Being Righteous Versus Self-Righteous
There are those who seem to believe that serving God is about showing everyone else how godly they are.
Indeed, when I was a college student, I rented a cheap room from an elderly woman, who I’ll call Mrs. M for the purpose of this article. Mrs. M loved to tell me how Christian she was. She bragged that she never missed a church service on Sunday morning. She loved wearing her big white hat with the pink bow, like she was a wrapped-up present, like she was God’s gift to man. Mrs. M also kicked out one of her tenants who couldn’t pay rent after this tenant got cancer, despite Mrs. M having several vacant rooms in a large house left to her by her lawyer husband.
This behavior is not righteousness. To me it seems self-righteousness, and with self-righteousness, the “self” comes first.
If you do a deep analysis of the world’s spiritual, philosophical, and religious traditions, there is an emphasis on ego death. This is more apparent in Eastern religions like Buddhism. But even in the Abrahamic faiths this is also true. There is an emphasis on putting a greater purpose first before the needs of the self. This doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t take care of their needs. But I think we can all agree that most of the world’s moral systems see selfishness, narcissism, and egotism as bad traits. It’s not good to be so preoccupied with the self, that everything else doesn’t matter.
Unfortunately, there are those who use the appearance of religion to promote themselves instead of humbling the self and centering one’s existence around a greater good.
The Quran for instance, talks very clearly about self-righteousness.
Here is Chapter Al Maun [The small kindness] in the Quran:
Have you seen the one who denies the ˹final˺ Judgment?
That is the one who repulses the orphan,
and does not encourage the feeding of the poor.
So woe to those ˹hypocrites˺ who pray
yet are unmindful of their prayers;
those who ˹only˺ show off,
and refuse to give ˹even the simplest˺ aid.
Here is a similar sentiment from the Bible:
Matthew 6: “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
I think the verse above might be the source of the phrase, “tooting your own horn.”
In short, a person using religion as a way to show everyone how great they are can be a form of idolatry because the person is worshipping themselves, not God.
Now, I’m not saying this means that people should hide their religion, or only worship God in secret. But what I’m saying is that true righteousness is about goodness for goodness sake, it is about serving the greater good and helping others, without needing these acts to promote the self.
Here’s a definition of righteousness from the Quran:
[2–177] Righteousness is not that you turn your faces toward the east or the west, but [true] righteousness is [in] one who believes in God, the Day of Judgment, the angels, the revelation, and the prophets and gives wealth, in spite of love for it, to relatives, orphans, the needy, the traveler, those who ask [for help], and for freeing slaves; [and who] establishes prayer and gives charity; [those who] fulfill their promise when they promise; and [those who] are patient in poverty and hardship and during battle. Those are the ones who have been true, and it is those who are the righteous.
