by Dr. Ralph Blair
BEWARE of BOASTING and BLAMING! is Dr. Ralph Blair’s Keynote at the 79th EC Summer ConnECtion, May 31 – June 2, 2019 at The Kirkridge Retreat Center atop the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania
(PDF version available here.)
Three weeks ago, 150 years ago, a single word was telegraphed all across America. That one word was, “Done”. Transcontinental travel by rail would now be a reality, four years after the tragedies of our Civil War. A gold spike linked the two tracks that met from east and west. It was engraved with a prayer: “May God continue the unity of our Country as this Railroad unites the two great Oceans of the world.”
Unsurprisingly, self-righteous divisiveness is still with us and within us – the primary symptom of fallen humanityand our fiercely favored excuse for sinning.
Luke, a Gentile Christian, wrote more of the New Testament than any other writer. Here’s his account of a parable Jesus told to self-righteous people who looked down, with disdain, on others.
“Jesus said, ‘Two men went up to The Temple – one was a Pharisee, the other, a tax collector. The Pharisee boasted: ‘Thank God, I’m not like all those others — the greedy, unjust, liars, adulterers, cheats. And I’m certainly not like this here tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give away a tenth of all I get.’ But, the tax collector was bent down, over there in a corner, painfully aware of his sin and so ashamed of himself, he couldn’t even glance toward heaven. Blaming nobody but himself, he sighed, ‘O, My God, please have mercy on me, a sinner.’
“Jesus said: ‘I tell you the truth, this man, not the other, went home forgiven by God. All who boast inthemselves will be brought low. But all who humble themselves, will be lifted up.” (Luke 18:9-14)
Jesus uses the active and passive voices – active, for human acts, passive, for the acts of God. All who boast in self (claiming self-righteousness) “will be brought low” (by God’s action in omniscient and omnipotent justice). All who humble themselves, so very aware of their own sin and guilt that they repent in deep sorrow “will be lifted up”(by God’s action in mercy and justice).
In our self-righteousness, we refuse to identify with Pharisees, aware of their bad reputation. But, in our denial, we do, what Pharisees did. Aware of our own guilt, we try to distract ourselves, and others, from our awareness ofwhat’s too close for our comfort.
So, let’s put this old parable into our own times and terms. “God, I’m glad I’m not like all those others — the greedy, the unjust, adulterers, cheats, homophobes, faggots, white privileged racist Right-wingers, lunatic Leftists, toxic masculine misogynists, that Trump crowd, that anti-Trump crowd.” Ugh!
We claim we’re not like our scapegoats. So, why are they, our own specially selected scapegoats?
Ancientscapegoats were real goats! They were loaded up with sins and sent away to deserts to die. Of course, sins loaded onto scapegoats were not the sins of the goats. These sins were the sins of sinners.
These days, our scapegoats aren’t goats. They’re people, loaded with sin. But the sin, we insist, isn’t ours. We claim that our scapegoats are loaded with their own sins. Isn’t that weird?
No. It’s called psychopathological projection and denial. Our blaming them reflects our own unwanted sense of not measuring up. That’s why they’re our selected scapegoats, and why we can’t stand them.
Inside our own dark dens of denial, we see lots of evidence of our sin and guilt. So, we try to hide this by boasting and blaming. A guilty conscience boasts and blames; a conscience at peace with God does not.
We’re aware, but won’t admit it, that our sins don’t stick to the scapegoats we pick to pick on. Thus, our fury at them! We’re still stuck with our sin and guilt! And, with no better “scapegoats” available, and no awe of awareness of a sin-bearing Savior – we’re still stuck with our sin and guilt, frustrated and furious.
Projection by self-righteous propaganda that’s self-addressed to ourselves, fails to rid us of our troubling sense of sin and guilt. We refuse to see that this sense of sin and guilt is God’s gracious gift of His presence and purpose to save us from a self-righteous demise.
And, you know, it’s really not hard to find a sinner or two, on whom to pin our own damned sins, since, as Paul said: “All have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God.” (Rom 3:23) But, in denial, we exempt us from the “all”, anddisdain all them as, “the other”.
