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“I changed my mind.”
We tend to say those words with a little hesitation, as though they require an explanation or even an apology. We are taught, in ways both subtle and obvious, that changing our minds means we weren't paying attention the first time, that we weren't firm enough, or that someone else somehow won. We admire people who stand their ground. We praise certainty.
But I believe there are times when changing our minds is a sign of strength rather than weakness. It can mean that we have listened closely enough to hear something we had not heard before, or that we have learned something that asks us to see the world differently. Sometimes it means that we have cared more about being honest than about being right.
Scripture gives us some remarkable company in this. There are stories in which God changes God's mind. Moses argues with God after the golden calf, and God relents. In Jonah, the people of Nineveh repent, and God changes course. Jonah is furious about it, which is perhaps one of the more human details in the story: he had preached what God was going to do, and then God decided not to do it.
And then there is Jesus.
A Syrophoenician woman comes to Jesus because her daughter is suffering. Jesus initially refuses her request. She pushes back and challenges the boundary Jesus has drawn, and Jesus listens. The story tells us that her words matter. Her daughter is healed, and Jesus' ministry moves beyond the boundary he had first described. Does this story makes Jesus less wise or less faithful? Rather, it gives us a picture of someone willing to listen when another person sees something he does not, and that matters to me.
We sometimes confuse conviction with certainty, as though having strong convictions means we must never reconsider them. But conviction and rigidity are not the same thing. A person can hold deeply held beliefs and remain open to being changed by what they learn, by what they experience, or by the person standing in front of them.
There is humility in saying, "I was wrong," and wisdom in saying, "I didn't know that." There is also something generous about being able to say, "You changed my mind." We should make more room for those sentences—not because we should abandon our convictions whenever someone disagrees with us, but because none of us knows everything.
We are all still learning, and we are all still becoming. If we are unwilling to be changed, then we have decided that there is nothing left for us to learn, and I don't believe that is faithfulness. Faithfulness leaves room for growth, for surprise, and for the possibility that God can teach us through Scripture, through experience, and sometimes through another person who sees something we cannot yet see.
So let’s stop apologizing for changing our minds. Particularly when that change means we have grown enough to know better than we did before, and that is a very good thing.
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