Being Right or Being Righteous

A question for you: Do you value having the right opinion over doing right by your neighbours?  Or, to use the language of the ancient Hebrew prophets, do you value being right over being righteous – that is, being in right relationship with others?  

In Zadie Smith’s 2016 essay ‘Fences: A Brexit Diary’, the British author reflects on the temptation to confuse having the right opinion with a commitment to creating a more just and fair world.  In the lead-up to what would become a deeply divisive vote over the future of Great Britain, Smith found that she and many of her friends were convinced of the obvious truth of their opinions (with the moral superiority that comes with such confidence) yet they were doing little to embody their values in practical, neighbourly ways.  In fact, Smith later came to see that she and her friends were so cocooned in their like-minded silos that the actual work of building a better future had given way to simply having opinions about what kind of world they wanted for themselves and their neighbours.  She concludes that ‘being right’ had become an end in itself, to the detriment of her country and community. 

Rooted in the imagination of the Hebrew prophets, Jesus was inviting the listening crowds to be loving toward their neighbours, to act lovingly toward the folks with whom they share God’s world,

Zadie Smith’s insights into the Brexit vote gave me pause.  Reading her essay in 2023, I saw myself in some of her reflections.  I, too, find it easy to confuse being right with working to make a more right-side-up world.  Of course, it is important to reflect thoughtfully on the issues of our day, the policies that shape our communities, and the public decisions that affect our neighbours – especially those who are struggling.  But it’s tempting to think that having the right opinion (and, so often, sharing that opinion via the social media platform of our choice) is where our commitment stops.  And I do not think I’m alone in that temptation.

Put otherwise, it’s easy for being right to become more important than doing right.  For Jesus-inspired justice-seekers, this will not do.

Why?  For one thing, this posture of ‘being right’ stands in direct contradiction to the witness of the ancient Hebrew prophets from whom Jesus seemed to glean so much of his wisdom and witness.  The prophet Micah, for instance, summarized God’s law in action-oriented, present-tense verbs: do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.  The prophets and psalmists - Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah, and others – consistently used the phrase ‘justice and righteousness’ to describe God’s hope for His people in the world (see Psalm 33:5: “The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the LORD’s unfailing love”).  Those two words are not about ‘punishment’ (justice) or ‘piety’ (righteousness), as we too often think.  Rather, the phrase ‘justice and righteousness’ conveys ‘loving, neighbourly action’ (justice) for the sake of creating ‘right-relationship’ (righteousness).  For the prophets, living in right relationship (righteousness) was the point.  

But spending two weeks with their global neighbours in southern Honduras, those ‘right opinions’ gave way to ‘right relationship’. 

All of this is really about love, understood through a gospel lens.  When Jesus invites his listeners to love their neighbours as themselves, he is not taking about having a loving feeling, sentiment, or affection toward the people around us.  If that were the case, we’d be in trouble!  Rooted in the imagination of the Hebrew prophets, Jesus was inviting the listening crowds to be loving toward their neighbours, to act lovingly toward the folks with whom they share God’s world, to try to be in right relationship with them.

An aquaponics project in Azacualpa, southern Honduras.

For my part, a recent visit to Honduras with World Renew brought all of this into clearer focus.  My students and I visited World Renew’s maternal & child health programs, sanitation initiatives, and drinking water projects in southern Honduras.  In the lead-up to our visit, our students debated how best to alleviate global poverty.  They discussed the merits of international development and north-to-south short-term projects.  They formed opinions about justice, poverty, and how to build a more humane, livable world.  Some of them questioned whether the privileged North should be involved in the Global South at all.  

But spending two weeks with their global neighbours in southern Honduras, those ‘right opinions’ gave way to ‘right relationship’.  Neighbourly relationships with those whose lives are very different from the lives of my students took priority, and began to re-shape the opinions they had so recently held dear.  Questions of justice-seeking began to be moulded in relation to those whose lives were affected by unjust political and economic realities at home and abroad rather than simply in relation to the most convincing development theory or theology of poverty.  

For my students and I, fledgling relationships with our neighbours in Honduras became an antidote to valuing ‘being right’ over ‘right relationship’.  I couldn’t help but think that the prophet Micah and his fellow prophet-poets would have approved.    

Photos courtesy of the author header is a school garden project, in western Honduras.