What many readers fail to see in this parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector is this fact: Each of these men knows full well that he, himself, is a sinner. One, in utter futility, tries to refute this gift of a God-given self-awareness. Thus, in effect, not by intent, he verifies his sense of his sin by his resorting to self-righteous boasting and self–righteous blaming.
And, he has the gall to do this, as he struts his way through a sanctimonious “prayer” in the presence of the All-Knowing, All-Seeing, Almighty YHWH. It’s but another sad case of religiously dedicated delusion – a quite common mode of denial throughout history.
All self-righteous boasting and blaming is a self-defeating self-defense in self-delusional depravity.
We do take after our first parents. After their self-obsessive refusal to heed God’s gracious warning, and yielding to delusions as wannabe gods, God mercifully gave them awareness of their sin and their shame. Yet, in their self-deceiving and self-defeating denial, they tried their damnedest to cover up their sin and shame with a few flimsy fig leaves – first of all the many self-help schemes that their descendants would contrive for cover-ups down through the ages.
When God came calling, to share, again, His peace for which He’d given them life, they were in pieces.
God asked a question to touch their self–awareness. “Where are you now?” The man muttered, “Hiding”, for he knew he was now “naked”. God asked how he knew he was now naked. He ducked the question and blamed “that woman” and God, too – griping about God’s gift of this woman, whom he’d received with such joy, finding in her, companionship that none of the animals had provided or could provide.
Then, the woman tried to escape her guilt in this mess by blaming a snake whose poisonous venom she’d so willingly and self-indulgently swallowed.
And, so it is, with us. We know we’re naked. We can’t, not know, we’re naked. The raw evidence is there in all the effort put into self-righteous cover-ups by boasting and blaming that are no better cover than those old flimsy fig leaves.
Today, most of us know better than to use fig leaves for cover-up. To even the least biblically literate, fig leaves would be a dead giveaway. Today’s cover-ups include a preening presence on social media, postured selfies, name-dropping, false modesty, padded curricula vitae, virtue signaling, identity politics, cosmetic surgery, et al., ad nauseam.
Worth is a glossy quarterly for elegant millionaires. It promises that, well-chosen men’s “shoes represent integrity and character.” This, under the heading: “A Man’s Sole” – s-o-l-e. If a man wants to make the best impression, he should “move with a certain quiet swagger that behooves unimpeachable authority” and wear “wrist candy”, i.e., fine analog timepieces. The ideal woman should aim for a body mass index of 16 to match the models on high fashion runways. But a BMI of 16 is medically considered dangerously low. Yet, by following these foolish, even health risking, tips, we will, we’re eager to believe, “stand out by making a statement [of] integrity and character”! Ah, yes. “Integrity” by deceit! “Character” in a cover-up! And we claim we’re not lost?
Our pretentious efforts to hide our disturbing self-awareness hide nothing from our view, except the stupidity of our schemes. Others can’t experience our sense of self, but we see right through our cover-ups, for, trying to cover up, we can’t not still see all we’re trying to cover up. And, with all the attention we must pay to try to keep our sense of self, covered up, we obsess over seeing what’s still there in our sight. Seeing it blinds us to the fact that others can’t see it, don’t see it, never have seen it and never will see it. But we see it! So, we assume they do, too.
Ours may be more expensive and more fashionable than fig leaves, but high-end cover-ups hide no more than those old fig leaves hid.
Yet, in all our self-righteous efforts to hide what’ssimply superficially “wrong”, we ruthlessly refuse to beware of awareness of how truly we fail to measure up. We repress and repudiate what is, in blessed fact, a gracious first step, offered by God toward the healing that we really do need, but stubbornly resist.
Nothing is hidden from God – not our sense of self, not our posturing, not God’s knowledge of us and of our rebellion against Him or how we need to be redeemed and can be redeemed in Christ Jesus.
Instead of falling for the foolishness of Pharisaical boasting and blaming, we, in God’s gift of a true self–awareness, may beware of who we are and who we aren’t. And, aware, we may then, beware.
