6 Subtle Ways to Hold on to Self-Righteousness

In his volume of printed sermon on Romans: Chapters 2:1-3:20,  Martyn Lloyd-Jones pointed out that there are 6 ways that we, like the unbelieving Jews of Paul’s day, can subtly hold onto a supposed self-righteousness. Reflecting on the teaching of Romans 2:1-11 Lloyd-Jones wrote:

(1) “Sin introduces, or can introduce, a prejudice into our listening to the Gospel, or into our reading of the Gospel. …we come to the Scriptures, pick out what we like and do not notice what we do not like. This is exactly what these Jews had done…

Some of us, sometimes, tend to read the Scriptures, not so much to be enlightened and to be taught, as to confirm our own theories, our own ideas, and our own prejudices. Now, I want to make that a universal statement. We are all guilty of it.

(2) So many tend to make us put ourselves into special categories and compartments. That is the outcome of the first, is it not? ‘I am a Jew. He is a Gentile.’ We are all given those labels….We tend to put ourselves into categories and compartments and then, of course, we go on doing what I have already been saying—we find statements in Scripture to confirm us and to buttress our position.

(3)  ‘Quite right,’ we say, ‘These abominable sins!’ We see them as we walk along the streets…we read about them in the newspaper, and we are impatient with those people, we feel they all ought to be blasted out of existence. We see it so clearly as it applies to others, but never in the case of ourselves. We tend to be blind to our own sins.

(4) We are all experts at running away from [the doctrine of justification by faith only]…we run away from the doctrine of justification by faith only when we rely upon anything or anyone except the Lord Jesus Christ and His perfect work. I do not care what it is! If you rely on your country, if you say, “I must be a Christian, I was born in…—a Christian country,’ if you are relying on that kind of thing, you are denying justification by faith, as the Jews did. If you are relying on the fact that your parents were Christians or saints; if you have any reliance upon your birth and ancestry; of if in any way you are relying on any form of moralism, on your good life, and your respectability, and your good works; if any of these things is true of you, you are denying justification by faith.

(5) [When we] separate doctrine from life. The Jew, you see, did not take daily living into consideration at all, either in the case of the Gentile or in his own case…the Jew seemed to say, ‘It does not matter what I do. I am a Jew, and because I am a Jew I am alright. As for the Gentile, of course…’ That is separation of doctrine and life, and it is a terrible danger and a most subtle one. It does not matter whether you have little doctrine or much doctrine, it is equally dangerous.

(6)  Lloyd-Jones concluded his argument by saying that there is “a persistence with which we tend to defend ourselves. We start with one position,” he wrote, “then the argument knocks it down, and we jump to another. The Jews started with the position that they were Jews then they relied on the goodness and mercy of God, then on the law, then on ceremonial. we will clutch at any straw. “

The Subtle Art of Destroying Humans

My dearest Grubnat,

I am glad to see you are finally learning to be subtler in manipulating your human. As I had warned you, I was concerned that your boisterous assault on the unborn vermin with the rare chromosomal makeup (the “disabled,” as the other vermin call them) was going to expose all our plans to destroy them.

So I congratulate you on the recent article in The New York Times, “Breakthroughs in Prenatal Screening.” I can see your skills developing. We must continue on this path as it does two important things for us: 1) it further blinds the humans to our real schemes; and 2) it rids us of having to deal with those foul, weak, “special” children that the Enemy calls “indispensable.” We mustn’t lose our grip here.

Because of this article, and unlike my last letters to you, I actually have a few things to commend — things to see you repeat.

Now, I wouldn’t have opened the article exactly the way you did (more on that in my comments about how you can improve), but I must admit I appreciate how you dehumanized the mother and the child in your opening paragraphs.

Refusing to mention the name of the child was excellent! Names are bad for our cause. It makes the humans actually begin to imagine them as “children” rather than the “mere tissue” we want them to think those little humans are. Let them only think the child is “Down syndrome,” and never Michael or Elizabeth.

Also, good job on not quoting the mother at all about how she feels today about her child. Those puny humans, left with all their preconceived notions and prejudices, already do well at creating frightening alternative realities for that mother. They talk about how sad she was, how horrible her life was, how much better it would have been if that child had never been born. In fact, I am a little jealous at how quickly they’ve been trained to distort reality.

