Self-Righteousness

 The blades opposite each other that hit the sacred heart of God from His back were the dastardly defiance of His divine order hand in hand with the equally dastardly conspiracy with the Impostor with which they owe nothing at all even the dust from where they were animated. Self-righteousness is the Adam and Eve folly that continually pushes humanity to the brink of eternal damnation where the last vestige of divinity in the human person – the image and likeness of God, could be wiped out permanently and forever. It then assumes the image and likeness of the serpent that it followed blindly through its lifetime by its convoluted and distorted profession of faith.

In other words, John appeared neither eating nor drinking and people say, “He is mad!” The Son of Man appeared eating and drinking, and they say, “this one is a glutton and drunkard, a lover of tax collectors and those outside the law!” Yet time will prove where wisdom lies. (Matthew 11: 18-19)

Direct from the lips of the Son of Man who is God, He disclosed in simple language how He and John the Baptizer were looked upon by the people He got entangled and mingled with upon His visitation. The people of the time judged them both as mere human persons inferior to them. John the Baptizer was labeled as a mad man. The Son of Man, on the other hand, was adjudged as an eye sore of society mingling with the marginalized and discriminated  social deviants. They applied upon the Son of Man and the Baptizer the norms of human conduct and morality. They were self-righteous. They thought and felt they were a lot better.

Before proceeding any further, it is well to recall that there were only two persons in the gospels of the four evangelists who were conceived in a woman’s womb upon the divine intervention of God the Holy Spirit. They were, in chronological order, John the Baptizer and the Rabbi. There were no other persons then and now who were conceived in such divine unnatural fashion. There was no entry in the entire Sacred Scriptures that the Son of Man followed and fulfilled that the virgin from Nazareth was divinely conceived just as the Baptizer and the Son of Man was. On the basis of the divine conception of John the Baptizer and Jesus Christ Our Lord, it is totally inaccurate and a gross misconception to conclude that they were human persons or natural beings. Hence, they should not be treated as such and even branded as inferior human beings as the people during His glorious visitation thought they were. They were the “fruits” of the Holy Spirit. They were never human from the beginning.

From the preceding gospel text from Matthew the tax collector, OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST underscored the self-righteousness of people. Self-righteousness consists of two negative and divinely undesirable traits that is uniquely human: a faultfinding trait and a  judgmental trait. Self-righteous people find fault where there is none. They make a mountain out of a mole. They highlight a fragment of the truth rather than the whole truth. They put any person in a box even God and His angels not knowing that by habitually do so they hasten the completion of the nails of their coffin: the box that they put themselves in. They have the temerity to put themselves in a pedestal over and above their fellowmen lusting for praise and adoration for whatever terrestrial good they have done honking and blabbing their so-called achievements and how good they have been. Because of their delusions of grandeur, self righteous people thought that the terrestrial good they have obtained and done will register in the silent memory of God. They forgot one of the two felons by His side on the cross. The penitent felon got his place in Paradise when the human justice system of the time convicted him as a criminal. He had no terrestrial achievements to be proud of. It never mattered with God. God has no respect for anything terrestrial particularly any respect at all for the self-righteous. He cursed them as “brood of serpents”.

Self-righteousness began in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve exercised it without batting an eyelash in front of the Person who created them in His own image and likeness. It surfaced in a flash like a monster from deep down under the sea. It happened after they were confronted by their Creator for their delectable ingestion of the forbidden fruit. They did not address their Creator “Lord”. They did not prostrate themselves to ask forgiveness for the blatant and lethal miscue. Instead, they stood their ground and invoked their human right against self-incrimination. They transformed themselves from divine to human right there and then. They have been caught beyond reasonable doubt by their Creator Himself. Yet, they wiggled themselves out like slippery serpents. Adam blamed Eve and even His Creator for his woeful act by responding to the holy query of his Creator with the following serpentine utterance: “The woman you put with me gave me fruit from the tree and I ate it.” (Genesis 3:12) Adam, like the instant liar and lawyer that he became, arrogantly and irreverently implied on the face of His Creator that had he not been given a woman he would not have committed the fatal fallacy of eating without thinking. He found fault with his Creator and the woman given him. He passed the buck to his Creator for his dubious flaw. He had become a liar and a lawyer rolled into one that even today, in most instances, one cannot distinguish one from the other even its pronunciation. In the same vein, Eve threw her pointing fingers to the wily ancient serpent. She admitted it was a deception. Nonetheless, she kissed and embraced it. She acted as if she had no intellect and free will and blamed others apart from her miserable self for her obvious wrongdoing. Adam and Eve became faultfinders and accusers. They were blameless in their own eyes. They have become self-righteous.