Blessed assurance begins in blessed awareness. Aware of our sin, we may beware of it. Aware of the Savior we may be assured of God’s gift of His grace.
Then, we, too, may do, as a self-consciously guilty tax collector did, and take grateful notice of God’s gift of self-awareness to beware. Honest to God and honest with ourselves, we, too, may plead God’s mercy and stop trying to hide what can’t be hidden, either from us, or, even from some others, and certainly not from God’s omniscience.
But, troublingly aware we’re not righteous, we try to mislead others into thinking we’re quite all right. We perform our shtick, but we can’t buy our shtick. So, we can’t buy that others buy it. So, we’re stuck with a useless shtick, with no useful shtick in sight.
We use false display, posturing, affectation. But we’d better beware of showing off! Others see show-offs as turn-offs. And, if we and others, so easily see right through all of our showing off, why in Heaven’s Name, would we think that God fails to see straight through all of our sinfully stupid showing off?
Jesus gave wise counsel against such boasting and blaming. He cautioned that, in giving to the needy, for instance, it would be well not to let even our own left hand know what our own right hand is doing. Do right, without a fuss. Do right, for it’s right to do right. But, ignoring Jesus’ words, we trap ourselves in a self-righteously foolish fatality. (Matt 6:1f)
Jesus also said: “When you fast, don’t call attention to any dreary evidence of it.” (Matt 6:16) Fasting is between us, and God; it’s not for praise from people. Besides, who praises the self-righteous – except, under pressure, to suck up to those in power?
All virtue signaling reveals awareness of one’s not measuring up, even while refusing to beware of what he or she is aware of. Boasting tries to flush our self-awareness down our drains of denial. But, our drains of denial are already clogged up with all of our many failed flushes. As Jesus warned, selfish self-seeking already has gotten all the alleged “reward” there is to be gotten from what’s only emptiness. (Matt 6:2)
Of the pretentiously pious, parading around in flowing robes of self-importance, grabbing at perks of presumed privilege, Jesus again used the divine passive: “They will be punished most severely.” (Mark 12:38ff) And even, most immediately, for, they set themselves up for unavailable fantasies. All who boast of saving themselves by themselves have no savior in their self-blinkered sight – and know it.
Frustrated, thus, furious, they can be maliciously intent on finding fault in others. One Sabbath, when Jesus entered a synagogue, he noticed a man with a deformed hand. (Mark 3:1ff) Self-righteous men were there, intently, but not receptively, spying on Jesus. They assumed that he’d likely work a merciful healing, right there, in synagogue on the Sabbath. Jesus detected their evil intent to trap him as “guilty”.
He graciously asked them a simple question to give them a moment to reconsider their malignant motive. “Is it right, on the Sabbath, to do good or to do evil?” Caught, in their evil, they refused to reply. Grieving for them, Jesus scanned their hard hearts in disgust. Then, turning to the man with the deformed hand, he gave him an invitation: “Hold out your hand.” Immediately, that hand was made whole. And, just as immediately, that deformed mob of Herod’s political lackeys filled themselves with fury. In their self-righteous indignation, they began a plot to kill Jesus. Unrepentant guilty consciences are lethal weapons. And, their haughty animosity reveals the self-awareness of the guilt in the guilty.
So, let’s all,ask ourselves, privately, talking only within ourselves, inside our own minds and hearts open to God: “Have I, myself, here, this weekend, blamed anybody or boasted in myself.”
Perhaps we had a self-defensive presence of mind not to label it “blaming” or “boasting” at the time. That would have felt too uncomfortable. But, let’s each, ask ourselves, “Since arriving up here, “Have I faulted anyone – in thought, in word, or in deed? Am I now worried that someone heard me say something snarky about someone? Am I now distracted that he’s recalling what he heard me say? Well, for him to be affirmed by you, there, on the spot, he probably smiled knowingly and rolled his eyes with your eye-roll. So, now he’s distracted with his thinking that you’re thinking of his complicity in that interchange of blaming or boasting, or both. Hmm.
