Editorial: The possibility of being wrong

Years ago, my friend and colleague Lynn Clayton passed along a funny quote. The first time I heard it, I thought it was a joke. But it’s a deep truth. When I remember it—and I’m embarrassed to admit that, too often, I forget—my life is more grace-full, empathetic and understanding.

Editor Marv KnoxLynn and I worked together in the mid-1980s. He was editor of the Louisiana Baptist Message, and I was his associate. Those were tense days in Baptist life, and it seems our newspaper made readers angry enough to write vitriolic letters every week.

As editor, one of Lynn’s jobs was to answer all that mail. I could tell it sometimes weighed him down. He and I both are PKs—“preachers’ kids”—and our default perspective is to please people and make them happy. So, dealing with unhappy, ticked-off people was a burden. I didn’t envy him one bit.

One day, Lynn received a particularly nasty letter. He told me he’d heard how a Methodist bishop somewhere answers mail, and he was thinking about copying the approach.

“So, what does he do?” I asked.

“He answers all negative mail the same way,” Lynn responded. “Each letter is only two sentences long: ‘Thank you for your letter. There’s an excellent chance you might be right.’”

Lynn’s hot letter cooked him into a funk. He seemed serious about following our Methodist brother’s two-line approach to cranky correspondence. Despite his forlorn appearance, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

Nothing to punch

“That’s brilliant,” I insisted. “Think how much time a letter like that will save. On the front end, you don’t even have to think up an answer to all your negative mail. And second, it will end every argument. How do they fight back if you don’t give them anything to punch?”

Of course, I also thought the fine bishop’s letter was totally disingenuous. Who really would write a letter like that and mean it? I knew I couldn’t.

And then I got a little older. Life experiences taught me lessons. The most important lessons—and the hardest to learn—schooled me when I made mistakes, when I thought I was absolutely right, only to discover I was irrevocably wrong.

One word describes situations like that: “Humbling.”

Well, another word also comes to mind: “Invaluable.”

Some of the greatest episodes of growth happen when I have to admit I made a mistake. When I acknowledge someone else is right and I am (golly, it’s hard to say) wrong.

Good results

When you admit you are wrong—or someone else is right—several good things happen.

First, you feel liberated. Always being right is a heavy, onerous job. When you’re set free from perfection, weight falls off your shoulders.

Second, you can be more flexible. Even when you think you’re right, you can appreciate the fact you might be wrong. That provides permission to think more broadly, to explore other options, to be creative.

Third, the future is more exciting. If you realize you don’t know everything, then you can’t wait to see what you’ll learn. (Even if you could know everything, then you might as well die. Because what fun would life be if new lessons weren’t out there to be learned?)

Of course, as I noted, admitting you’re wrong—or even acknowledging you might be wrong—is a humbling experience. Most of the time, we act like that’s a bad thing. “Humbling” and “humiliating” are sibling experiences. And in our proud culture, nothing is worse.

We need more humility

But that’s not true, is it? The more I see of this world—in international relations, in our churches, in communities, in businesses, and in families and marriages—the more I’m certain the one thing we need more of is humility. Humility is not earned. It’s bequeathed through mistakes, errors, blunders, gaffes and miscalculations.

When we embrace the capacity to say, “There’s an excellent chance you may be right” and/or “You know, I might be wrong,” we open up new worlds of growth and relationships. If more of us could admit mistakes and agree we might be wrong, the world would experience fewer wars, divorces, business failures, estrangement, loneliness, heartache and split churches.