Week 5 · Lesson 1
Understanding Pride and Accepting Responsibility
Week 5 of 23 · Pride and Accepting Responsibility
When was the last time you said you were wrong and meant it?
Not sorry. Wrong. Out loud, to the person, with nothing added on the back of it. No but he did this first. No but you do not know the whole story.
Some people cannot remember the last time. Some people cannot remember one ever.
That is not a character flaw. There is a reason for it, and this lesson is about the reason.
Key ConceptWhere You Come From, Admitting Fault Costs More
In a lot of places, saying you were wrong is free. Somebody says it, everybody moves on, nothing happens.
Where you are from, being wrong out loud can move on you. It gets remembered. It gets brought back up in front of people. Somebody files it away for later.
So you learned to never give it up. Hold your position no matter what, because giving ground once means giving it again.
That was not stupid. That was the correct read of a situation where information gets used against people.
But the same thing that protects you out there will keep you exactly the same forever, because nobody can fix something they will not name.
Journal Question
Write about a time you were wrong and never said it. Then write what you thought would happen if you had.
Teaching PointThree Things Pride Is Actually Protecting
You said something, or you took a stance, and now backing off it looks like folding. So you defend a spot you do not even want anymore because leaving it in front of people costs more than staying.
Everybody has one. I do not need anybody. I never get played. I am the one who handles things. Admitting a specific mistake is fine. Admitting one that breaks the story is not, and that is why some things you will argue about forever.
This is the one nobody says. Sometimes the thing you will not admit is not about the situation at all. It is that if you were wrong about this, you might have been wrong about a lot of it, and there is a whole stretch of years back there you do not want to look at.
So it is easier to be right about today than to open that.
Activity
Three things. Write which one you are actually protecting most of the time. Then write what it would cost you to put it down for one conversation.
ScenarioThe Argument You Already Won
Somebody says something to you. You know within a second that they are basically right.
And you argue anyway. You find the one part they got wrong and you hammer that part. You bring up something they did last year. You make it about their tone. And by the end of it you won, technically, and you know you did not.
You go home and it sits there. And the next time that person has something true to tell you, they will not say it, because they already know how it goes.
That is how a man ends up surrounded by people who agree with him and alone at the same time.
Journal Question
Who has stopped telling you the truth? Write the name. Then write what you did the last time they tried.
Spiritual Takeaway
He had every right to argue and He did not say a word
They brought Jesus in front of the governor, and men stood up and said things about Him that were not true. Straight lies, in a room where His life was on the line.
He had the whole case. He could have taken every one of those men apart with words, and He had done exactly that plenty of times before, in public, to their faces. This is not a man who could not hold His own in an argument.
Matthew says He gave no answer, not even to a single charge, and the governor was amazed. That is the word used. Amazed. Because the man had never seen anybody in that position not defend himself.
Understand what that is. Silence there was not weakness and it was not folding. It was a man who did not need that room to say He was right, because He already knew who He was and where He was going. He had nothing to prove to people who had already decided.
Proverbs 16:18 says pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Everybody has heard that. Almost nobody notices what it is actually describing, which is a sequence. Pride is not the fall. Pride is what walks in front of it.
So if you are winning every argument in your life right now, that is not proof you are right. It might be the sound of somebody walking.
One conversation. When you know you are wrong, say the three words with nothing attached. No but. No explanation. Just I was wrong, and then be quiet and let it be uncomfortable.
Take it one week at a time.
Defining Narratives · Week 5 Lesson