The Biggest Pill To Swallow: Overcoming Self-Righteousness

Part 1 - Because Everyone's Journey IS Different

Let’s face the real fact-unforgiveness is a form of cancer that can spread into every part of our lives. It saps our joy, depletes the vitality of our relationships, reduces our quality of life, and can lead to destructive behaviors of all sorts-including the most destructive behavior: suicide.

Discussing forgiveness using cancer terms is appropriate for “Immersion”, though it may require some definitions and explanations along the way. Because Everyone’s Journey IS Different we realize that survivorship is always a matter of living or dying. In cancer treatment, some cancers are so big and complicated that it’s impossible to deal with all of the complexities at once. Because cancers often grow in and around vital organs, their removal requires patience and persistence. In cancer jargon, “debulking cancer” means to make it smaller, usually through radiation, chemotherapy, or a combination of both.

Once the tumor has been shrunk, it becomes possible, usually, for surgeons to remove the remaining pieces of cancer. Debulking cancer makes the situation more manageable and increases the likelihood of success.

Healing emotional wounds through forgiveness is similarly complex; so, in this discussion, we’ll “debulk” forgiveness so that, in our next discussion, we can identity and remove remaining obstacles.

One of the biggest-if not the biggest barriers people must overcome is their feeling of moral superiority or self righteousness toward the people who caused them harm. Why? Because of our tendency to “demonize” our enemies. We don’t want to forgive a demon. We would rather destroy it, and we usually have some pretty good reasons to justify our actions. For example, who could blame you ( or name the person/someone here) for thinking some pretty bad thoughts about the criminals who had ruined your life or your child, parent, etc.? We all get.

The point is that our enemies are not demons. They’re fellow humans. Addressing issues of self-righteousness or moral superiority is an attempt to put a human face on our adversaries, without which it is almost impossible to find forgiveness. Without confronting the completely understandable feeling of self-righteousness, we can often get stuck in a destructive mode and become self-destructive.

Self-righteousness is a strong word, and admitting to it can be a big pill to ask someone to swallow. I recall a initial response after I suggested that someone might need to address issues of self-righteousness? It was a shock to them that I even brought it up. You may have been in a similar situation.

Again their response was completely understandable and seemingly justifiable. Unfortunately, it hindered them healing. So, they could hand on to their self-righteous perspective, and everyone around them would understand, but it would keep them from getting to forgiveness.

We all have an innate ability to create distance from our adversaries; and in that distance, we make often well warranted judgments about them. A criminal is a criminal, but he is also human. Even the worst offender, one who has made an irreversibly huge mistake, is still a human being, in need of grace.

Further, to be human means that we are all victims of other people’s meanness, and here’s the most important part-we are also perpetrators of harm. Let me say it again: To be human means that we are victims and perpetrators.

No one escapes the consequences of being human, or the inevitable difficulties created by living with and around other people. We are hurt and we hurt others. As long as we cling to feelings of self-righteousness when we’ve been victimized, we will never be able forgive our perpetrators.

Developing a sense of empathy however small and tenuous toward the people who have hurt us is a critical bridge to cross. On one side of the bridge stand the self-righteous; on the other side stand imperfect humans with other imperfect humans.

“What can a wicked person do unto him who carries the saber of forgiveness in his hand? Fire falling on the grassless ground is extinguished of itself.”

I will explain the metaphor this way: Imagine that a meteor falls from the sky and lands in the middle of a tall field of dry wheat. What would happen? There would be an eruption of fire. This is an easy concept to understand.

Now imagine that same meteor landing in the middle of the desert, miles from any vegetation. It would hit the ground with a thud, and apart from the initial impact there would be no lingering aftershock. No fire. No damage. Only one more rock in the midst of san and many other rocks or things.

Now imagine that someone hurls a meteor of sorts at us, a fireball that comes in the form of a harsh word spoken, or a husband who has been… or any number of other emotionally traumatic experiences.

If we are a field of wheat, ripe for the harvest; FIRE: We will burn with anger, resentment, thoughts of revenge, and our memories of the event will serve as fuel for the flames.

But as the above quotation, reminds us, fire falling on grassless ground extinguishes itself. Is it possible for us to become “grassless ground?” How can we, in light of the traumatic experiences we face, resist becoming ignited with rage, anger, and hatred? And further, assuming that we find ourselves enraged (which I might add is a common human response), how do we put our the fire?

To become grassless ground, more or less imperious to the painful meteors lobbed at us from any number of directions, we must become humble enough to recognize our humanness, that is, that we are bot victim and victimizer, depending on the circumstances. We both receive and perpetrate harm.

I hurt people, and you do too. We don’t’ always do it intentionally, but our intentions are not the point. Whether we intend to or not, we lob meteors every day that have the potential to hurt someone. In reality, we’re all pyromaniacs. The real question is: how are we going to fight the fireballs that are lobbed at us? With fire, or with forgiveness?

In reflecting on experiences with people who were struggling with forgiveness, “forgiveness, or something like it, seemed to occur when they are able to see the people who had injured them as different people.”

My experience takes that thought a little further: pe3ople are often unable to see other people as different people until they are able to see themselves differently. Forgiveness can only occur when we see ourselves as different people. As long as we see ourselves as inherently better than other people and beyond the realm of ever having hurt someone deeply, either through our action or inactions, it is impossible to find the humility required to empathize with the failing of another human being.

Might I suggest “people are more forgiving toward transgressor if they see themselves as capable of committing similar offenses,” using such methods as “hypothetical scenarios, actual recalled offense, individual and group processes, and correlational and experimental designs.

There are three factors mediate the link between personal capability and forgiveness:

1. Seeing the other’s offense as less severe,

2. greater empathic understanding, and

3. perceiving oneself as similar to the transgressor.”

The Bible teaches that no one escapes sin, and that wrongdoing occurs through both commission and omission. Sometimes the meanest thing is not what we actually do, but our decision not to offer the help we could have offered.

The Bible teaches, “Anyone, then, how knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins. The truth is no one escapes this net. Either through what we do intentionally to hurt someone, or through withholding acts of kindness and love, we are forced to admit that, along with everyone else on the earth, we are not perfect.

Admitting our own humanity begins the process of becoming “grassless ground."

Stay By for Part 2-Culture