Pharisee says, 'like other men, that tax man for instance.' This strategy of self-justification never fails, for there are always people more guilty than ourselves. That is why we read the gutter press: to feed our own smug self-satisfaction. 'Tut, tut!' we say under our self-righteous breath as we read the salacious headlines. 'Who could imagine anybody doing such a thing?' The implication being, ‘I never would.’
Our moral censure of others is once again just a device to distract attention from our own guilt. We think that by adopting a tone of shocked indignation over the sins of others, our own sin will go unnoticed. As Jesus put it, we point out the speck in other people's eyes in order to distract attention from the great plank in our own (Matthew 7:3). Or as the apostle Paul says, we try to escape judgment by making ourselves into judges (Romans 2:3). By this type of comparative obedience many of us will probably succeed today in avoiding the chastening effect of this very parable upon our lives.
Have you heard of the Sunday School teacher who told this story to his class? Afterwards he drew what he thought was the obvious moral lesson. 'Now, children,' he said, 'let's thank God we're not like that proud Pharisee.'
The trouble is it's all too easy for Christians to slip into the Pharisee's shoes without even realizing we are doing it, in the very act of trying to distance ourselves from him.
By these three classic techniques our Pharisee succeeds, then, in feeling good about himself. By these means he coped with his guilt feelings very well. So very well that they had been completely repressed. No flutter of moral anxiety disturbed this man's conscience at all. And yet Jesus insists that for all the effectiveness of his self- administered psychotherapy, his real guilt remained. It had not been diminished one jot. He felt all right, but his feelings did not correspond to the state of his soul. He might have been more emotionally stable as a result of his religious exercises, but he was nearer hell.
109