Have we tried to drop hints about how “woke” we are, and how “un-woke” others are? That’s boasting; that’s blaming. That’s self-righteous. But aware of our self-righteousness, we get to beware of it, we get to repent of it, we get to turn from it. Thank God!
We get to tap into our God-given self-awareness, recall a fault or two – or three, or more – of our own,even since arriving on this mountaintop, for another retreat of connections for Christian awakening.
But, beware, for we might try to rationalize, self-righteously, to defend ourselves to ourselves, over what we said, or thought, and surely knew better than to say out loud – especially at a Christian retreat?
What shall we do with a useful self-awareness? Shall we protest, “Well, others do it, too!” That’s blaming. “I only thought it. I kept my mouth shut.” That’s boasting. But aware, we get to beware of it!
And, thank God, recognizing our self-righteousness is nothing to boast about. Such awareness is God’s gift to grab hold of, and use in our life in Him and in His priorities for our good and for the good of others. We get to thank God for a true self-awareness, asking for guidance to stay tuned to Him, to be ever more self–aware, that we might ever beware of falling into selfish, self-justifying habits of boasting of self and blaming others.
Jesus taught us a daily prayer to remind us of our grounding in reality, over against all the spin that can keep us reeling around in circles. We’re to pray to “Our Father in Heaven”. That reminds us that our relationship with God is with our Father! And He’s our Father – along with our sisters and brothers in faith! Jesus’ urges us to affirm, “Holy is Your Name, i.e., “Your authority is holy”. We’re not informing God of His authority. We’re reminding us that our Heavenly Father’s authority is holy, wise and just. When we ask that our Father’s reign on Earth be as it is in Heaven, we look forward to the truest answer to all the problems of our fallen world. We don’t have to wish in vain for these problems to be solved by fallen humanity, though we’re called to play our part.
And when we ask for daily basics, we focus on what we need, not on what we, in fantasies, mislead ourselves into imagining we need. When we ask that, forgiveness for our mistreatment of others, match the way we forgive those who mistreat us, we ask for a practical compassion that can give more gracious meaning to life with them. When we ask for rescue from our temptations, we ask for our Father’s help to stay faithful to Him and to His high calling of us.
In prayer, it makes no sense to boast in self or to blame others. “Prayerful” boasting or “prayerful” blaming, without awareness of God’s overview and sovereign grace, is squatting in a temple to self.
But, what about imprecatory prayers like David’s: “May my enemies be erased from the Book of Life!” (Ps 69:28) Hey, God hears the heavy heart, however inarticulate the grief. Few, if any among us, suffer scorn that others suffer for God. David did. Many still do. And David knew, in this Psalm, that, it was for God’s sake he’d borne reproach. (69:7) Can we honestly say that about any of the scorn we face?
Jesus, fully faithful to his Father, suffered horrible agony for us. And, on the cross, he alluded to this very Psalm, identifying with all who endure such scorn. (69:9) He prayed for his tormentors: “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.” (Lk 23:34)
Aware that none could take his life from him, he willingly and lovingly laid down his life for us – not only, there and then, at Golgotha, where and when he pronounced, “It is finished!” and bowed his head and gave up his spirit (John 19:30) – but, even before the foundation of the world, from all eternity and for all eternity – our reconciliation to God was “Done!” (John 10:18; Eph 1:4)
Jesus warned that we’d be scorned for identifying with him. (Matt 10:16) But, is all the scorn we get, due to identification with him? And, whatever their reason for abusing us, do we forgive them? We’d more readily forgive them, if we’d learn to cope with our recognizing our self-righteous blaming,in theirs.
Given God’s gift of a self-awareness against all our efforts at suppressing reality, we yet try to smother God’s gift under still more self-righteousness.
But we can’t avoid awareness of what we’re doing. We’re lying! And this awareness, too, is God’s gift.
