self righteousness on Western Culture

Pop psychology is wrong when it tells you to look inside yourself and find your value. The magazines are wrong when they suggest you are only as good as you are thin, muscular, pimple-free, or perfume...

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...

At the core of every project of self-salvation is the staunch unwillingness to believe that God’s love and forgiveness can be unmerited. Those who would try and save themselves prefer work to rest, ef...

When you are smashing monuments, save the pedestals they always come in handy.

An obsession with righteousness (leading invariably to self-righteousness) is the normal human condition.

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.

This is one of Jesus’ most vivid parables. He paints a dramatic picture of two figures, with a twist to upend his hearer’s expectations. While the context of this passage involves the dynamics of an a...

Many have passed the rocks of gross sins - who have suffered shipwreck upon the sands of self-righteousness.

That which of all things unfits man for the reception of Christ as a Savior, is not gross profligacy and outward, vehement transgression, but it is self-complacency, fatal self-righteousness and self-...

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

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 ...

This is one of Jesus’ most vivid parables. He paints a dramatic picture of two figures, with a twist to upend his hearer’s expectations. While the context of this passage involves the dynamics of an a...

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...

Jesus warns us against our self-righteousness in the most dire terms. (He uses the word hell a lot more often than most of us are comfortable with.) He’s quite aware that while we humans have seemingl...

My devotion to niceness has won me a lot of acceptance and praise, but it has also inhibited my courage, fed my self-righteousness, encouraged my inauthenticity, and produced in me a flimsy sweetness ...

The greatest enemy to human souls is the self-righteous spirit which makes men look to themselves for salvation.

Every time we look at the cross, Christ seems to say to us, “I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.” Nothing in...

It is characteristic of those who are evil to judge others as evil. Unable to acknowledge their own imperfections, they must explain away their flaws by blaming others.

Context Assyria the Destroyer of the Northern Kingdom It is important to remember that in addition to there being seventeen books of prophecy in the Old Testament, each one of these books takes thei...

If my own righteousness is all that I am relying on, then I have no hope of finding favor in God’s sight. This is perhaps the hardest part of the Christian message to get across to people – the fact t...

A predominant characteristic . . . of the behavior of those I call evil is scapegoating. Because in their hearts they consider themselves above reproach, they must lash out at anyone who does reproach...

When a person has lost Christ, he must fall into the confidence of his own works…. Take great care that no one goes to mass trusting in confession, or prayer, or self-preparation; but lacking confiden...

Written almost a hundred years ago, this excerpt from the Reverend John W. Rilling points out one of the main reasons we continue to observe Lent, a period of repentance and discipline for many who ca...

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...

I once asked a psychologist who had been in practice for over forty years what is the most common regret his clients felt. Without hesitation, he said, “Selfishness.” Why was I not the spouse or paren...

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...

There are only two kinds of people: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

One needs to be right before getting righteous.

Jesus insists on this willingness to change, because he knows that self-righteousness will separate us from God forever. We’re all at high risk of becoming sick with self-righteousness, and if we don’...

It is easier to cry against one-thousand sins of others than to kill one of your own.