Alexander Pope, not the Bible, is credited with the quote, “To err is human; to forgive divine.” As a Christian for many years, I know that to sin is human and forgiveness comes from God’s divine mercy and grace. Christians are still human and we are quite capable of making mistakes or being wrong about things. When the Holy Spirit points out the errors of our ways, it is often easier to admit our mistakes to God than it is to admit them to other people. To paraphrase another Pope quote; No one should be ashamed to admit they are wrong. It is just another way of saying, “I’m wiser today than I was yesterday”.
Have you ever known someone who never admits being wrong about anything? I hope it isn’t the person you see in the mirror every morning. I never have had a problem with admitting my mistakes, even several times a day if necessary. I think that may be a product of fifty years of married life. The choice between being right and being in a peaceful relationship always seemed an easy decision for me to make. Where sharing my faith or writing on my blog is concerned, I depend on the Holy Spirit to make sure I don’t make mistakes or spread false information. Once I gave the Apostle Paul credit for writing Hebrews. Although that was the traditional belief, modern scholars believe it was probably written by another unknown Jewish Christian. It didn’t change the message in the blog post one bit, but I still changed it to “the writer of Hebrews” instead of Paul.
One of my favorite Mark Twain quotes explains why so many people are wrong and refuse to acknowledge it. “It is much easier to convince someone that a lie is the truth than it is to convince them that what they believe to be true is a lie.” If it’s on social media it must be true, right? Wrong! That is the reason I stopped sharing posts on Face Book several years ago. I don’t have the time to research the information thoroughly and just because a trusted friend posted it doesn’t mean that they weren’t fooled by it.
There are two reasons people accept false information as the truth. The first is that they trust the source of the information. Either that person was fooled and believes it to be true, or they are using their trusting relationship with you to get you to believe what they want you to believe. The second is that the information is something we want to believe. If we have a biased view of a person or group, we will be more apt to believe good or bad things about them depending on our bias. The only fact checker who can always be trusted is God and His word. Christians have the advantage of having God’s Holy Spirit within us to let us know when something is not right. The question is, do we carefully run everything past Him? Shame on us if we don’t; but if we do, there will be a lot less mistakes for which we will have to admit and apologize.
Don’t forget that others in your life are also still human, even those who are brothers and sisters in Christ. So be quick to forgive, even when they don’t admit or apologize. You are not doing it for them, but for your own peace of mind.