Category Archives: Addiction to Self-righteousness.
For All God’s Beloved Imperfect Children
Releasing Any Need for Perfection
Drawing on personal experience, Father Richard offers an encouraging reminder that we don’t need to be perfect in order to be loved and accepted by God.
We don’t come to God by doing it right. Please believe me on this. We come to God by doing it wrong. Any guide of souls knows this to be true. If we come to God by being perfect, no one is going to come to God. This absolutely levels the playing field. Our failures open our hearts of stone and move our rigid mind space toward understanding and patience. It’s in doing it wrong, making mistakes, being rejected, and experiencing pain that we are led to total reliance upon God. I wish it weren’t true, but all I know at this point in my journey is that God has let me do just about everything wrong, so I could fully experience how God can do everything so utterly right.
I believe this is why Christianity has as its central symbol of transformation a naked, bleeding man who is the picture of failing, losing, and dying, yet who is really winning—and revealing the secret pattern to those who will join him there. Everyone wins because, if we’re honest, the one thing we all have in common is weakness and powerlessness in at least one—though usually many—areas of our lives. There’s a broken, wounded part inside each of us. [1]
In the Everything Belongs podcast, Father Richard explains how he has been freed from his tendency to focus on “what’s wrong” with himself, others, and the world:
As a perfectionist by nature, accepting that things aren’t perfect has been at the center of my life’s inner struggle. I’m always seeing the wrong of everything. At the same time, I haven’t wanted to let “what’s wrong” drive the show—in myself and others. I want to be perfect, and I want other people to be perfect—but of course, the only perfection available to us is the ability to embrace the imperfect.
What I like to call “holy dissatisfaction” gave me my instinct for reform, but it also chewed me up. In the first half of my life, I was constantly thinking, “It’s not supposed to be that way!” I was constantly noticing, “That isn’t it! That isn’t it!” It’s only in the second half of my life that I am finally able to live in the holy tension of accepting that a “remnant” or “critical mass” is enough. Scattered in each group are always a few who get it, a few who live and love the gospel. When that became enough, and even more than enough (even in myself), I was free. So, this scriptural image of “remnant” or “yeast”—to use Jesus’ words—is very important for me and my own liberation. If I’m going to wait for the reign of God to be fully realized before I can be happy, I’m never going to be happy.
Addictions
Good morning all of God’s tenderly loved children! And that’s all of us. Good old Paul is still trying to shape us up in Romans. He not only says no quarreling, but to make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.
Well, pooh! I’ve given up alcohol, stopped smoking, and as an 86 year old widow my chances of gratifying my fleshly desires are beyond slim. During Covid I switched to a low carb diet, so I even had to give up my addiction to jelly doughnuts. And to top everything off, in the last two years I’ve come to understand those I oppose politically. I think my addiction to feeling I’m right and anyone who disagrees with me is not only wrong, but bad, is my toughest one to get over. But feeling right and virtuous and judging those that disagree as evil is the definition of self-righteousness. And that was the sin Jesus pointed out most often. It ends up making us push each other to extremes until we become blind to the need for balance. Even old self-righteous Paul admits we all see through the glass darkly. Nobody knows all the truth and nothing but the truth…but God. The worst sin is pride because we are blind to it. Here’s a repeat of the poem I wrote when reflecting on the “Body of Christ” in the scriptures.
The Broken Body
Reflecting on the Body,
you the hand, I the foot,
Christ the head and the heart,
someone else the hidden part,
I let the Scriptures
flood my mind with images.
Then suddenly an image
is so harshly real, I gasp aloud.
I see a figure staggering
and stumbling towards me,
arms flailing, head jerking
back and forth in spasms,
body parts all pulling
different ways.
This then, reality:
Christ’s earthly body now.
Lord, forgive us!
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 