The Greatest Enemy of the Gospel is My Own Self-Righteousness

In the last post of a series of "Reflections on the Leadership Landscape of the CRCNA", I made the statement that "the greatest enemy of the gospel is my own self-righteousness". Since those posts were about candidacy and leadership development, I didn't want to use that space to expound on personal testimony. But since I do have a lifetime of thoughts and experiences behind that statement that I would like to share, I offer the in this separate post.

Testimony of a Recovering Pharisee

I was one of the many people who didn’t have a “testimony”. Born to believing parents, raised in church and Christian schools, I had learned a fair bit about the Bible and was formed by a community with many godly values so I had managed to avoid most of the big, noticeable sins. When I graduated high school and enrolled in a large university, my life seemed even more squeaky clean in comparison to the party lifestyles of other students. And when I joined Intervarsity Christian Fellowship in college, it wasn’t too hard to blend into the culture of Bible study, worship, spiritual retreat and evangelism of that community.  I remember how the love and joy I saw in that student community drew me in and made my heart ache to know and experience God in that way. 

I had started to feel a deep longing to figure out God’s will for my life and do something that really mattered. Having been formed in a culture of over-achieving, I started seeking out radical ways to please God. I won’t take the time to tell those stories about some of the extremes I went to,  but to give you a brief overview, they involved quitting my degree program, moving to a third-world country to serve in an indigenous Christian community and coming very close to working myself to death.

I thought I was obeying God through all this sacrifice and I hoped to somehow bridge the gap between my feeling of never being good enough and God’s favor. But instead the gap seemed to widen and I felt less and less spiritual. I was plagued with fear of never being good enough and driven by the anxiety that I wasn’t doing enough.  Transferring my  unrealistic standards onto people around me, I found myself critical and unmerciful, full of judgment and jealousy. I was all about sacrifice, but I didn’t know mercy.

In this miserable state, the Spirit of God graciously confronted me, revealing that, like the Pharisees, I was a white-washed tomb. My righteousness was like filthy rags because it was  self-righteousness. In that moment, the Spirit of God flooded my heart with cleansing and assurance.  A tremendous weight was lifted from my soul and the “sabbath rest” of the gospel became real to me. I no longer had to strive like a servant trying to please a master. I had received the  undeserved love of that a father extends to his  child and my response was child-like delight! I finally understood the gospel–the righteousness I had been searching had been given to me freely through Christ.

Suddenly I had a testimony, and. I felt compelled by a passion to share it with others in the Church who might have gone to church every Sunday but never understood their own misery and been set free by Christ’s mercy and forgiveness.  I was deeply motivated to help others find the grace of God in the face of Christ.

But it didn’t take long for me to realize that the struggle to stay grounded in grace is real and constant.  A good instinct to  gain more knowledge of the Bible could turn so quickly into a  “puffed up” state of thinking I knew it all. So often good deeds disguised bad motivations, like pleasing people or seeking honor for myself.  And each time I took some kind of righteous stand, I became aware of how unrighteous someone else was.  With all my good intentions I could still slide back into this default of my broken nature–self-righteousness.  And as lovely as the church can be, it’s also a minefield. I’ve noticed that every church and denomination I’ve been part of finds ways to prop  themselves up on some form of self-righteousness to appear a little higher than the others. We found ways to pride ourselves in cool factor, rich tradition, good theology, missional strategies, Spirit-filled worship…and anything else that we thought made us special.

Self-Righteousness on Steroids

Then add to that a crisis like the pandemic that stripped away all the good things we had going for us–we couldn’t gather, our great worship sounded terrible online, our cool factor went down the tubes.  With the world feeling so wrong,  we scrambled to feel right!  Instead of digging deeper into the well of Christ’s righteousness and supporting each other to depend on Christ through challenging times, we took to joining “right” political causes and facebook groups.  We became “maskers” or “anti-maskers” and found a range of other social issues to disagree on as well. We joined groups that put our self-righteousness on steroids, giving us an opposing camp to snicker about, stereotype and dig at.  We became sick  with suspicion, but even in the face of dissolving relationships we felt good about ourselves–now we could get some distance from all  the wrong-headed idiots! 

If that weren’t messy enough, in 2021-2024, as masks faded out of the picture, human sexuality began to take center stage for us in the CRC. Just as churches had to come up with a practical plan for navigating the pandemic, we had to come up with a plan for how to navigate our ministry in a culture that was departing from traditional perspectives on human sexuality. Still shaken from the pandemic, many of us clung to our anxious default–self-righteousness. Some found it in confessionality, others in justice-seeking for the LGBTQ+ community.  Both had some “rightness” to offer the Church, since both compassion and moral clarity are necessary for discipleship. But soon our positions and convictions morphed into identities.  They looked suspiciously like the “right-wing” and “left-wing” branches of our culture and we even adopted some of their tactics. Like politicians, we used “mud-slinging” to create a terrible narrative about their opponents, making them look worse through misrepresentation (the Bible calls this “slander” and “bearing false witness”, but it’s easy to justify this means when you feel that your cause is right). So much damage has been done, and is still being done, to the body of Christ through these means.

But I sense that the Lord is working to draw us back, helping us to see ourselves and others more clearly. Those who have leaned into Christ’s righteousness and seen their own faults have developed a gentler, less defensive posture. Many who experienced Synod 2024 firsthand noted their experience of love, respect and true attempts to see one another's perspectives. We emerged with pain and with much work to be done–the bulk of which probably involves persistent, honest self-reflection. In these times, I think it’s crucial for us to invite Spirit to search our hearts and reveal any self-righteousness that has attached itself to our souls over the last few years so that we can come to a place of seeing God, ourselves and others clearly enough to move forward towards Christ and surrender our pride.

I am aware as I say this that many from the progressive end of the spectrum will read this and say “I’m glad she’s calling out those self-righteous conservatives”, and many from the conservative end of the spectrum may be thinking as they read this, “I’m glad she’s nailing those self-righteous progressives”. So let me just say clearly, in case it wasn’t already clear enough, that I’m actually writing to all of us who are human. Self-righteousness is the default of human nature, and we must struggle against it daily to embrace and live into the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Questions for Reflection

Here are some of the really hard questions I’ve asked myself over the past few years. I am offering them as a prompt to anyone who might find them helpful for their own self-reflection.

1. What makes me feel like a good Christian? Is it what I believe? What I do?  Stands I’ve taken or positions I hold? Have I developed some pride in being more right, more compassionate, more theologically astute, more (fill in the blank) than others?  Has this sense of righteous identity caused me to lose sight of the grace of Christ?
2. What has been motivating my actions?  Is it love for God and others, or a desire to prove myself? Have any of my unloving motivations made me a “resounding gong or clanging cymbal” to others? 
3. Am I increasingly filled with joy, peace, patience, kindness, genteness, humility and self-control? Or am I constantly struggling with anger, anxiety, hatred, suspicion and factious behaviors?  
4. Does my lament over the brokenness around me include a true lament about the state of my own heart? 
5. How do I feel about the people I consider “wrong”? Do I treat them like family or like enemies to my cause? Have I tried to understand and empathize with them?  Have I sincerely prayed for those I feel are in error? 
6. Do I judge myself or others harshly? If so, can I relinquish those judgements and leave them to God?
7. Am I anxious about my own standing with God? When was the last time I just received his grace and forgiveness and rested in His righteousness?