arrogance of thinking we’re always right, is to admit our need for God’s help in stopping the habit. Even though God says that He tears down the house of the proud (Proverbs 15:25), HeHHe never shames us for coming to Him for remodeling of our characters. He says that He establishes the way of the humble (James 4:10, Luke 14:11). Even some of Jesus’s most faithful followers, like Peter, were often wrong and quickly corrected (Matthew 16:23). God promises to help restore us in tender love and lead us if we’re quick to admit our mistakes and willing to respond to His correction.

Let’s not be like the person the novelist Henry James wrote of saying, “Every now and then she found out she was wrong, and then she treated herself to a week of passionate humility. After this she held her head higher than ever again.”[1]

[1] James, Henry. “Chapter VI, Portrait of a Lady.” Collection at Bartleby.Com, 6 Sept. 2022, www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/hc/the-portrait-of-a-lady/chapter-vi-18/.