The Lust to be Right

by Alma Newitt

I have one friend who gets hysterical if you disagree with her opinion and another friend who becomes hostile at the slightest hint of criticism. Still another person I know, when confronted with a mistake he's made, acts as if it never happened. My own short-comings case self-pity and I freely admit them to avoid the blame of others.

But, essentially m y friends and I are alike. We all want to be right, and desperately fear being wrong. Different symptoms of behavior -- same disease. Idolatry.

We are back worshiping at the altar of our self-image. We have experienced the Living God, but we are not living in Him. We are focused on ourselves -- how we are and do and appear to others. In Hebrews 12 we are admonished to look to Jesus as we run the race set before us. But instead, it is as if inside, unconsciously, we are still looking to an image of the perfect self we want to be or its negative counterpart -- the fool we fear we are.

We have forgotten that "only One is righteous, and that is God" and that it is in "beholding His face" that we "move from glory to glory."

May we all give up defending our spurious self-rightness and confess to each other and the Father our true condition of need. Only then will be really seek his righteousness and be open to receive it.

God, deliver me

from my own righteousness

which stinks

like skunk cabbage

rising from the earth.

Give me

Your True Holiness

that falls from above

Like cleansing rain.

"Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness."