What's Tony Thinking

Self-Justification

“Self-defense is the most prevalent source of error in our thinking.” That’s a quote from the theologian H. Richard Niebuhr (brother of the more famous Reinhold Niebuhr).

What does it mean? Why does it matter? “Self-defense” might also be termed “self-justification.” It means making the case for yourself, for your importance, worthiness, value, etc.

I bring it up because it’s something that Donald Trump does pretty much endlessly. Think “crowd-size.” “I had the biggest crowd ever!” Or think his recent remarks about abortion. “I fixed it. Everyone said it couldn’t be done. I did it.” Or “I had the best economy ever.” And now, “Everyone says I won the debate,” referring to the Sept. 10 debate with Kamala Harris.

But it’s not just the former President. We get caught up in our own self-defense and self-justifications. It happens in personal relationships, often with those closest to us. We try to make our own case over against our spouse, the in-laws, a brother or sister, the neighbors, other people by referencing our own virtues, generosity and tireless contributions, etc., etc. We mostly run this tape in our minds. But occasionally it bursts out of our mouths in a self-justifying rant when we feel put upon, unloved, unappreciated or unnoticed.

Does it work? Nope. It doesn’t ever achieve what we hope, which is peace of mind. It only makes us sound, and feel, small and peevish while adding to the sadness of the world. Unless, of course, you are a narcissist, for whom self-justification is your stock-in-trade (see above).

What’s the alternative to trying to justify ourselves, to making our own case? A practice which, by the way, inevitably results in dividing the world into the good and the bad, into “us” and “them.” Today, we call that “polarization.”

The Christian message is that we are justified by God’s grace alone. We cannot justify ourselves by our works, effort, resume or the group to which we belong. We are justified by God’s free gift of grace. The gift of God’s mercy and grace is the ground upon which we stand. The classic text is from Paul’s letter to the Church at Rome. “Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3: 23).

A less abstract statement of the same thing is found in Jesus’ famous parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18: 9 – 14). The Pharisee advances to the front of the temple where he prays in a way that enumerates his virtues. “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” His prayer is a textbook illustration of self-justification.

Meanwhile, at the back of the Temple barely in the door, the tax-collector (a Jew complicit with the Romans and thus a traitor, treated with disgust and disdain by people like the Pharisee) prayed only (or maybe wailed), “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

Jesus wraps up the story by saying that it was the tax-collector who, “went down to his home justified rather than the other.” Justification (peace inside your own skin) comes by God’s grace, not be a self-justifying list of one’s good deeds or by comparison to other people.

Of course this is sometimes forgotten in actual churches. We celebrate our good works, our enlightened views or our correct faith. Sadly, this combines with looking down on others just as the Pharisee compared himself favorably to the tax-collector. “Thank God, I’m not like him! Thank God, we’re not like them!”

We often think of church as a place, to quote my friend Jason Micheli, for “good people to become better,” rather than “bad people trying to cope with their failures to be good.” It’s what Francis Spufford has in mind in UnApologetic where he terms the church “the international league of the guilty.” The heart of our faith, and the good news of the gospel, is God’s grace for sinners, for flawed and imperfect people, who regularly screw up — which would be all of us.

Niebuhr had it right, if in a scholarly, under-stated sort of way: “self-defense is the most prevalent source of error in our thinking.” We are justified, that is put right — another bible word is “reconciled” — to God and our neighbor not by our virtues and achievements, but by grace, by God’s gift of mercy to broken, flawed people.