A Year of Humility (XXXII): On Apologizing

 I have been wrong in my life more than I care to admit.

There are, at least that I can think of, at least two different ways to be wrong.

The first way is, for lack of a better term, simply being wrong. This can be due to a number of factors - lack of knowledge, lack of facts, lack of key information - but the outcome is the same:   we do or say the wrong thing.  We give the wrong answer.  We choose the wrong next action.  It can be born of pride, a great belief in our own knowledge or giftedness, or of innocent assumption that we knew something that we really did not know.

The second is choosing wrong.

Choosing wrong is not acting from a lack of knowledge or understanding, it is actively selecting to do wrong.  Sometimes the thing is subtle, like choosing to not let go of an argument or secretly watching someone founder that we hold a grudge against.  Sometimes the thing is not so subtle, when we know the correct action to take and we do not take or instead we actively choose the wrong answer.

Beyond the path back from this point, which most likely involves some level of asking for God's forgiveness and possibly the forgiveness of others, comes that most difficult of acts: apologizing.

Apologizing is easy if it is is in the first category; one can plead lack of knowledge or just a plain mistake.  Most of us have done this many times over the course of our lives - it is the higher level equivalent of "excuse me" after we bump in to someone (it turns out that such a simply apology as "excuse me" in a native language goes a long way towards smoothing uncomfortable situations over).

Apologizing in the second category can be much more difficult.

Why?  Because in the second category, to apologize is to admit that we actively choose wrong.  We chose the harsh words or anger or mocking or the thousand other sins that can infest our lives.  We knew better - than God, than His word, than others that may have tried to counsel us otherwise.  

In perhaps the most memorable example (not original to me), it was we that chose to drive the nails into Christ's hands and feet on the Cross.

What does any of this have to do with humility?  Because, in both cases, it takes humility to apologize.

To apologize - in either case - is to admit that there is something about me, greater or lesser, that is wrong.  That I do not know as much as I think, that I am not as skilled as I thought, that I did not read the relevant document, that I actively chose something that physically or psychically impacted others.

Sometimes - at least for me - apologizing is far more difficult than asking for forgiveness from God.  Apologizing to God is a personal transaction between myself and Him.  Apologizing to others involves the same concept - making ourselves humble enough to admit our mistakes - but doing it to our fellow humans, sometimes fellow humans of which we may vehemently disagree or even actively dislike.

The odd thing?  Apologizing - at least in my own life - always puts me in a better position.  Maybe not directly with the person that I apologized to, but often with others around them.  Why is that?  I wonder if it perhaps the demonstration of the fact that someone - a peer, or perhaps even someone who is in a position or place of greater responsibility - can be wrong and, seeing that they are wrong, have the strength of character to admit it.

The proud can never admit they are or were wrong.  It is only the humble, who see themselves accurately, that are able to do so.