Four Words
It has often been said that there are three little words that every person longs to hear—“I love you.” It is true that we all long to hear those words because we all need to be loved. But it is also true that there are four little words that every person longs to say at some time or other—four little words that feel like they bring justice to the world.
Those words are “I told you so.”
Doesn’t it feel great to be right? Being right may not be anywhere near as important in life as being loved, but being right sure feels like it's almost as important. So much so that the next time you hear a person say, “I hate to say I told you so but…” you can know that person is lying! They may not want to be a jerk about it, but they love to be right just as much as the next person does.
In fact, we love being right so much that we make it really hard for ourselves and other people to admit it when we are wrong. That’s a big problem because although it may never happen to you, the rest of us actually are wrong from time to time. And when we are wrong, there are four words that we definitely do not want to hear—and guess what they are—“I told you so.”
We so love to be right that we make it really hard for ourselves and other people to be wrong.
What a pickle. We’re like a mom at dinner time who is mad at her kids for not eating their vegetables and says, “If you don’t want to eat your peas, that’s fine! But don’t come crying to me when you get scurvy.”
As we process our situation there are two things that have to be said. First off, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, who gets scurvy? I mean, come on Mom, what are we, seventeenth century pirates?
Secondly, and much more importantly, I have some good news on this whole “I told you so” situation. God is not like us. One of the characteristics of God is that He is righteous. That means that he doesn’t just know what is right, He is what is right. And because He is righteous, He is kind to us when we are ready to own the fact that sometimes we are wrong.
In fact, throughout the Bible, God is always the hardest on people who are self-righteous. And rather than blasting out an “I told you so” speech, He is always compassionate towards people who are ready to accept their wrongs.
Jesus told a story one time in the Book of Luke, Chapter 18, in which one guy that everybody thought of as a good guy and another guy who everybody thought of as a bad guy both showed up in the same place at the same time to pray. The good guy prays to God and says something like, “God, thank you that I’m not a rotten person like this bad guy over here.” And the bad guy prays to God and says, “God, forgive me, I’m a bad guy.” Then Jesus basically says to the crowd, “Guess who went home forgiven that day?”
You should look up that story and read it because it’s amazing, but I’ll tell you how it ends:
It was the bad guy that got forgiven that day.
When someone admits to us that they were wrong, we say, “I told you so.” But when someone admits to God that they were wrong, God says, “I forgive you.” Here’s what I’m thinking. Let’s all become people who have received forgiveness from God, and are really good at handing it out to other people.
