The pastor of my church recently completed a series of sermons on the quest for Godliness, talking about the spiritual disciplines we need to practice to become Godly men and women. It was a good series. However, as I was listening, I couldn’t help thinking about the ways in which this can go very wrong. The study and practices necessary to become Godly, coupled with pride and ego, reliably end up in self-righteousness. This is Satan’s booby trap. We start out trying to become more Godly people and we start thinking that makes us better people. Then we look around at the folks that don’t think and act like us and begin regarding them as lesser people, fully deserving of our disdain and condemnation.
This is attractive to no one save other self-righteous people, so we end up in isolated enclaves of like-minded people, congratulating each other on how wonderful we are. This suffocating self-righteousness feeds on itself. Other people shun us because, frankly, why wouldn’t they? In response we elevate our regard for ourselves and lower our regard for others until we become like those hateful caricatures of Christians the news media love to interview, rather than the imitations of Christ that we are supposed to be working to become. Remember, those reviled Pharisees in the Bible were not casually religious people. They were dedicated religious zealots. They were examples of what devoted religious people become when they forget the source of true righteousness which is God.
What is the cure? Humility. Remember what Paul wrote in Romans 3 ” There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” The only righteousness we have was imputed to us by the blood of Christ. It is an unmerited gift and, as such, the response should be gratitude and humility, not pride. Heed the prophet Micah when he says, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” “I am right. You are wrong, and therefore I am morally superior to you.”, is not how we are directed to treat each other. Our primary job as Christians is to draw people to Christ, as Christ did, through the unstoppable power of love.
It’s no surprise that this crushing self-righteousness runs wild in our increasingly secular society. With God pushed to the sidelines all righteousness comes from ourselves. Everyone is looking for something to elevate their self-regard and for a reason to condemn others. Race is a pretty popular category, but these days politics seems to be the dominant one in America. “I am right. You are wrong, and that makes me morally superior to you”, is the cry from both sides of the political aisle. Even the fringe parties sing the same refrain. I am beginning to believe that this addictive self-righteousness is at the root of just about every evil known to modern man. With no heavenly standard of behavior, the standard becomes, “Whatever our side does is right. Whatever your side does is wrong.”, even when it’s arguably the same thing because, after all, it’s not the thing that is righteous, it’s the people doing it. In every repressive regime in the world it’s, “We’re right, those that oppose us are wrong and morally inferior, therefore we need to jail or eliminate them.”
In America we have Constitutional safeguards that, so far, have prevented those sorts of things from happening. Still, we have the seeds of it. We have Democrats in Congress who characterize President Trump, who is about as law abiding as any recent President, arguably more so than his most recent predecessor, as the most egregious law breaker in the history of American Presidents and about one Congressional blink away from actually becoming Adolf Hitler. We have public officials being hounded out of restaurants, shouted down at public speaking engagements, and MAGA hat wearing citizens assaulted in the streets. All of it stems from the “I am right, etc” self-righteousness. The other side isn’t always a shining example of virtue either. Personal insults, slander, and hateful ridicule are stock in trade for social media meme makers and those memes get gleefully passed around by people, including Christians, who ought to know better. The President himself is pretty handy with the personal insults and hateful ridicule aimed at anyone who opposes him. Calling critics in your own party “human scum” isn’t very aspirational or inspirational. All this stems from the same brand of self-righteousness. I am right, you are wrong, and therefore morally inferior.
When does it end? How do we stop it? I don’t pretend to know. I read something by Tim Keller the other day that I posted on Facebook. In it he says this, “The proper cultural strategy is faithful presence within,” he added, “not pulling away from the culture, and not trying to take it over. ‘Faithful presence within’ means being faithful; it means we’re not going to assimilate, [but] we’re going to be distinctively Christian. It’s about an attitude of service, uncompromising in our beliefs, but not withdrawing and not trying to dominate.” I agree with this. We are not supposed to withdraw from engagement with the culture or try to forcibly take it over. We are to be a faithful presence with in it. This is straight from the mouth of Jesus in Mathew 5:
“Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
As best we can, we are supposed to be true to our principles that were given us by God. We don’t support or cheer the evil deeds of others even when we voted for them or they are part of our political tribe. We don’t ridicule and insult those opposed to us because Jesus told us not to and because it’s counterproductive to the goal of advancing his kingdom. I have had dozens of people tell me that we tried being nice to our political opponents and it didn’t work so now it’s time to be insulting and vindictive just like them. Jesus didn’t say to love your enemies and if they don’t love you back then never mind. If the goal is to woo people over to our side, whether spiritual or political, I don’t see how condemning them and calling them names is going to work. When it the last time someone won you over to their way of thinking by ridiculing you and calling you names? Jesus also spent exactly zero words telling his followers how to take over the Roman government and use the state to enforce God’s laws. Looking back over the years at the Congress and the White House flopping back and forth from Democrat to Republican shows that the claim that being civil doesn’t work is a lie. Even if it wasn’t, there is nothing in our professed belief system that says that politics matters more than advancing God’s kingdom according to His word. As I have said before, responding to evil by becoming just like it isn’t fighting, it’s surrendering.
