Religious Pride

Religious people are the hardest to please. It almost seems like the longer we follow or practice our Christianity the more rules we have. Every time we get a little better at something we make a new rule that everybody else needs to follow. We become the standard of Christianity for everyone else. When we first got saved we knew that mercy and grace were our only hope of acceptance, but after a few years of what we call growing and maturing we look back and say, "I wasn't even saved back then." Oh, but now we are! We have cleaned ourselves up, and made ourselves presentable and now we are acceptable to God.

This thinking is filled with pride. It causes us to put the cleanest parts of us in front and desperately try to hide the broken and dirty parts. It causes us to judge everyone else around us by our own self made standard. We expect maturity from infants. Instead of training and exhorting we condemn and tear down.

Sinners gladly heard Jesus. It was the religious people who hated His message. Good people hate mercy because it brings those who have not worked to an equal standing with themselves. So often our loud cries against sin are not from a loving heart toward the one who is being destroyed, but rather from a spirit of pride seeking to be validated for our abstinence and effort.