So, with which of the two in the Temple parable, do we, too readily, try to identify? With which of the two, might we, more frankly,identify? By God’s grace, we may move, in honest awareness of self, from hubris to humility, from self-righteousness to God’s gift of Christ’s righteousness. (Cf. Gal 2:20)
Honest to God and honest with ourselves,we’d see that our motivations and others’ motivations for boasting and blaming are the same. They, too, trip up over their self-centered frustrations, in aGod-given awareness that they, too, don’t measure up to God’s deep desire for us all. Yet, as it is with us, it is with them – we all distract ourselves, worrying over not measuring up in stuff that’s all so superficial, while denying a deep self-righteous rebellion against God.
Recognizing this as the sin of us all, we’d not be so touchy when they blame us or boast in themselves.
Can’t we know where they’re coming from in their boasting of self and blaming us? Don’t we have their number? We should! They and we all share the same wrong number! They’re obsessed with self; we’re obsessed with self. So, we’re fellow boasters, fellow blamers, so similarly tempted to self-righteousness.
Talk about a recognizable and relatable “identity group”! Our entire human race has been and still is, one fallen people, each one falling over a sense of self, a sense of sin, and falling all over each other. Daydreams of “diversity” descend into frighteningly factious nightmares, when we fail to see what we all have in common, created in God’s Image, but fallen.
We, and “they” suppress our God-given awareness of God’s best for our flourishing together. And, on both levels – superficially egotistical and spiritually estranged – we’re all guilty as sin, tripping up in our pretentious pride, instead of living the true life we’re offered, to daily thrive in God’s Image and in the righteousness of Christ, the Savior of the world.
So, in practical terms, we know something of what it’s like to be them, for we misbehave as they do, in our common, selfish motivations to boast and blame.
Why, then, in this world–on-edge, would we boast to them or blame them? Isn’t it predictable that, our defensive boasting at them will trigger their defensive blaming of us, and, their defensive blaming of us,will trigger our defensive blaming of them? All such self-righteousness spins out of control and into a crash, as if none had a clue. But, we have more than a clue.
Playing around with fantasies, we find it impossible to rid ourselves of jealous notions that, those whom we self-righteously blame, are somehow, better off than we. It may help to realize that our versions of them are not their experience of them, for they cope under fantasies of their own. But, if we can’t escape our fantasies of their “advantages”, we’re stuck in self-pity, and can’t empathize with their mixed-bag lives of disappointments that, indeed, match, in their way, our mixed-bag lives of disappointments. So, we’re all stuck in our own pointless, self-penalizing needs for revenge – but against what, against whom?
We hold ourselves hostage to fantasies of what we think we’re missing, and, what we think, they’re not missing. But, thinking we’re missing out on what is, in fact, fantasy, we’re missing nothing at all – except that big fat fact that, fantasies are fantasies. Every fantasy goes missing as soon as we think we’ve found it. But, then when we don’t get what we fantasized getting, we yet, once again, don’t get it!
We mislead ourselves, obsessing over images we but imagine we’re missing. What we miss isthe fact that imaginary images exist only in imagination. But chasing after every wild goose, we miss out on even any consideration of what we’re truly missing at far, far deeper depths of reality and real need for far, far more serious meaning in God’s eternal purpose for all created in His Image.
Freed by God’s grace, we’re freed from what we’d thought it all was all about. Now, without a need to boast and blame, we may still readily relate to and commiserate with others,aware that, they can no more get away with their boasting and blaming than we. Would that, they could let go of their own self-centered boasts and blame games, but, hey, maybe they’re without faith in Christ. What’s our excuse?
Recognizing ourselves in each other, as kindred screw-ups, we see we’re all so very much in need of mercy. As kindred spirits of the lost, yet, now more aware of God’s grace, we may beware of temptations to boast and to blame, and instead, may more readily share with others, the mercy we’ve already received.
But, if we continue to blame all but us, and boast only of us, we demonstrate our ingratitude for God’s grace to us, by which we claim to live as Christians, and, thus, we have no credible witness to others.
Waiting for others to change their minds or their ways with us, we may, indeed, have a very long wait. Meanwhile, we miss our chances to change our minds and our ways of dealing with them,for a worthy witness that may, by God’s grace, help them.
