Assured of Our Own Righteousness

If non-violence were as simple as “don’t hit, push, or bomb anybody,” we’d get there a lot faster. Gathering with others as a “shield of love” for campus when Westboro Baptist folks came to Guilford College and reflecting on what I saw and felt has pushed me to look at more nuanced levels. Non-violence is not as simple as keeping our hands to ourselves and not saying mean things.

While many administrators and faculty preferred to ignore Westboro’s presence, community members wanted to gather in a show of support. As we outnumbered them about 55 to 1, there wasn’t any energy of fighting. We were well-behaved as we faced campus, standing between it and the three members from Westboro standing on the corner, each with 4-6 signs. Between us and them stood a police presence assuring good behavior.

There was no energy of battle. What bothered me the next day was the energy of victory. If there are winners and losers, God isn’t the primary force at work. We were acting as if Love defeated hate. It felt good. Our moral superiority was clear. And who doesn’t like to feel morally superior? I know I do.

Until I remember the Light shining clearly on it within me and exposing my moral superiority as contempt or disdain. As not Love. Then it hurts to see my well-trained and well-practiced unconscious reactions. We bear these defenses for a reason. When we get beneath them our hearts break for the pain and brokenness we see in one another, including those from whom we want so badly to separate ourselves. They mirror us to ourselves in ways we don’t want to see. It’s so much easier to be convinced we know how things should be and to tell others how to be it! While it is not given to me to know without a doubt what is in another’s heart, what I saw and felt from others seemed to mirror my own responses that day.  

Was there any way we were like them? I asked the next day and heard an immediate reply: “We were all assured of our own righteousness,” which elicited another ouch. Those who know scripture will hear the echo of Luke 18:9-14, a parable Jesus told “to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.” We were doing our best to care about the things and people Jesus cares about, but in what spirit?

In the parable Jesus compares a Pharisee to a tax collector when they both went to the temple to pray. To Jesus’ audience, there was no comparison. The good guy was clearly the Pharisee, who in his prayer made it clear how closely he not only fulfilled the letter of the law, but went above and beyond. His audience knew the tax collector to be scum, and Jesus telling of him praying for mercy with downcast eyes must have drawn sneers of “Good luck with that!”

When Jesus turned the tables and claimed the tax collector went home right with God and not the law-abiding Pharisee, it was scandalous. Especially to those who were assured of their own righteousness. It’s so much easier to identify with the tax collector and feel exempt from Jesus’ hard words than it is to admit walking away feeling righteous as the Pharisee did. The Pharisee went home from the temple unchanged by any genuine encounter with God, which is the point of prayer.

According to Jesus, the awful tax collector was the one who went home right with God, a God whose standards for goodness clearly aren’t the same as ours! “Have mercy on me, a sinner,” he cried. Have mercy on us, God, we who feel no need of your mercy because we see ourselves already on the side of good and right! Have mercy on us as we seek to follow you and care about the things you care about—and miss our unconscious motivations and defenses along the way! Have mercy on our moral superiority, on our contempt for those whom we perceive as different or separate from us, especially when we hide it from ourselves! Lord, have mercy!