The humans who have been through the distortion tutelage usually aren’t even afraid of the right things! When a parent talks about both the hardship and the “blessing” of raising that child (yes, the Enemy often makes good come to the family through this vermin), a little whiff of reality sets in. And when that happens it becomes harder for us to kill the next one. So keep bleaching from their minds the idea of these babies being real persons.

Another thing: the clean, clinical description of the prenatal tests nicely ignored any discussion about how much the culture loathes these disabled children. How laughable for them to think that “tests” are neutral in a world like theirs!

The doctors and so-called ethicists are the best among them for our cause. Keep working on the medical professionals to believe that termination is a responsible choice, especially when you know the mother doesn’t have anyone around her to support the birth of her child.

And another thing: The following sentence was perhaps your best: “When prenatal testing reveals that a fetus has a serious birth defect, some women may consider ending their pregnancies.” Hilarious! Yes, yes, yes! Let the mothers think they are just making an “informed, personal choice” rather than realize that they’re part of our culturally orchestrated attack on children who have the extra chromosome. The Holocaust was fun, but this is even more satisfying. They actually think their individual choices don’t accumulate into genocide.

Now enough with the commendations! Here are a few things you neglected.

Why in the world did you allow them to have drawings of babies in the graphic above the article? Yes, some humans are so calloused that they don’t care whether it is a baby or not. But most don’t like to think too much about it. Don’t give them any evidence that the little creatures they are destroying are actually human just like them. Don’t make this mistake again. Test tubes or computer code or something like that are far better. Keep it clean and scientific.

As much as I appreciated your opening the article with the story about the friend with the disabled child, you overdid it. The headline was about prenatal screening and you immediately made the story about abortion. The humans are stupid but even they can see an agenda this obvious. Next time bury the abortion bit later in the story so that the test results always end with a “compassionate” termination.

Never suggest that they talk to parents who are raising children with disabilities. For some unknown reason to me, when they talk to people who have experienced real suffering rather than imagined suffering, they get encouraged and emboldened. You know how our Enemy works in suffering.

In the future, only present all the hardship and expense and loneliness and how awful their lives will be, always couching it in terms of how horrible their baby’s life will be. They feel better, and their hearts get just a little harder, when they rationalize that killing their baby was a good thing. That’s the reason that if we can convince a woman to have an abortion she will likely have more.

Make these corrections and I’m sure your next piece will be even better. And I know The New York Times will be happy to print it.

Content with your work, for now,

Wormwood

Don’t Miss the Subtle, Ironic Poetry of God

When it comes to God, you must always keep your eyes open. If you don’t pay attention you’ll miss jaw-dropping glory.

Take the book of Esther, for example. If you’re not careful, you’ll only see a Hollywood-like story of a beautiful young orphan girl who against all odds becomes queen of Persia and, with a little help, recognizes her moment of destiny and courageously faces down a Persian Hitler.

And you would miss the real story.

The real story is not Esther’s inspiring courage or her beauty or Mordecai’s sage wisdom. This story is about what’s really going on behind the machinations of power.

Haman thinks he’s taking super-sized revenge on Mordecai for dissing him by orchestrating a kingdom-wide ethnic cleansing of the Jews. But all he really is is just the devil’s pawn.

Ahasuerus thinks he’s searching for a royal goddess-queen by culling “all the beautiful young virgins” (Esther 2:3) from the 127 provinces in his kingdom and hosting the world’s largest personal beauty contest. He has no clue that he’s God’s pawn to checkmate the devil. Oh, and, by the way, after all that work he “chooses” a Jewish orphan who lives down the street.

The book of Esther is the subtle, ironic living poetry of God where he chooses “what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27) and shouts his total sovereignty over cosmic powers (Ephesians 6:12), raging nations (Psalm 2:1), and the course of human lives without ever mentioning himself once. Nor the devil.

One thing I love about John Piper is that he doesn’t miss the poetry and he helps us see it too. In fact, it stirs the poet in him, which is why he wrote a narrative poem-story based on the book of Esther, now published by Crossway and beautifully illustrated by Glenn Harrington. It has two movements. In the first, 12 year-old Esther asks her uncle, Mordecai, how she came to be an orphan. In the second, 35 year-old Esther tells her own child how she came to be queen.

Often we are helped to see glory by looking at biblical truth through someone else’s lenses. We see different facets by looking from different perspectives. That’s the value of this book. It will help you see more than you might on your own.

And it will remind you to keep your eyes open as you watch God’s living poetry going on around you right now. The real story is often not what is most visible.