Why does faith involve acting like a jerk?

I needed a little gentleness this morning. I mean in my own heart, towards others. I was experiencing a "bad church experience" hangover.

Maybe you've had them. They're those times when you go to a church and get so angry you don't want to go back.

For me it was the self-righteous attitudes of some, but not all, of the presenters. I realize I'm a self-righteous jerk on a regular basis, but I get tired of being with other people's self-righteousness.

Maybe I have an unrealistic expectation that others will have grown further than me and be able to help me or inspire me, rather than demonstrate the same ugliness I hate about myself. Maybe it's because I'm trying to find the person of Jesus lived out in other people, and when they fail, I'm disappointed.

It got me thinking, "why do so many of us who claim to follow Jesus, have such a proclivity towards being self-righteous?"



I'm familiar with all the usual explanations about "sinful nature", but sometimes I think this is a bad case of hiding behind a label. It's like calling people "lazy"...it seems to explain a lot, but ends up blaming things on a vague character trait, rather than taking responsibility to figure out where a person's motivation has broken down. It may be true in an ultimate sense that I am sinful, but what is it about this condition that makes me prone to being self-righteous? Or without the theological language,  what's broken in us that makes us prone to thinking that our beliefs, behavior, values, etc are better than others?

My psychologist colleagues wisely point out, that these types of things are often related to insecurity. That when we doubt something, we often project excessive confidence to protect ourselves from the anxiety that accompanies uncertainty. This is especially true when we perceive anything different as being a threat to something significant in our lives.

Maybe faith, by its very nature is something we're unsure about. If faith requires us to believe a reality that is not perceived by senses, it must be accompanied by a certain amount of doubt at the same time. So maybe we're prone to self-righteouness about faith because we often so deeply doubt at the same time.  I can see why we might be insecure about that, and why we might react with protective over-confidence and false certainty. Self-righteousness is like a walking stick we use to prop ourselves up with our fragile and uncertain faith. The problem is, it's a pretty ugly walking stick, and it usually involves positioning our beliefs as better than others.

To be gentle with others, I have to understand that their self-righteousness, like mine, might actually be because they're feeling pretty unsure about the whole thing, just like I am. That the very act of faith,  brings with it a world of doubt and insecurity, and that sometimes this leads us to act in very unhelpful ways.