This post is thanks to the nasty comments on an article about a priest somewhere in this nation who excoriated the local Catholic schools on his Facebook page for allowing a gay couple to serve on the annual fundraising dinner committee.
You can imagine the rhetoric and vitriol that followed.
I was just about to leave the comments when I noticed that this one guy was being such an ass. I felt called by the Spirit to tell him to lay off.
His answer was that he was RIGHT. We’ll call him RIGHT Guy.
I have been known to have the RIGHT disease. As I’ve aged and decided I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life, I’ve come to understand that it’s better to be right and humble, right-ish and/or right with a side dish of not really sure.
Because the minute anyone seems to think they are the only one with the RIGHT answers, things start to go poorly.
The Pharisees are an excellent of example of this. Jesus told the Apostles they must be careful of the Pharisees: “But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them” (Matt 23:3-4). And indeed, the Pharisees were so busy being RIGHT that they crucified the Christ.
Whoops a daisy.
RIGHT Guy was so comfortable in his RIGHTness that he was running all around the comment section calling people idiots and damning them to Hell. Not to say there weren’t other RIGHT folks firing back. There was a lot of cherry-picked Scripture.
RIGHT Guy kept insisting that it was our job as faithful Christians to point out sin and keep pointing it out until the sinners finally realize how RIGHT we are and give us an award for being RIGHT everyone was worthy of their salvation. He called himself a defender of the faith.
It’s interesting that he thinks banging others on the head with his RIGHTness is defending the faith of Jesus, but maybe he’s reached a place in his faith I haven’t gotten to yet. Benefit of the doubt.
That’s still only half the job Jesus gave us. Love him faithfully and obediently.
But also—as in both/and, not either/or—love others by bringing them to him.
So I asked RIGHT Guy what he’d done that day to bring others to Jesus.
He exited the conversation.
I felt triumphant for a second because I’m human, y’all. Then my Catholic guilt kicked in and I asked myself the same question.
What have a I done today to bring others to Jesus?
That’s a good question, isn’t it?
Full Of Graces 