Surely you have heard the expression: “The righteous right. . .”
(Luke 15:7 ESV) Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
The righteous right.
I heard the expression again on the radio yesterday. Janis Ian, songwriter, performer and practicing lesbian, made the comment concerning some of the hate she experienced from her song “Society’s Child” which is about a white girl and a black boy. She spoke of the hostility vented toward her because of racial prejudice and she identified her haters as the righteous right.
This is so easy to do for at least two reasons.
REASON # 1 TO KICK “THE RIGHTEOUS RIGHT”
This is a great way to deflect guilt or salve your wound. This is a way that many people return insult for insult because of the offense they feel concerning the perceived judgmental behavior of the moralists, aka the righteous right. To the liberal the righteous right are the “them” who are the cause of, if not all, most of the wrong in the world. Small-minded, self-righteous church folk who want to have a hand in everyone’s business. This is akin to blaming the hypocrites for a person not believing in God.
What the unrighteous left often do not realize is that it takes one to blame one. In other words, we, as humans – no difference in regard to moral, immoral or amoral, church or no church, global warming or non-global warming, Democrat or Republican – by default become or already are what we accuse others to be. The critical condemner, the person who indiscriminately places blame and guilt especially on a group of people, can just as easily be found to be a liberal as a conservative, a “it will be a cold day in hell before I set foot in a church” person as a Bob who has Sunday School perfect attendance pins for the last 36 years.
Everyone misses the mark; it just often comes out in different ways.
Our default mode is to be a critical condemner unless we choose otherwise. This is not a Christian or non-Christian trait or issue. It is a human issue, found on both sides, just as unfair and hurtful when spewed out by a liberal lesbian as it is when pounded from a fundamentalist pulpit.
Different person, different setting, same defect, problem. . .same sin.
The person who is not “sick” does not need the doctor, whether right or left, conservative or liberal, black or white or brown, American or European, old or young. . .
(Mark 2:17 NCV) Jesus heard this and said to them, “It is not the healthy people who need a doctor, but the sick. I did not come to invite good people but to invite sinners.”
REASON # 2 TO KICK “THE RIGHTEOUS RIGHT”
The righteous right pretty much deserve it. Yes, I said it out loud. I am tired of the ninety-nine “righteous” people speaking for Jesus Christ. I am tired of the healthy people who don’t need the doctor diagnosing the ills of our world. We are too often critical condemners, moralists promoting our own causes, our own self-centered agendas.
We need more sinners speaking for God. Said that out loud also. We don’t need the ninety-nine who are so found that they were never lost. We don’t need the ones whose lives are so together that they are doing God a favor by being his ambassadors.
We need the sick, desperate, spiritually bankrupt beggar who knows the darkness that Jesus Christ brought him out of and absolutely loves the light of God’s love and forgiveness.
(Luke 7:47 NKJV) “Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.”
We don’t love much because we have been forgiven little, if any.
We need the person who better understands the gap between God and man, the woman or man who has been forgiven of her or his many sins, the person who was dreadfully sin-sick and only lives because of the grace and mercy of God.
If those people were heard, then maybe the expression “the righteous right” would take on new meaning. Maybe a young Janis Ian would not have felt the hate and rejection of the nintey-nine but the love of the one that Jesus found, the one rescued from the scrap heap, the one who had many reasons (read sins forgiven) to love.
How many times do I hear us say “hate the sin but love the sinner,” and I think God must almost puke. Like the man in our congregation who would say that and then turn around and tell a cruel joke about homosexuals. What!? Throw up now!
Making people our adversaries is not God’s plan. Advancing our moral cause against them is not God’s plan.
So where am I? Am I one of the ninety-nine or am I the lost sinner that Christ gave life.
