In case the photo does not make it obvious, winter has come. This is the first snow of the year. It was cold last night. Mightly cold. We all retreated under duvets, extra blankets — and kept the heat pump running. According to my unreliably reliable thermometer — it is 11 degrees (Celsius) next to the computer — and 0.5 degrees on the porch just outside.
So I’m posting the photo to FB with a comment — it’s cold — and thinking “SNOW DAY”. We ain’t moving until the road is cleared. (Now, for those Canadians who think this is wimpish, I live on a hill on a one in ten gradient. Without chains or studded snow tires, your four-wheel drive will nicely drift into the armco barrier, all four wheels spinning). And while there, one of my friends has posted this text. (And the school has texted me. It’s closed. The boys have a day off).
Put religion aside, the two most irritating pompous assholes in that panel are the fanatic atheist and the fanatic christian preacher man. Their speech, their body language and sweeping disrespect and disregard for all points of view other than their own. Both come across as equally annoying self-inflated self-important men whose brains have no space for broad mindedness
I’m not that tolerant. When people start slashing up serving soldiers, which has happened in England and France, or start rioting and burning other people;s property, as is happening in Sweden, I want the laws enforced. I don’t want to tolerate criminals intimidating me or my family.
I’ll tolerate error in teaching (but in the church). Heck, I’ll even leave it up on the site. But tolerance has its limits. We all know that — for we have all told our friends that their actions, their choices are damaging them, and that we will no longer tolerate their behaviour. My friend’s pretty clear. She does not tolerate self righteous assholes. Nor should she.
What’s fascinating to me is that, not only in the story of Jonah, but throughout the Bible, it’s always the immoral person that gets the Gospel before the moral person. It’s the prostitute who understands grace; it’s the Pharisee who doesn’t. It’s the unrighteous younger brother who gets it before the self-righteous older brother.
There is, however, another side to self-righteousness that younger-brother types are blind to. There’s an equally dangerous form of self-righteousness that plagues the unconventional and the non-religious types. We “authentic,” anti-legalists can become just as guilty of legalism in the opposite direction. What do I mean?
It’s simple: we become self-righteous against those who are self-righteous. We become Pharisaical about Pharisees.
Many younger Christian’s today are reacting to their parents’ conservative, buttoned-down, rule-keeping flavor of “older brother religion” with a type of liberal, untucked, rule-breaking flavor of “younger brother irreligion” which screams, “That’s right, I know I don’t have it all together and you think you do; I know I’m not good and you think you are. That makes me better than you.”
See the irony?
In other words, some of us are proud that we’re not self-righteous! Hmmm…think about that one.
Listen: self-righteousness is no respecter of persons. It reaches to the religious and the irreligious, the “buttoned down” and the “untucked,” the plastic and the pious, the rule-keepers and the rule-breakers, the “right” and the “wrong.”
Now, when I look at Scripture I do not see a sense of self righteousness. I see anger, lust, vengeful rage, love, care, charity. I see the whole range of human emotions. But I do not see us standing as if we are God. For when we do, we are pulled down.
1 To you I lift up my eyes,
O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
2 As the eyes of servants
look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maid
to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the LORD our God,
until he has mercy upon us.
3 Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us,
for we have had more than enough of contempt.
4 Our soul has had more than its fill
of the scorn of those who are at ease,
of the contempt of the proud.1Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
3So he told them this parable: 4“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? 5When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
8“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ 10Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
As Pastor T says, those who have done wrong often get salvation. Those who have been told they are correct do not.
And the problem today is that our choice of not hurting feelings, of supporting self-esteem makes us all self-righteous, self sufficient, powerful, and full good. With no need for repentance, guilt, or a God.
What a lie. And what horrible beings we become.
To follow on from your last paragraph, we have become such horrible beings because we do not understand that hurt can be helpful, when it teaches us to keep away from harm.
Yep. We reject correction.
There is a very fine, nebulous line between self-righteousness-against-self-rightesouness, and the strong emotional responses that one may have when one comes up against the pompous asshole attitudes of the self-righteous and self-inflated superiority of masters of whatever belief systems they be. I agree that one has to constantly re-examine ones motivations and attitudes behind one’s own attitudes, but that only brings us back to the thin fine nebulous line. One of my favourite visual images about Jesus is His anger at the temple gates. If He did that at our churches these days, nobody would recognise him! They may mistake Him as either a terrorist or a hateful atheist. Such is the state of our self-righteousness in our modern constructs.
He’d destroy the shop at most mega churches.