Besides, none of us can ever buy our own boasts, can we? That’s why we boast. We boast against our own sense of inferiority. So, we assume others can’t buy our boasts. But, of course, they’re not fixated on our sense of our inferiority, for our self-centered sense of inferiority isn’t in their brains. It’s in ours. They have their own self-centered sense of inferiority in their brains. So, they just might buy into our boasts. And if they do, they’ll hate us. But, that’s not why we wanted them to buy into our boasts!
All can relate to envy. But not to what is envied. The one who’s “without” whatever he envies, holds himself hostage to unmixed fantasies of whatever he thinks he’s missing out on that he thinks is actually in the possession of another, while, that other person who’s “in possession”, as it were, cannot experience her actual possession, as the unmixed fantasy that’s inside the mind of the one who envies her.
So, so-called “social justice theory” doesn’t help to bridge this imaginary gap. Indeed, it actually feeds resentment in the so-called “advantaged” that mirrors resentment in the so-called “disadvantaged”, for it’s our fallen human nature to complain of our supposed “disadvantages” and to envy imagined “advantages” of others. This shouldn’t surprise us, for we’re all so self-centered, no matter what the case may be in terms of a seemingly objective assessment of what’s, after all, relative, in so many more ways than one.
“Social justice theory” can fuel more blaming and boasting between recently favored “outsiders” and recently disfavored “insiders”. All remain “the other” to each other, by race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or however else we defensively divide and isolate as, “us-not-them”.
Contrary to today’s elitist fictions and fashions, thebest lessons for reality testing of all self-righteous boasting and blaming are lessons that our fallen race has always resented, resisted and even refused to recognize in self-righteous reliance on fantasies. Whatever the era, the lingo, alleged “logic” or however “woke” the rationalization, nothing’s new.
Lessons of ancient wisdom have stood the tests of time and tests of truth. Among the many lessons of wisdom, have been and still are these: Beware of blaming others and beware of boasting in self.
From blatant lies of a snake in the grass of Eden (Gen 3), to the “loud noises” of Pharaoh, mocked by the prophets (Jer 46:17), from the chaos of “big mouths” in the era of the Judges (Judges 9:38), to the boisterous, but bereft prophets of Baal (I Kings 18:25ff), from the arrogant boasts, noted by James (James 4:16) to Peter’s boast that he’d never desert Jesus, until he so very soon did, (Matt 26:31; 69:75) there’s a very long history of baseless boasting in self.
Here’s Paul’s refutation: “It’s by God’s grace that you’re saved, by faith, it’s not by yourselves. It’s God’s gift – lest anyone boast.” (Eph 2:8f) So, as he counseled: “Let’s behave with decency as in daylight … not in dark dissension, rivalry and jealousy.” (Rom 13:13f)
But humanity succumbed to absurdity in Eden, in a lie that promised that, without God, we’d be God. (Gen 3:5) Without God, we’d not even be! It was a perverted “power trip” pushed by an already fallen loser, destined for doom. And those who fell for that lie, in delusions of grand jour, fell thereby, into ruin.
Nietzsche extolled this “will to power” as our basic drive. But, it’s our fallen nature. (Gen 3) From Eden’s first grasp at boasting and blaming, to Evil’s last gasp of boasting and blaming, boasting and blaming always betray. So, beware.
Blaming, even if in innocent ignorance, is mainly motivated by willed ignorance, envy, prejudice, and hostility. It’s motivated by self-serving agendas. So, it’s easily exaggerated and elaborated with lies, half-truths, innuendo, and angry, even deadly, violence.
The Proverbs tell of six things the Lord hates, and a full measure of a rounded seven that summarize what is abominable to the Lord: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are quick to do evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and all who stir up strife. (Prov 6:16ff) What is all of this, but a summary of humanity’s angry self-centered boasting and self-centered blaming, spread these days, 24/7.
