Of all the spiritual obstacles that can block a person’s growth, self-righteousness may be the most deceptive — because it wears the costume of confidence and conviction. It looks, from the inside, like principle. Like moral clarity. Like knowing what is right and standing for it. But from the outside, and in its effects on relationships, careers, and inner peace, it functions as a slow poison that narrows your world until only your opinions remain.
How Self-Righteousness Operates
Self-righteousness has so many ways that it operates. It shows up as the deep need to be right all the time. The deep need to tell people what you know. The need to correct people. The need to tell people things about what they do that they never even asked about. The need to have the last word in a conversation. It operates when we give a cold shoulder as a punishing act: “I am punishing you because you did this wrong and that wrong to me.” Any time we emotionally abuse someone, we do it with a self-righteous demeanor and stance of why we did it. That is self-righteousness: Self is the authority for our lives.
Self-Righteousness in Groups and Communities
Think about how self-righteousness shows up in group settings. Consider a situation where someone repeatedly insists that their particular community, meeting, or approach is the only valid one. “This is the best place. There is no place like this one. If you want the real thing, you have to be here.” If you really believed that, there would be no need to keep saying it over and over again. What that repetition reveals is the self-righteousness underneath — the attitude of “we are right and everybody else is wrong.”
The real worry inside that kind of proclamation is that you have to sell it — and throw it in people’s faces — because you have to sell yourself on what you are telling others you believe in. If you can convince others, maybe you will truly believe it yourself. That is the epitome of self-righteousness: performing conviction in place of actually having it.
Self-Righteousness in Personal Relationships
In personal relationships, there is no room for this attitude. You have to be a partner. Look for self-righteousness in any area of your life where you feel the need to be right, to have the last word, or to have your part validated. The way to address it is to back off, pay attention to the people you are with, and let them have their say without having to add to it or correct it.
Watch for the impulse to tell everyone what they should be doing, what product or program or community is the best — always promoting whatever you have discovered as the only right path. We do not have to tell everyone what they need to do. We should not feel the need to convince everyone that what we are doing is the best thing. That impulse is self-righteousness looking for an audience.
The World Gets Smaller
Look out for extreme individuality — that is where self-righteousness comes in and makes your world real small. Your life always narrows down real small with a lot of pain. You find yourself only looking at personalities in life and having an opinion about everyone and everything. This is the juggernaut of self-will — it is my personality, only looking at what I want. It is so small-minded.
Self-righteousness is exactly what authorizes us into deep depression. When we are having a bad time, we are the only ones that exist. We do not see anyone else’s troubles — only our own. The world shrinks to the size of our grievance. And that is where we get stuck.
How to Treat Self-Righteousness
Ask God to help you see self-righteousness and be ready to have God take it from you. Without reluctance, just let it go. Say, “I do not need to be right.” Ask God to show you how it operates in you. You may see it in some of the ways described here. Look for it in your day, treat it now — do not let it go undetected. Ask God to show you how to disengage from it and it will come to you exactly where your self-righteousness operates and how you can step back from it.
The liberty is this: when we do not act in self-righteousness, the world does not get small anymore. Self cannot see Self. But God can.
If you want to know that you are no longer in Self Will, ask yourself this simple question: “Am I at one with everything around me right now?” Isn’t it strange that the one true act of self is to be one with everything?
- Self-righteousness wears the costume of conviction — it looks like principle from the inside but functions as poison in relationships
- The need to correct, to have the last word, to punish with silence — all are forms of self-righteousness asserting that Self is the authority
- Repeatedly proclaiming that your way is the only right way is a sign you are trying to convince yourself, not others
- Self-righteousness makes your world progressively smaller: it reduces life to your opinions and other people’s failures to agree with them
- It is also the root of deep depression — when you are the only one who exists in your own mind, you are completely alone in your suffering
- The sign that self-righteousness has loosened its grip: you are at one with everything around you, and you no longer need to be right
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