A Guide to (Political) Self-Righteousness

What activity is the most effective way to bring people together? Is it eating food? Cultural experiences? Academics? Worship? To be sure, all of these things are key components to sharing our common humanity. And yet, one thing binds us together like nothing else: a common enemy. Brothers may bicker and quarrel with each other, but if one of them is pushed on the playground, the others will immediately come to the rescue. Like bees defending their queen, we are most compelled to work as a single unit when a greater threat confronts us. Comrades are never more united, it seems, than when they are comrades-in-arms.

In the wake of the English Reformation, Daniel Defoe once wrote that there were a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse. Finding a cause to believe in can be both empowering and liberating, but the exhilaration of the cause can also blur the truth about those you oppose. As ready as we are lead to battle for the sake of democracy, we tend to forget that the opposing side claims to be fighting for the same reasons. When our discourse is dominated by ‘wedge issues,’ we fail to realize how much is shared across the aisle.

Instead of unity, the instinct to defend one’s tribe was on full display at the recent party conventions — first in Milwaukee and then in Chicago. As much as both parties wanted to cast a more hopeful and positive vision, to appear above the fray of messy partisanship, neither side could help but take shots at each other. Watching it all unfold, I couldn’t help but think of a Thomas Merton quote from almost sixty years ago:

How to be a pharisee in politics: At every moment display righteous indignation over the means (whether good or evil) which your opponent has used to attain the same corrupt end which you are trying to achieve. Point to the means he is using as evidence that your own purposes are righteous — even though they are the same as his. If the means he makes use of are successful, then show that his success itself is proof that he has used corrupt methods. But in your own case, success is proof of righteousness.

In politics, as in everything else, pharisaism is not self-righteousness only, but the conviction that, in order to be right, it is sufficient to prove that somebody else is wrong. As long as there is one sinner left for you to condemn, then you are justified! Once you can point to a wrongdoer, you become justified in doing anything you like, however dishonest, however cruel, however evil!”

Merton is apt to show how our world is built around the concept of a face-off. From political debates, to professional wrestling, the best way to win is to tear down one’s opponent. Telling people you’ll cut their taxes might win a few votes, but few elections are won without an enemy who is responsible for everything that is bad in the world.

Even beyond politics, our very survival often depends on whether or not we throw the first punch. Again, this is hardly a cultural effect, but simply natural selection. An “eat or be eaten” approach to life is embedded in our DNA. And yet, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. In an ironic perversion of scripture, we judge others specifically out of fear of being judged first. We are justified, but only by someone else’s condemnation.

Jesus is hardly ignorant of our propensity for self-righteousness. In his prodigal son parable, the dutiful older son holds his brother and father in contempt for their corrupt methods of family harmony. Manipulation! Codependency! You call this a happy family? And yet his own purposes are hardly altruistic. The elder brother is just as self-focused and ambitious as his black sheep counterpart. As Tim Keller pointed out in The Prodigal God, “Neither son loved the father for himself. They both were using the father for their own self-centered ends rather than loving, enjoying, and serving him for his own sake.” Perhaps the elder brother’s virtuous status was dependent upon his younger brother’s remaining the no good, deadbeat he had always been. The father wants to kill the fattened calf, but the elder brother wants the younger to be his perpetual scapegoat.

In truth, the battle between good and evil is not played out on the Senate floor or the voting booth but in every human heart. As Derek Webb once sang, “Nothing unifies like a common enemy. And we’ve got one, sure as hell, but he may be living in your house; he may be raising up your kids; he may be sleeping with your wife; oh no, he may not look like you think.” Try as we may to find the culprit across the aisle, we are often our own worst enemies. In an age when we have lost our shared national story, when the only things that unites us are the consumer holidays of Black Friday and Prime Day, we need something more to bring us together.

Thus, we build new bandwagons every day to ensure that there is always something we can agree on be against. Today, for instance, everyone hates Tesla trucks (even owners of Tesla trucks). Everyone thinks Ben Affleck is a loser. And everyone agrees that Raygun is the worst breakdancer in the world. We may roll our eyes at our appointed scapegoats, but without them we would have no communal cohesion. Moreover, we would be forced to look at our own inadequacies and insecurities.

There is one enemy that binds us all infinitely closer together, however: God. In the trial of Jesus Christ, we spoke as one single unit: “Crucify him!” Be it Pharisee or Sadducee, we all found common ground in his condemnation. Even Pilate and Herod became friends through the process. Not only did his death feed our self-righteousness, but our conviction that, in order to be right, it was sufficient to prove that he was wrong. Perhaps his broken body will be what finally brings us all together.