Always Right

I am right until I am proven wrong; then I change my thinking and am right again. – Benjamin Pore

It was the mid-1990s, and I had just completed my master’s degree in management. The Air Force was helping engineers become better managers and sending us to consulting certification courses so we could rely on internal consultants instead of paying high fees to outside firms. I volunteered for every class they offered. It was eye-opening.

Halfway through my first class, we received feedback on our performance. Mine was energetic, to say the least.

Consultant Instructor (CI): “John, I’ve noticed you always have to be right.”

Me: “Would you prefer that an engineer building a bridge your family uses is sometimes wrong?”

CI: “I’m just saying you do everything you can to be right.”

Me: “I operate on the best evidence I’ve got. When better evidence shows up, I update—because being right isn’t about stubbornness; it’s about keeping up with reality.”

CI: “You just did it again.”

Me: “Did what?”

My belief about being right shows up most clearly in church.

Church doctrine teaches that we should become more like Jesus every day. At my last church, they decided to change its name, and I questioned why. If God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, why change?

Deacon: “John, you need to quit challenging church leadership.”

Me: “Am I not supposed to be more like Jesus?”

Deacon: “Yes. Why?”

Me: “Didn’t Jesus question everything church leadership did—to the point it got him crucified?”

When church leadership says, “Be more like Jesus,” they don’t really mean it. Somehow, it gets translated into being subservient to authority. It becomes less “What do I think?” and more “What should I think?”

I believe there is a fundamental flaw in the idea of being more like Jesus.

Deacon: “John, Jesus was perfect. You are not. You are a sinner.”

Me: “So when Jesus said, ‘Go and sin no more,’ he knew no one could actually do that?”

Deacon: “John, you’re trying really hard to be right.”

Me: “Wasn’t Jesus always right? And shouldn’t I be more like him?”

My brain tends to lock up when faced with contradictions: being more like Jesus—except for perfection, being right, questioning authority…in other words, except for the parts that matter.

I don’t know a single person who wakes up thinking, “I’m going to be a wrongful sinner today.”

In one of my Sunday School classes, I asked everyone to write down every sin they had committed from the moment they woke up to that point in class. Dead silence. No one moved.

I said, “Just write it in your journal. Don’t share it.” Still, no one moved.

We, as Christians, are quick to use sin as an explanation—and slow to treat it as a responsibility.

In everything I do, I try to be right—much to my wife’s dismay. I think everyone does. Why would anyone aim to be wrong?

Being right shouldn’t be a curse. It should be a virtue.

I wish everyone tried to be right—not just me. And when proven wrong, changed their thinking so they are right again.

Am I missing something?