relationships and community on Self-Righteousness

Self-righteousness is a sense of moral superiority that appoints us as prosecutor of other people’s sinfulness. We relate to others as if we are incapable of the sins they commit. Self-righteousness w...

Many people live righteously for selfish or misguided reasons. If you are striving to please God, examine your motives today.

The Golden Result is a corollary to the Golden Rule, which calls us to do to others as we would have them do to us. The Golden Result says that people will usually treat us as we treat them. If we bla...

God of lasting forgiveness, You are not surprised to find us standing before Your throne once again, asking for Your forgiveness. It’s true, Father: we have sinned again. In our thinking, in our doing...

The self-righteous never apologize.

One needs to be right before getting righteous.

Moralistic behavior change done for one's self simply manipulates and leverages radical selfishness without challenging it.

Ah, there is nothing more beautiful than the difference between the thought about sinful creatures which is natural to a holy being, and the thought about sinful creatures which is natural to a self-r...

Stop being so sure that you are always right, and others wrong. Don't trust your own opinion, when you find it contrary to that of older men, and especially to that of your own parents. Age gives ...

Why is it so fun to be right? As pleasures go, it is, after all, a second-order one at best. Unlike many of life’s other delights—chocolate, surfing, kissing—it does not enjoy any mainline access to o...

If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.

As people seek out the social settings they prefer—as they choose the group that makes them feel the most comfortable—the nation grows more politically segregated—and the benefit that ought to come wi...

I’ve learned that Jesus is both terribly dangerous and terribly safe. For the proud, he is the biggest threat imaginable. And for the humble, he is the securest refuge.

Call to Confession: The prophet asks the Lord’s people, “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap.” ...

In his excellent book on the desert fathers, Where God Happens , former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams tells of an encounter between two monastic fathers. The first was Macarius, famous in...

Where do you turn for marriage advice when you aren’t religious? This is becoming an ever-increasing question as western cultures become more and more secular. One option is to turn to the London-base...

The Bruderhof is one such Christian community with many locations around the world. Unlike most such attempts to build radical communities, the Bruderhof has not only survived, it is thriving. In 2021...

Self-righteous service comes through human effort. True service comes from a relationship with the divine Other deep inside. Self-righteous service is impressed with the "big deal." True ser...

The ideas of right and wrong among the Hebrews are forensic ideas; that is, the Hebrew always thinks of the right and the wrong as if they were to be settled before a judge. Righteousness is to the He...

The current popular notion that judging others is in itself a sin leads to such inappropriate maxims as 'I'm okay and you're okay.' It encourages a conspiracy of moral indifference whi...

Entitlement is a hot topic today. The root word entitled means exactly what it says—to give someone a title or a right. It used to be reserved for the wealthy and the privileged, based upon economics ...

But it is important to be aware that the act of judging others has its origins in our self-judgment. As I often tell patients, “Shamed people shame people.” Long before we are criticizing others, the ...

There is not any thing, relating to men and characters, more surprising and unaccountable, than this partiality to themselves. . . . Hence it is that many men seem perfect strangers to their own chara...

Pastor: O God of grace, you have taken my sin and put it on Jesus’ head, and you’ve taken his righteousness and put it on mine. You’ve made me holy and blameless in your sight; therefore, you delight ...

Leader: Heavenly Father, I confess that I have sinned against you. I have delighted my soul in other things more than I have in you. Why, then, is it any surprise to me that you feel far off from me? ...

Pride is a by-product of insecurity. And the more insecure a person is, the more monuments they need to build. There is a fine line between 'Thy kingdom come' and 'my kingdom come.' If...

We boast of taking advantage of others, love evil more than good, speak deceit rather than tell the truth. We relish words that hurt and harm. We take refuge in wealth, security in savings and in succ...

If we get our very identity, our sense of worth, from our political position, then politics is not really about, it is about us. Through our cause we are getting a self, our worth. That means we MUST ...

Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of anyone. For no one can judge a criminal until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is m...

There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as 'moral indignation,' which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue."