(when the good life isn’t really good)
I was going along happily in my life as a Christian until I came to Ecclesiastes 7.16
Do not be overrighteous, neither be overwise—why destroy yourself?
I thought you could never be good enough. Maybe Solomon was saying this sarcastically. I read further.
Do not be overwicked, and do not be a fool—why die before your time?
Nope, he was for real. Being over-righteous is bad, as bad as being over-wicked (not that being just plain wicked is OK). What could he mean? Could it be possible that a person had too many good works? Could a person be too good for their own good? The thought was, quite frankly, tantalizing. Then I remembered Jesus’ words, “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5.20).”
The Pharisees were the bad guys, right? Repeatedly Jesus rebuked them for their hypocrisy, their works of righteousness done only to be seen in the eyes of men. Their whole religion was based on doing good to earn heaven. Now I was on to something. It was possible to have too many good deeds, good, that is, only in man’s eyes, but not in the eyes of God. It was more than a remote possibility that I and every Christian could be self-righteous!
What was one reason the Pharisees were so religious?
They wanted to be seen and honored by men.
How did this show in how they gave to the needy?
They announced their giving with trumpets!
Jesus encourages just the opposite attitude toward good deeds—why does not letting “your left hand know what your right hand is doing” a good description of the attitude Jesus seeks?
You don’t remember it, you don’t keep track of it, so you are not tempted to brag about it to others.
If you are going to do something good in secret, you must have faith that God will see it—after all, you won’t get the earthly feedback of praise. Explain how such a faith will not think what it is doing is earning that reward from God.
A humble faith that recognizes God sees every good thing we do also recognizes God sees every bad thing we do—and the bad far outweighs the good! The only way he can stand us is through his forgiving love to us in Christ. By Christ we stand before God, not because of our good works, real or imagined.
Have you ever heard of a “reward of grace”? Think of the parable of the workers in the vineyard (those who worked one hour and got a whole day’s wage). What is a “reward of grace?
God’s “reward of grace” to us is heaven. It is a gift, really. But God in his goodness to us also praises us, credits it to us as righteousness. He treats us as though we did all the good deeds Jesus did. In one of his parables Jesus says the judge will tell the believers, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a few things, be faithful over many things.” That’s a reward of grace.
In the Old Testament, people fasted to show repentance or grief over sin. It was accompanied by prayer, so Jesus naturally talks about that, too. You can’t tell, by looking, whether a person is fasting or not. How did these busy beaver Pharisees fix that problem?
They prayed in public, right on the street corners and in the middle of the synagogues!
What kind of full reward would they get for being so blatant about their good deeds?
They will enjoy the (misguided) good opinion of men. Maybe even some mothers would be twisting their naughty little boys’ ears saying, “Why can’t you be more like Alfonse Pharisee?”
What is the secret reward from God they will miss out on?
They will receive an answer to their prayers from God.
Can you give some examples of such hypocrisy among the pagans in our world today?
A lot of joint-faith prayer meetings or vigils. They can’t agree on which is really God, but they all agree that whoever this God is he should answer their prayer.
There are some people to spend a lot of time doing good deeds, even donating large amounts of money to charitable building projects, that they might make some business connections, feed their pride or gain some fame.
One also wonders about the visiting political candidates in strange houses of faith.
Pretty easy, wasn’t it? Now silently think of at least two instances where you have played the blatantly busy beaver this past week. (Hint: all you have to do is remember times you got mad when someone failed to praise you for doing something you thought was rather exceptional).
Various answers could be thought of by each participant.
Our school system has a regular unit on self-esteem. In some cases it is tragically necessary, for there are some students who are abused, berated and generally trodden into the ground by poor excuses for parents. Also tragic, however, is the effect this unit can have on kids who already have a healthy self-esteem.
“Hi, good looking, you’re the best looking person I know!” they say into the mirror. (It gets better.) You’re the best person I know. You are my best friend” And so forth as the child is taught to praise himself.
Why would the sinful human nature see to it that this, of all the homework given at school, is the one that gets done?
The sinful human nature always is vain. It always wants to be flattered and praised, in the most extravagant terms permissible.
What is a Christian’s (godly) self-esteem based on?
Our view of ourselves is based on God’s view of us. We were worth so much to him that he sent his one and only Son to die for our sins on the cross. We are worth so much to him that he lives within us. We are worth so much to him he wants us to be with him in heaven. With that as the basis for my self-worth, I will want to live up to my high calling as a Christian.
