When Being Right Becomes Our Blindness (Luke 18:9–14 )

This parable speaks of the greatest virtue, humility. Yet what often keeps us from being humble is not open pride but the quiet trust we place in our own righteousness. Luke begins by saying that Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and looked down on others. Those words already hold the message.

 We too often trust ourselves to be right. We do it gently, even unconsciously, wrapped in good intentions. We find comfort in our discipline, our prayer, our ministry, our sacrifices. And without realizing it, we begin to compare, not always out loud but in the small, silent corners of the heart. To make ourselves right, we make others wrong. It happens in very subtle ways in our personal, family, and community life when we long for our ideas to be accepted and feel hurt when they are not, when we notice another’s weakness and quietly reassure ourselves that we would never act that way, when correction becomes more of a habit than an act of compassion, or when we speak of another’s mistake to confirm our own sincerity. Sometimes it slips in when we assume that our way of prayer or service is somehow purer or more faithful, or when our conversations focus on who is wrong rather than what is wrong.

These movements of the heart are not great faults, but they slowly close us to grace. Self-righteousness often appears as strength, yet it weakens our capacity to receive mercy. It makes us certain instead of open, confident instead of humble. Jesus gives us a tender and vulnerable image in the tax collector standing far off, unable even to raise his eyes. There is no defense, no comparison, no need to justify himself, only the raw truth of being seen. And that is enough. Grace meets him there.

I often find that truth in my own journey. The words that matter most are not the many I speak, but the ones that rise from a life that tries, however imperfectly, to live what it says. The Pharisee compared himself with others; the tax collector compared himself with truth. The only comparison that leads to growth is with who I was yesterday and who I am becoming under God’s gaze today.

 -        Lilly Pushpam PBVM