Two Wrongs Never Make You Right

Where there’s conflict for me it has rarely been, “is it my fault, or is it your fault?” It’s always my fault. My pertinent questions are “is it entirely my fault? do I need to start implementing damage control measures?” Once you’ve caused as many problems as I have, you stop wondering if someone else is to blame and just assume that you are.

In a way this is a positive. I rarely feel affronted by others, most of the time I assume conflict resolution is something that I have to do to make someone else feel better, as surely it’s my fault. Most of the time I was at fault with women, and women, as you might be aware, are never wrong.

That’s the cultural claim, at least. We, mankind, must avoid womankind’s whimsy and wrath, because we are always wrong and they are always right. Conditioned as I was by this cultural assumption, I was surprised when a girl/female/lady friend of mine recounted a recent conflict with someone by echoing my common refrain – of course it was my fault, it’s always my fault, I mess everything up.

As with most things, there’s a fine line between a healthy perspective of ones negative tendencies and an unhealthy self-loathing. Yes, you, me, everyone, even those who are too blind to see their real selves through their mythological self-conceptions, are bad people. We mess everything up. Our natural human tendency is to sow discord. Attribute it to whatever you want – maybe it’s original sin, maybe it’s survival of the fittest, but we constantly strive to elevate ourselves, our glory, our genome above our neighbors. It’s good to hold open the constant possibility that one might be wrong…because we probably are.

The problem comes in when you wrap your identity into being this bad person. Let me introduce myself. I’m Eric. I’m the guy that messes everything up. I can’t help myself, I’ll mess you up too, steer clear, watch out, I’m secretly scheming of ways to screw up the next thing too. We start to use our corrupt nature as an excuse, start to think we are resigned to our fallen fate, we’ll rot and fall under the weightiness of our own evil. Inevitability is an expedient to the continued future decay of your soul.

And it’s true, the whole world is still mired in its corruption, groaning under the stress of its brokenness. It shivers and cities shut down, it spasms and they fall, it heaves and they disintegrate. Year after year more broken people do more broken things, year after year people get sick and die. One day it will be better, one day we will be redeemed from ourselves, but in the meanwhile, deep down we have a new nature. We are now defined by something other than our intrinsic corruption.

Because of this some day it might not be my fault. You will be the first to know. Don’t hold your breath.

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