While we don’t, as Lutherans, subscribe to medieval Catholicism’s categorizing of sin into mortal (deadly) and venial (pardonable), we can certainly see why they listed pride as one of the big, bad, seven mortal sins.
In Psalm 73 Asaph complains about the life of the proud. They have everything, the believers have nothing. He almost lost his faith until he remembered Judgment Day. Asaph has a fine description of human pride and its fruits.
What do the arrogant have to be proud of?
Their care-free life. Even health problems don’t affect them like it does the working poor. Their money paves the way for everything.
What does pride lead them to do to others?
They are violent to others. Their schemes to defraud others know no limits. They threaten, bully and oppress their way to more wealth. They act so holy, but their thoughts show earth is their home—they are so intent on possessing so much of it for so long.
How can they treat others in such a way?
They think God doesn’t exist, so there is no way God can either know what they are doing or punish them.
What, ironically, do they claim to be in spite of their lives of wickedness?
They claim to be good Christians, their mouths laying claim to heaven itself.
How do people today claim to be religious without being good?
I believe in Jesus, but I don’t have to go to church.
I say my prayers (claims the drug pusher/prostitute/con man).
The priest hitting on the church secretary.
They are listening to their sinful human nature and the devil get them into all sorts of absolutely terrible situations which so turn reality upside-down that they have to be spiritually insane to keep going through with it.
Can good deeds lead a person farther away from God?
Yes! The deeds of a hypocrite simply ingrain in him the thinking God can be fooled or God doesn’t exist. They succeed in getting what they want from me for their hypocritical deeds and their sinful human nature is pleased. It’s a perfect combination of self-delusion fed by megalomania and a lofty form of hedonism.
Let’s look in on John one last time. He conquered his drinking—finally, though the last bout really has ruined his health. He’s living alone, Jane moved away long ago and he doesn’t hear from her. He’s got a job down at the Walmart, but is starting to spend a lot of time at church, doing the little jobs usually left to the pastor who ahs no idea how to do them. People are starting to notice that John’s around church a lot. The local paper even wanted to run an article on him because he found a young child wandering around the church one evening and he reunited the fiver year old with his parents. Church members are starting to praise him, even thinking of making him one of the council members.
John doesn’t like it much. “Pastor, I just want to be left alone. I do what I do because that’s what I want to do for the Lord and to help out at his church. I don’t want praise or recognition—I could go off the deep end tomorrow and embarrass everyone, if it weren’t for the Lord. After all, I figure I caused you so much trouble, it’s the least I can do.”
Why shouldn’t pastor be planning a “Let’s Celebrate John Sunday” at church next month?
John doesn’t want to be celebrated. He wants every Sunday to be a “Jesus Sunday” at church, because Jesus has brought him through (alive and forgiven). Pride goes before the fall, John knows, and he just doesn’t want to face any more temptation about his pride and will-power. It’s like the ex-smoker, who, as soon as he looks down his nose at the loser smoking in the car next to him at the light, will start smoking again within the next two weeks.
Why should pastor be planning a “make me more like John” petition for his daily prayers the next month?
He himself is feeling a bit “special” with all the good things he is doing around the church—and it takes so much time away from his golf game!—that he doesn’t think the members really appreciate him like they should. Maybe a sermon (which he supposedly will write and will supposedly listen to himself) which stresses the value and virtue of unselfish service to the Lord out of pure love for what Jesus has done for us, will wake him up to what the ministry really is—service for the Lord by serving God’s people. This will help him realize whether they compliment him or not, whether they notice his work or not, whether they appreciate his work or not, he is still doing it for the Lord out of love for a God who freely gave his life on the cross for his sins. Maybe some of the other church leaders and members are feeling the same way, especially if they are starting to grind on each other.
Discuss how the modern fixation with diet, health and fitness can become the new Pharisaism.
These can be the ways to happiness, the highest good in our lives. You can have a person touting the latest diet craze secretly using some weight loss pills to hide her binge eating (or worse yet, she has an eating disorder).
The way to live “forever”? Join our running club—we run every Sunday morning! (And don’t forget to feel superior to those tubs of lard sitting in the Lutheran Church you are passing by! Keep this uip and we’ll really make the insurance industry effective—we won’t insure anyone who is overweight or has weight-related health issues because they brought it upon themselves.
And let’s do everything in our grasp to look healthy on the outside, though we may not be healthy on the inside. Anna Nicole Smith evidently made a good looking corpse. Maybe Michael Jackson will, too!
All these fixations will turn us away from God.