For the sake of emphasis, self-righteousness is a trait that is distinctly human. It is not divine. It is demonic. The dictionary defines a self-righteous person as one who believes, perceives and projects itself as upright, moral and virtuous and, in effect, intolerant of the beliefs and actions of others. It closes its mind and restricts or limits itself to its own perception of uprightness, virtue and morality. Such was how the people that the Son of Man encountered conducted and behaved themselves particularly the high and mighty religious authorities of the time. Their serpentine behavior and attitude runs parallel or congruent with the Scriptural definition of self-righteousness: “the man has now become like one of us, making himself judge of good and evil.” (Genesis 3:22)

Self-righteousness, in the context of the Holy Bible, is the crux of terrestrial life. It is the imprimatur of natural death. It is the cornerstone of the Adam and Eve way of life that this present generation, more than ever, incessantly and inexorably adheres to. Most, if not all Christians, adopt and practice the Adam and Eve way of life and mentality. This is vividly reflected in the practice of their Christian faith. Self-righteousness is glaringly manifested in the strongholds of Christendom with the perpetual persecution and condemnation of Judas Iscariot as an evil man or a demon. The landmark and hallmark evidence of such truth and reality is the undeniable fact that no Christian male, Catholic or otherwise, has ever been named or christened after Judas Iscariot. His name is the most hated name above all other hated names. He has become the butt of sarcastic jokes and demeaning utterances from generation to generation. He has been traditionally bashed as part and parcel of so-called “Sacred Tradition”.

Most Christians, inadvertently or not, overlooked the Biblical fact that Judas Iscariot was given the perplexing order of betrayal by the Rabbi not once but twice to underscore that He commanded it and wanted it fulfilled. The initial order of betrayal was at the Last Supper: “Be quick in what you are to do!”(John 13:27). The final order of betrayal was at the Garden of Gethsemani: “Friend, do what you are here for!” In silent, servile and  solemn compliance, Judas Iscariot carried out the order whatever it was remembering and taking to heart the only order ever issued by the virgin from Nazareth throughout the duration of the Lord’s teaching ministry: “Do whatever He tells you.” (John 2:5)

Most Christians, inadvertently or not, overlooked the Biblical fact that the Betrayer was the first recipient directly from the holy Hands of the Eucharistic meal of His body and blood immediately after the bewildering and mind-boggling out-of-this-world order (John 13:27) that strengthened the resolve and motivation of Judas Iscariot and emboldened him to carry out earnestly the divine order. The command of betrayal is an out-of-this-world order because the Son of Man who verbally issued it is an out-of-this-world Person. His kingdom is not this world.

Most Christians, inadvertently or not, overlooked the Biblical fact that Judas Iscariot totally ignored the Impostor or Satan who was allowed entry into his heart (John 13:27) by following the order of his Master in earnest and without reluctance in fulfillment of the Scriptures. The role of Satan, of course, was clear-cut. It was to prevent the fulfillment of the Scriptures by stopping Judas from doing what he was ordered to. Satan failed. The Scriptures were fulfilled.

Most Christians did not give Judas Iscariot a second look. They trample upon the person who was addressed “Friend” by God Himself all because of their self-righteousness. They have not ransomed or reversed the Adam and Eve attitude and mentality that they continue to follow and apply until their dying days. They continue to believe in what they thought rather than what was taught more than two thousand years ago. They continue to believe in themselves rather than believe the words that shall not pass away that came out directly from the lips of the Son of Man who is God. They worship a God whose friend they despise to kingdom come. They are religious hypocrites of the first order. They are the present-day “wolves in sheepskin” or “brood serpents”.They are the merchants of the word of God on the basis of their own theories and assumptions. They are not evangelizers.

“I have come to call sinners, not the self-righteous.” (Mark 2:17)

The Son of Man was emphatic in distinguishing between the self-righteous and the sinner on the basis of His divine purpose in visiting this world where His Kingship does not belong. The obvious difference between the self-righteous and the sinner follows. The sinner acknowledges its sinfulness and unworthiness before its Creator and Rabbi who is God. The sinner can still be reformed. It is penitent. The prototype was none other than the God-loving felon beside the Crucified Christ. The self-righteous person is stubbornly and arrogantly self-centered and refuses to acknowledge its sinfulness and unworthiness before its Creator and Rabbi. It is impenitent. It can no longer be reformed. The prototype is the other felon beside the Crucified Christ who stuck with his miserable self until eternity.

All told, self-righteousness is a demonic trait acquired by Adam and Eve via a double-bladed dagger called sin. The blades opposite each other that hit the sacred heart of God from His back were the dastardly defiance of His divine order hand in hand with the equally dastardly conspiracy with the Impostor with which they owe nothing at all even the dust from where they were animated. Self-righteousness is the Adam and Eve folly that continually pushes humanity to the brink of eternal damnation where the last vestige of divinity in the human person – the image and likeness of God, could be wiped out permanently and forever. It then assumes the image and likeness of the serpent that it followed blindly through its lifetime by its convoluted and distorted profession of faith.

Peace to everyone!