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DEVOTIONAL
SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS: A PARABLE FOR OUR TIME By Frances Lee Menlove
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ODAY I AM going to tell you a story. This is a Jesus story, the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, which Jesus told to some people who trusted their own righteousness and regarded others with contempt. I’m a grandmother, and I’ve learned that not only are stories important but they also can be adjusted to meet the occasion. One of my grandson’s favorite stories is “The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig.” So, I will first tell this parable as it appears in the Gospel of Luke and then take some liberties. I’m allowed to do this because I’m a grandmother. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted. (Luke 18:10–14, RSV) Remember the audience here. Jesus was talking to people who “trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others” (Luke 18:9, RSV). Perhaps this parable is speaking to us in these contentious times. A parable is a made-up story with a pow-
erful theological punch, but this story is so familiar to us, we know the ending and have successfully moralized the sting out of it. We reject arrogance and self-righteousness and have identified ourselves with the tax collector. The jolt is gone. We even think of selfrighteousness when we simply hear the word “Pharisee.” But that is not the way an audience in Jesus’s day would have heard it. Pharisees were respected citizens. They were devoted to serving God, though they tended to apply the Mosaic Law less rigidly than did the Sadducees. It was the Pharisee Gamaliel who defended the apostles before the Sanhedrin (Acts 5:34-40). Pharisees represented righteousness and justice and the laws of Moses. They studied God’s word and urged people to live right. Tax collectors, on the other hand, were despised. Tax collectors were collaborators with the Roman occupation forces. They would agree to collect a given amount in taxes, and their profit came from whatever they were able to collect in excess of that. This system lent itself to corruption and extortion. Self-interest bent the tax collectors toward dishonesty. The more toll collected, the more profit made. And all this with the support of the Roman occupation. The money taken from the Jewish citizens went to the Roman government, which some Jews felt approached blasphemy—gathering taxes to keep the pagan occupiers in power. Tax collectors were traitors and unclean. Now, can you hear the punch in the ending? The good guy in this ancient culture is the Pharisee, but the Pharisee is the antihero in the story. And the tax collector went home right with God—without even being told to change occupations. Pretend for a moment the parable said: “Two men went into the Church to pray—
FRANCES LEE MENLOVE, one of the founders of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Michigan and a Master’s of Divinity from the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. She has four children, six grandchildren, and lives in Oregon. This sermon was given as a devotional address at the 2004 Salt Lake Sunstone Symposium (tape #SL04–301). OCTOBER 2004
one, a bishop, the other, a Hell’s Angel. The bishop prays, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people—that Hell’s Angel over there, for example. I fast, I pay my tithe, I do my temple work and am a bishop to boot.” The Hell’s Angel prays, “Have mercy on me a poor sinner.” The Hell’s Angel goes to his home made right with God, but not the bishop!” That story stings. We wince hearing it. Remember, our imaginary bishop is doing the right things, fasting, tithing, and obeying the commandments. The problem is all in his attitude, his sense of self-righteousness.
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HY does Jesus take self-righteousness with such deadly seriousness? Why does this one negative trait—self-righteousness—trump all the Pharisee’s positive ones? I think there are a couple of reasons. First, self-righteousness is the bane, the destroyer of human relations. Self-righteousness depends absolutely on a division of humanity into “us” and “them.” I can’t be up unless you are down. Contempt for others is always a partner of self-righteousness. The reason is clear. Pride is not accidentally, but essentially, competitive. This way of thinking about human relationships, in terms of “us” and “them,” was anathema to Jesus. Jesus was constantly and consistently inclusive. He went out of his way to make non-Jews heroes of his stories. Jesus kept company with outcasts. Nowhere did Jesus make his feelings about this issue clearer than with the second great commandment—to love our neighbor as ourselves. Self-righteousness leads directly to disdain for our neighbor, which short-circuits love. The Gospel of Matthew adds a further warning: “ Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3–4, RSV) There is another ugly side of self-righteousness—the inability to be self-critical. If we are totally convinced of our own righteousness, self-examination is not necessary. Listen to this old aphorism: “A surplus of virtue is more dangerous than a surplus of vice.” “Why?” we ask naturally. “Because a surplus of virtue is not subject to the constraints of conscience.”1 Being on the side of right can delude us into believing anything is justified because of our relative moral superiority. The history of religion-fueled hate and killing and oppression is horrific. ReligionPAGE 7