I have chosen three difficult areas to talk about today. They can be very controversial but never- theless I'm going into each of them with my eyes wide open and unmindful of those who choose to disagree. The topics are unrighteousness, self- righteousness and righteousness. Stay around if you will and let me know what you think! OK?
Here goes!
I can almost hear someone say everyone knows what unrighteousness is. The dictionary tells us it is doing that which is unlawful. Well it is also doing that which God disdains. The sins of the flesh are all included in unright- eousness. Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lascivious- ness, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, drunken- ness and revelries, murder, and the like.
Again I can hear someone say "That's nothing new. I've heard all that stuff before."
I'm sure you have, but challenging unrighteousness is a process of both self-evaluation and standing up for the truth in the presence of others. Jesus constantly challenged people to change and expand their vision. Challenging unrighteousness is the act of challenging others to perform at a higher standard. When leaders challenge others they do it in such a way that others are uplifted rather than humiliated. Challenging others is demanding and requires charity and longsuffering as well as boldness and sharpness. Leaders that challenge unrighteousness emulate Jesus and help others progress.
Now self-righteousness is a horse of a differnt color alto- gether. In a society that sanctions every individual's right to seek his or her own path to perfection, self-righteous- ness can seem only as an irritating character flaw. One person decides that eating vegetables is the only respons- ible way to eat and turns pale when her friends order meat when they dine at a nearby restaraunt. Someone else discovers the advantages of running to improve his health and begins to badger all his friends to do likewise. We all do it on some level. We find something that gives us a fuller life and we want everyone else to have it too. We want to share the good we have found, whether it is as simple as a new way of losing weight or as profound as a new way of approaching God.
But when I turn my good into your duty and judge you for your failure to perform it according to my standards, then my wish for your well-being becomes something more sinister and actually becomes dangerous. My altruism becomes self-righteousness, which is no longer an annoying habit but a noxious pride that works evil in the human soul.
It may be difficult at first to hear something as common as self-righteousness called evil, but read any gospel and you will discover it describes it over and over.
Jesus does not preach humility because modesty is becoming. He preaches it because it is the only cure for the deadly pride and arrogance that make us want to kill each other, whether the murder is as subtle as excusing someone from our circle of friends or as bloody as killing someone with a gun. The only cure is to recognize each other as kin, united by the only one who was ever right.
"Why do you call me good?" even he protested. "No one is good but God alone"
I totally believe that it is essential that we have faith in uprightness, in justice, love, and truth, for these are among the highest evidences of true Christianity. I am not disturbed by charges of verbal infidelity; the infidelity I really dread, is to be faithless to the right, to moral principles, to the divine impulses of the soul, to a confidence in the possible realization God's will being done now. We know what we are at present; if we are doing right, acting in accordance with sacred principles, we all know how peaceful and happy we are. And we know how we are brought into torment by violating the right. We should have the assurance that if, we resolve to do right, we can do it.
I know there are those who will disagree with me on this, but I honestly believe that the spirit of man is a candle of God's lighting.
To amplify that, I means that there is something in man's innermost being that can be kindled and struck into flame by God. As we feed the flame with our lives we can become revealing places for God, a flame of God's life, as it were If it is true, and I believe it is, it is one of the greatest words that was ever spoken. It puts the basis of religion at the centre of man's life where it belongs. Religion in this view is not an addendum to life, not something added on by a remedial scheme to a spiritually barren and bankrupt outcast. Religion is not a foreign bestowal; it is a divine spring and capacity which belongs to our being as men and women from the beginning. Religion is just overwhelming, it is exhuberant life.
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