Verna Dozier on the Freedom to be Wrong

Is there any division in the Christian church that isn’t a result of the I’m right your wrong argument?  Most of us completly lack the grace necessary to say, “I could be wrong.”  Why is it such a scary thing to think, that maybe, just maybe, the age-old positions we’ve taken may be only a human construct and not the direct rev

elation from God we’ve been led to believe.  Now don’t jump to any conclusions, I’m not talking about the basic tenents of the Christian faith?  I’m talking about the peripherial issues, the “non-essentials”. Our beliefs say something about who we are in a very fundamental way.  But we should realize that our existence proceeds from the very God of the cosmos, not from our beliefs about God.  God is true because God is true, not because we believe God to be true.  If we find that we’re wrong, if we rise or if we fall, it does not change the truth of the God we serve. Maybe what we need, is to hear a word from Verna Dozier, a well-loved lay theologian, author, mentor and Christian educator in the Episcopal Church.  But hey, I could be wrong…

“Faith always includes the possibility that we could at any given moment be wrong, and that is why it requires courage. Kingdom of God thinking calls us to risk. We always see through a glass darkly, and that is what faith is about. I will live by the best I can discern today. Tomorrow I may find out I was wrong. Since I do not live by being right, I am not destroyed by being wrong. The God revealed in Jesus whom I call the Christ is a God whose forgiveness goes ahead of me, and whose love sustains me and the whole created world.”

– Verna Dozier (1917 – 2006)