Gallup says we’re stressing more than ever. Suicide rates are climbing. But, we’re not in a hot war and our economy is booming. So, let’s learn from what holocaust survivors learned in the camps and what cognitive research reveals: Our stress is not caused by circumstances, but by our interpretations. We can hold ourselves hostage to our otherwise scenarios that tie us up into frustration and fear that we express in hostility by blaming any but us. Hate crimes in New York City are souring with an 82 percent surge in anti-Semitic crimes accounting for more than half of all hate crimes. Over 42 percent who identify with political parties accuse the opposition party of being “downright evil”. One person in five blames all who disagree as “lacking the traits to be considered fully human”. They’re blamed for “behaving like animals.” Sixteen to 20 percent in the two major political parties believe that we’d all be better off if millions in the other party would just die. Some 14 to 18 percent say violence is justified if their party loses in 2020. Counting on politics to give them respite from their own irrationalities is hopeless.
Yet secular self-righteousness is now being framed in “holy war” and theological terms, e.g., orthodoxy, heresy, sanctimony, demonization, etc. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, an atheist, sees this trend as, “moralistic condemnation of designated enemies … condemning, demonizing, or scapegoating designated sinner[s].” Use of this spiritual language in the secular sphere reveals a visceral awareness of a primeval abyss beneath the outrage. People don’t get themselves this fanatically offended unless, what they fear needs not to be true of them, they fear, is true of them. So, they resort to today’s self-serving, but feeble, trope: “It’s my truth! So, you, shut up!”
In the wisdom of the ages, self-righteousness is, of course, as old as the hills. As the Proverbs inform: “People call themselves pure, but the Lord looks deeper into the motives of their hiding.” (Prov 16:2) “They pretend that they’re clean, but they’re filthy.” (Prov 30:12) Paul notes: “Disregarding the way God puts people right, people set up schemes of their own. They’ve refused to submit to God’s way of putting people right.” (Rom 10:3) Paul knew this truth, in recalling his own self-righteous years as a Pharisee.
In the 4th-century, Augustine was transformed by God’s righteousness. He turned from his rebellion against God and saw, all around and deeply within, evidence that, as he said to God, “You made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You”.
There’s this deepest human longing for belonging to the One in whose Image we’re made to be at Home with Him. And nothing else can meet this deepest human need. No identity politics, material comforts, pretense to self-importance, postured piety, not a thing in and of ourselves, can ever address our God-given awareness of our rebellion and lonely exile in self – except God. With Him, we’re at Home.
This Good News, the very best news ever given or received, begins for us, in our awareness of rebellion against God. Aware, we may beware of our sin and repent and receive God’s forgiveness in Christ.
No people group, no matter how remote, has ever been found without what the historian, Philip Schaff, noted: “We find, everywhere in the world, the traces of a revealed God.” A thousand years before Christ, YAHWEH cautioned His Chosen People against their self-righteousness: “I will record Rahab and Babylon among those who acknowledge me – Philistia, too, and Tyre, along with Cush – and I will say, ‘This one was born in Zion’.” (Psalm 87:4) Five centuries before Christ, the last book of the Hebrew prophets declared to Malachi’s smugly indifferent people: “Across the world, from sunrise to sunset, says the Lord of hosts, my authority is glorified among the nations. In every place, incense is offered to my authority.” (Mal 1:11) Paul revealed to Athenian pagans, the true identity of a god they’d been revering as “unknown”. (Acts 17:16ff)
Said Calvin: “The door to the true God is opened [even] by pagan thinkers.” Goethe observed: “The conflict of faith and unbelief remains the proper, the only and deepest theme of the history of the world.”
Today, the awareness remains – there, under denial in the New Atheists’ version of Eden’s old Garden variety. It’s there in the arrogant assumptions and ignorance of self-professing “nones”. It’s there in the sloganeering of sanctimonious secularism. It’s there.
In spite of the nonsense, that deep need is there, as it’s always been there, that deep awareness is there, as it’s always been there, in one gracious clue or in another, under this boasted claim or foisted blame – it’s humanity’s lonely lingering in sin and unmet awe.
