SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS AND WISDOM

This will sound strange, but self-righteousness sits in opposition to wisdom. Let me give you a few examples of this.

Those who are self-righteous often do good things. Sometimes they sacrifice themselves for the welfare of animals. One woman fed stray cats. Before long, her house had become home for a multitude of strays. However, they had little respect for her house and urinated at will. The floors became so saturated with moisture that eventually the house had to be bulldozed, and the cats once again became strays.

How does this kind of thing happen? We need to feel good about ourselves. The woman with the cats had such a highly altruistic perspective in regard to her feline friends that she neglected common sense and ignored her rotting floorboards. Our need to feel that we are worthy, valuable, and righteous is so powerful that it seems to eclipse everything else, even wisdom.

The evidence of this is pervasive. In “Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country,” Shelby Steele argues that white guilt, the terror that whites experience at being labeled a “racist,” has harmed the black community:

• It has spawned a new white paternalism toward minorities since the 1960s that, among other things, has damaged the black family more profoundly than segregation ever did.

Victimization can also become a form of self-righteousness. Anyone who considers him or herself to be a victim seems to have this mind-set: “As a victim, I occupy the moral high-ground above those who have victimized me. This makes me worthy and entitled.” However, entitlement programs have done more to victimize their recipients than to help them. The black community was making tremendous strides towards parity with whites until the “Great Society” had all but disempowered them. However, one of the unintended corollaries of the “War on Poverty” legislation was that it enabled many whites to feel that they were righteous because of their support for those programs.

I am not trying to say that we do not have a God-given obligation to help those in need. However, this help has to be guided by wisdom. The same hand-out, which might empower one person, can disempower another. This is where discernment and prudence must take charge.

Where the need to prove our righteousness remains untamed, wisdom is forced to take a back seat. This need to consider ourselves to be righteous is so pervasive that it seems to affect all our endeavors. Recently, we were speaking with some farming friends about how our need to appear to be righteous has infected our choices regarding environmental concerns. For example, deer hunting is strictly controlled, causing the deer population to explode. As a result, we are witnessing the spread of serious maladies, like Lyme disease; the increase of deadly crashes between deer and cars and trucks; and even the devastation of crops and gardens. With a note of sad irony in their voices, our friends also mentioned that the murder of the unborn by abortion is celebrated by the same people who vow to protect the rights of “endangered species,” even highly poisonous snakes.

Here too, discernment has been replaced by the need to champion a “righteous” cause. The need to feel morally worthy and righteous is so profound in us that wisdom can barely find its voice. Instead, we find that we have become addicted to success, the approval of others, money, influence, and whatever the latest most-favored cause might be.

Our need to prove our worth and righteousness can be life-controlling. Even success will not satisfy for long. John D. Rockefeller had been asked, “How much more money do you need to be satisfied?” His answer was very revealing of our quest for significance - “ Always a little bit more.”

Is there any way for us to escape this madness? Success is a drug which always demands more. Perhaps we were not designed to be able to fulfill this need on our own. Perhaps instead we were created for love, for relationship. However, if we expect our partner to meet these deeply needs, we will inevitably be disappointed and will place a unbearable burden upon the object of our hope. However, there is One who can fulfill our hope.

The Apostle Paul wrote about how he had learned to not trust in his tattered

moral righteousness but instead the gift of Righteousness achieved through the Cross of Christ:

• I once thought these things [trust in our moral “achievements”] were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else [those things Paul had trusted in to give him his sense of worth], counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. (Philippians 3:7-9)

When we truly believe that we have been loved, forgiven, and valued by Our Savior, we no longer remain a slave to our psychological drives and their blinding powers, which imprison us in webs of self-deceit. Instead, we have been freed.