12 Steps for the Recovering “Pharisee”

“We Realize that We Detest Mercy”

Mockingbird / 8.26.20

Quoted from the book, Twelve Steps for the Recovering Pharisee (like me):

  1. We admit that our single most unmitigated pleasure is to judge other people.
  2. Have come to believe that our means of obtaining greatness is to make everyone lower than ourselves in our own mind.
  3. Realize that we detest mercy being given to those who, unlike us, haven’t worked for it and don’t deserve it.
  4. Have decided that we don’t want to get what we deserve after all, and we don’t want anyone else to either.
  5. Will cease all attempts to apply teaching and rebuke to anyone but ourselves.
  6. Are ready to have God remove all these defects of attitude and character.
  7. Embrace the belief that we are, and will always be, experts at sinning.
  8. Are looking closely at the lives of famous men and women of the Bible who turned out to be ordinary sinners like us.
  9. Are seeking through prayer and meditation to make a conscious effort to consider others better than ourselves.
  10. Embrace the state of astonishment as a permanent and glorious reality.
  11. Choose to rid ourselves of any attitude that is not bathed in gratitude.
  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we will try to carry this message to others who think that Christians are better than everyone else.

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COMMENTS


One response to “12 Steps for the Recovering “Pharisee””

  1. E Nash says:

    I and my friends have rewritten the 12 steps many times for our amusement and for various other purposes, but this is the best!

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