"You are just as capable of making a mistake as anyone else. By insisting too eagerly upon a small right, you may turn it into a wrong against yourself and also against your neighbor"
About this Quote
Moral certainty is the quiet trap Lovasik is warning against. The line starts by puncturing the ego: you are not the exception, not the person whose judgment is magically immune to error. That opening matters because it frames the rest of the quote as spiritual hygiene, not mere etiquette. A cleric’s authority here isn’t about winning arguments; it’s about disciplining the impulse to treat being right as a license.
The phrase “insisting too eagerly upon a small right” carries the real bite. Lovasik isn’t condemning righteousness; he’s diagnosing a familiar escalation: when a legitimate claim (a rule, a boundary, a principle) becomes a performance of dominance. “Too eagerly” signals impatience, heat, and pride - the emotional fuel that turns a correct point into a relational weapon. The “small right” is also a shrewd choice: it’s often the petty certainties that people cling to hardest, because they’re easy to prove and satisfying to enforce.
The subtext is communal. In Christian moral thinking, neighbor isn’t just the person next door; it’s the test case for whether your virtue is real. Lovasik’s warning is that rights detached from charity become self-harming: you may “turn it into a wrong against yourself” by hardening your character, and “against your neighbor” by shrinking empathy into legalism. The context feels pastoral - a guide for ordinary conflict, where the spiritual stakes are not abstract doctrines but the everyday temptation to win and call it holiness.
The phrase “insisting too eagerly upon a small right” carries the real bite. Lovasik isn’t condemning righteousness; he’s diagnosing a familiar escalation: when a legitimate claim (a rule, a boundary, a principle) becomes a performance of dominance. “Too eagerly” signals impatience, heat, and pride - the emotional fuel that turns a correct point into a relational weapon. The “small right” is also a shrewd choice: it’s often the petty certainties that people cling to hardest, because they’re easy to prove and satisfying to enforce.
The subtext is communal. In Christian moral thinking, neighbor isn’t just the person next door; it’s the test case for whether your virtue is real. Lovasik’s warning is that rights detached from charity become self-harming: you may “turn it into a wrong against yourself” by hardening your character, and “against your neighbor” by shrinking empathy into legalism. The context feels pastoral - a guide for ordinary conflict, where the spiritual stakes are not abstract doctrines but the everyday temptation to win and call it holiness.
Quote Details
| Topic | Humility |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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