I’ve got good news for anyone who thinks this meme is worthy of contemplation: You NEVER have to choose between being right and being kind!

This quote pasted on a decades-old photo of Denzel Washington is nonsense. It is a false dichotomy that sets up kindness and ‘rightness’ as mutually exclusive.

Intelligence is under attack these days. Our culture assumes that thinking about stuff turns a person into an arrogant, loveless know-it-all. “There are things more important than being right,” is recited by legions of meme posting minions who have never experienced being right about anything.

Thoughtless people want credit for how they feel. Unwilling to do the hard work of learning something, they demand applause for their random and sporadic emotions. They label whatever feelings they currently hold as, “kindness” and any criticism of this process is a hate-filled attempt to deny the authenticity of their experiences.

“John, you insufferable, arrogant, jerk!!! You’re so unkind!!!!”

That’s just your feelings. If you spent a moment thinking about why you’re saying that…well…you wouldn’t say it. But you’re not going to think about it because thinking is hard and you’re lazy. You’ll let your emotions tell you how to behave because that’s easy and will win the approval of other brainless people.

There is nothing more important than being right. Go ahead and argue with me! Demonstrate your need to be right.

If you have to choose between being right and being stupid, choose to be right. Stupid people will be mad at you but it doesn’t matter. They’re wrong.

(Psalm 119:127) Because I love your commands more than gold, more than pure gold, and because I consider all your precepts right, I hate every wrong path.