“Oh, that’s the Law!” I have been teaching people how to become soccer referees for 20 years. Part of the course is instruction in the Laws of the Game (of soccer). Every year there is at least one dad (almost always a male) who utters that line. He’d been shouting at referees for years and only now discovered he was wrong.
Yesterday I talked a little about self-righteousness. I was puzzled for years by the phenomenon that people can hold firm opinions about things even when faced with incontrovertible evidence that they are mistaken. (People includes me, of course.)
After a few years of study, I learned that the human brain is capable of believing anything it’s told. You and I have built-in wiring that allows us to be deceived. Self-help gurus use that biological fact as advice for self-improvement. For example, they’ll advise you to tell yourself over and over phrases such as “I am a winner” or “I am strong and confident” in order to get your brain to believe it.
Then I learned that there are two systems in your body that work together. The “electrical” system in your brain and the “chemical” system that originates in your gut. If you associate a thought in your brain with a strong feeling from your gut an opinion is formed.
Proposition A says that the thought may not be true, but proposition B says that you will go to your grave (maybe) holding the opinion that it is.
Sometimes you are presented information such that you can grow in wisdom and understanding and move past those opinions that hold you back. But first you have to understand yourself. Then you have to be willing to let loose of old beliefs and accept new teaching.
There are fundamentals that I’ll probably never leave behind because they are based on experience. I believe in God because I’ve experienced God. And further study of Scripture and the writings of spiritual masters of the past several thousand years tell me that the experience is congruent with experiences of many other people. That’s how you test experience.
But every day my eyes are opened to new understanding of God and His message. My job is to be open to new revelations from God through whomever He might send my way–either through personal interaction or through reading. My job is to continue to learn and to share what I learn.
I pray that this attitude keeps me from self-righteousness and makes me a better witness. As you look into your heart and soul this Lenten season, you might check on the state of your self-righteousness and whether you need to chuck some useless weight overboard.
Faith Venture 
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