Prodigal Magazine

Being ‘right’ is a commodity that drives people to do some asinine things.  Self-righteous ‘street preachers’ blast pedestrians with cold-hearted theology, generals and commanders march their ranks off to demise for a cause they see as right, and relationships fail with conviction because one party refused to back down on principle.

Rightness is something I hear constant kinetic metaphors about.  ‘Digging your feet in,’ ‘lowering your head,’ etc.  Rightness can also be accompanied by battle analogy.  ‘Not giving up ground,’ ‘defending my position,’ etc.  Naturally, as a man these comparisons appeal to me.  I want to beat the bad guys, win the day, and crane-kick the stud of the Kobrakai.  However, I find myself needing to come to grips with the fact that winning these battles may have a different set of casualties than I may understand.

My mom once shared a marriage adage with me when a friend and I were having a quibble.  She said, “The cost of being right is being alone.” Basically, she was telling me that in relationships, triumph isn’t the ultimate virtue: compassion is.  Compassion in that we try to understand the way the other party communicates, then bridge the gap to the best of our ability.  It’s not about what is being said, and in some cases not even how it’s being said; most relational conflict resolution comes down to how much we are trying to understand the other party.

In my younger years I always combated somebody saying I was religious by retorting “I don’t care about religion, I care about my relationship with God.”  Though I now see that response as a bit trite, it still carries truth.  I am in a relationship with God, and I find myself getting pretty hung up on being right sometimes.  I frequently question the decisions God makes because I don’t see them as fitting into my concept of right.  Some people get blessed who I feel shouldn’t be, and others don’t get the blessing I feel they deserve.  Hurricanes roll through poor neighborhoods and rich suburbs greet neighborhood watch with jubilation.

It feels like God and I are on very different wavelengths.  We get into ‘disagreements’ sometimes, and I have a very common method of dealing with our communication breakdown: It’s called ‘the silent treatment.’  I will walk into His presence and not even break a smile.  I will focus on what I am doing and pretend He isn’t even there.  He will beg and plead that I look at Him, or even acknowledge His existence, but I will have none of it; I lower my head and keep on going.  Naturally, this doesn’t last forever.  After a while I cave and we talk, then slowly but surely things return back to normal until the next spat.

I never saw this disturbing trend until I started to think of God as possessing emotion.  This happened when I went for a walk around campus to find a spot to read.  I found some prime real estate on the steps of a huge lecture hall on campus, and plopped myself down to dig into the bible.  However, I changed my mind at the last second.  While my hand was in my bag, I let go of my bible and rummaged around for a second more to pull out an Arthur Nersesian novel which I don’t feel comfortable naming (because of the title, not because of the plug!).  I cracked that book open instead.

I’m not the type to claim that the bible is the only necessary piece of literature a person ‘needs.’  So really, this last minute switch-up didn’t feel like a slight against God when I considered my actions.  However, when I considered my motives things became clear; it wasn’t about the book I chose, it was about my disregarding time I set aside explicitly for God.  It wasn’t about not reading the bible at that point; it was that I would rather think on the trashy stuff in the novel than think about God.  I felt at that moment, I had hurt God’s feelings.  In typical masculine fashion, I told God to relax and he was reading a bit too deep into my book selection.  I don’t really know if God was hurt at that moment, but I do know that I was ready to trivialize that hurt right then and there.  Then I started my silent treatment, because I knew God was being petty and He would come around eventually and all would be well.

I knew I was right, and I wasn’t going to budge.

Presently, God and I are working out the kinks in our relationship; namely, me.  At times I forget about the actual relationship that exists between God and I.  I always just imagine Him being in everything and that means if I am in relationship with those things I am good with God.  Basically, I serve goodness because it comes from God, but forget to include God in my worship.  I encourage all those who are reading this to stop for a moment and think about how the dynamic of your personal relationship with God works.  Consider the way you communicate with one another, the way you approach one another, and the way you deal with conflict.  Don’t be afraid to be wrong, and address it with God thusly.

God created relationship for us to be connected to Him: so let’s not have a dysfunctional relationship with God.