When 'sorry' is the hardest word

The difficulty of saying ‘sorry’ has somewhat saturated the news this week.  It’s not the most edifying thing to either read or hear and it’s always sad to see folk in public office score ‘own goals’.

Whatever the trials and tribulations of a certain Peer of the Realm and his party the whole episode has got me thinking about just how hard it sometimes is for any of us to say ‘sorry’.

To never say it, or want to say it would, I think, be to hold a rather arrogant view of life.  I’m never quite sure that the traditional advice given to The Royals to ‘never explain and never apologise’ quite fits The Gospel. 


Isn’t it simply a basic understanding of humanity that we all make mistakes.  At one level, and at certain stages of our development we actually value these moments as opportunities to lean important lessons about life and its relationships.  I suppose the problems come when we keep on making them, repeating them because we’ve never really heeded the valuable lessons such mistakes might have taught us.


The other day I was sitting around a committee table and the guy next to me shouted me down when I was in mid-sentence!  I was saying something like, ‘we need to have a generous spirit in the way we approach this issue’.  Well this didn’t go down too well with my fellow trustee.  He chimed in with a full frontal assault on ‘pietistic clergymen’ (his words – not mine!) who confuse the agenda with wishy washy phrases rather than fulfil their legal duties under Charity Commission law. So there – that put me in my place!

Why, you may rightly ask, am I retelling this brief encounter of a critical kind?!

Well it’s simply that I still believe we need to approach every area of life with a generous spirit and I think the friend on my right needs to understand that it’s a travesty to compartmentalise life into the ‘legal’ and ‘spiritual’.


Isn’t it about the way we think – the way we think about ourselves, others and God.  At times that means having the humility of spirit to accept we make mistakes and apologise.

Of course there are other issues here – issues about justice – yet I would hazard a guess that more problems are caused by people whose default position is ‘I’m never wrong’ than by those who accept their human fallibility and value the part that ‘grace’ plays in all our lives.

With best wishes,


Ian