Now – lest my critique be mistaken as the blaming I’m critiquing, let’s all take note of the undeniably significant difference between defensively self-righteous blaming on the one hand, and, on the other hand, vital diagnosis, discernment, evaluation, debate and rational analysis.
Without rational analysis, accurateunderstanding is blocked. Yet, PC scolds slander rational analysis, critical thinking, logic and objective truth as clichés of Western Culture’s allegedly racist “whiteness”. Politically correct revisionistscelebrate their own systemic racial prejudice and ignore the fact that, Western Cultural ideals aimed at, and achieved, history’s highest levels of liberty and justice for all.
Undermining others is the aim of boasting and blaming. Understanding others is the aim of honest diagnosis. In boasting and blaming, one tries to impose one’s preferred reputation, and at others’ expense. Rational analysis allows any and all to have his or her opinions about any and all. But, opinions must be subjected to rational analysis and debate.
Blame seeks revenge. Discernment seeks resolve. Blame wants to punish. Discernment wants to empathize. In blaming, both blamers and the blamed are victims of vindictiveness and even violence. There’s no vindication, only retribution, retaliation. The blamed blame the blamers, who can’t resist returning the favor with more blaming. Nothing gets resolved. Everything’s made worse.
Rational discernment interrupts irrational tit-for-tat games, allowing for some reasoned interpretation, verification, clarification and insight and, perhaps, even some changing of minds and attitudes for a more loving understanding all around.
As Paul put it to Christians: “I pray that your love may abound in knowledge and in profound insight, so that you can discern what’s best, that you may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ.” (Phil 1:9f)
In this sin-disordered world, there’s a constant need to understand, to be aware of who we are, who we aren’t, who we’re called to be, and what we face.
Without awareness of danger, we can’t beware of danger. We can’t function, as we need to function, without awareness of our assumptions and beliefs and behaviors based in our assumptions. We must accurately assess our assumptions, our agendas,prejudices, ignorance, as well as those of others. We must identify and challenge these aspects of inquiry into truth, to find whatmay be in us and in them, and assess rationally, act accordingly in well-grounded understanding and insight. Failing to do this, we’ll fail to do the good we’re called to do.
Socrates’ advice, “Know thyself!” is good advice. But, knowing one’s self,can be disturbing and lead to defensive boasting and blaming. But, our boasting and blaming are clues that we need to get to know ourselves much better. We’re habituated boasters and blamers for a reason. Andhere it is: We know we’re not right. But, thank God, knowing ourselves aright, we know we’re not right. If honest and humble, we get to face this fact in the light of God’s grace, with well-based remorse, not with artifice and alibis.
Paul expressed the great truth on this matter when he wrote: “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting people’s sins against them.” (II Cor 5:19) We are to blame for our sins. But, Jesus took our sins and our blame, into himself, on the cross, and he paid our penalty in full.
So, we do have one in whom to boast with humble and thankful hearts. As Paul put it, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ”. (Gal 6:14) What a blessed boast – to boast in the truest meaning of that cruel instrument of public shame and execution on which God, in flesh, was crucified in our place!
When Paul preached that, “Christ Jesus is, himself, our righteousness, our holiness, our redemption”, he cited Jeremiah, “Therefore, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (I Cor 1:30; Jer 9:24)
Does this begin to suggest how seriously we sin and how seriously we’re saved? Again, the active and passive voices: our action and God’s. We sin, on our own. We are saved by God.
Boasters and blamers have always resisted this Good News. So, Jesus warned: “I’m sending you out as sheep among wolves. Be shrewd as serpents and harmless as doves.” (Matt 10:16) And Paul urged: “Keep on sharpening your awareness of the truth, deepening your discernment and insight.” (Phil 1:9)
We’ve all changed our minds at times. And, surely, we’re not done changing our minds. But, only in awe of God’s grace in Christ, can we be motivated to bid all our vainglorious boasting and blaming, good riddance, for good – for our good and for the good of all we’re called to love as we love ourselves, for we’re loved by God, in Christ. Amen.