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The Smug, The Snide, And The Supercilious
Why Jesus Called It Out… And Why We Still Fall For It
In Luke 18:9-14, Jesus tells one of His most jarring stories. Two men walk into the temple.
The first? A Pharisee… respected, polished, the kind of guy who knew his Bible backward and forward. Everyone expected him to be the hero. He stands tall, chin up, voice loud enough for all to hear. His prayer is basically a résumé: “God, I thank You that I’m not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers… or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes on all I get.”
The second man is a tax collector. Back then, tax collectors weren’t just disliked… they were despised as traitors. Sellouts to Rome. Greedy opportunists. If Pharisees were the “good guys,” tax collectors were the bottom of the barrel.
But this man doesn’t strut. He doesn’t brag. He won’t even lift his eyes. He pounds his chest in grief and blurts out: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” And then comes the gut punch: Jesus declares the tax collector righteous, not the Pharisee.
It’s the opposite of what anyone in that crowd expected. The well-dressed “holy man” went home empty. The despised man went home forgiven.
False Righteousness: A Deadly Illusion
So what happened?
The Pharisee wasn’t praying to God… he was performing. His righteousness was built on comparison. His confidence rested on a smug, snide, demeaning look at others. His sense of righteousness was fueled by superiority and contempt. That’s what I call a kind of “Supercilious salvation.”
It’s the belief that you can justify yourself before God… or society… by despising and putting down the “right people.” Yep, by hating the right class of villains. By finding worth in who you’re not.
And Jesus tears it apart.
The Same Old Trap Today
Social media wars: Not many winners. Where the wounded keep scrolling.
Now, before we roll our eyes at that Pharisee, let’s be honest. This mindset is alive and well today. Watch your X feed—any social media platform, for that matter.
We live in an age where people constantly define themselves by what they oppose. Crazier yet, it seems to change every few hours. If you love your cause, you’d better also despise the “enemies of the cause.”
Religious tribes do it. Political tribes do it. Social movements do it. Each camp tells itself the same story: We’re righteous because we hate the real enemies. The Left continues to define itself by hating Trump. Seriously, how did that work out? You guessed it. One of the reasons he was elected was simply because the Democratic Party had the hatred of Trump as its leading policy platform. They said, “We’re not Trump,” and expected to win.
Sound familiar?
This is why we see so much venom in politics, church fights, and cultural debates. Righteousness gets boiled down to hostility… who you cancel, who you mock, who you can’t stand. It’s the Pharisee’s prayer all over again, just updated with hashtags.
The Ritual of “Righteousness” in American Politics
Take a quick look at American history.
In the 1960s, liberal intellectuals proved their virtue by scorching McCarthy, Goldwater, Nixon, and the Vietnam War. In those circles, you weren’t “in” unless you hated the right villains.
On the other side, conservative groups built their identity around despising liberal icons, social movements, and playing jujitsu against the people who hated them. Different enemies. Same playbook.
And this isn’t just an American thing. Across the ocean, Leftists in Europe have been notorious for their “ritual hate” of the United States, usually during their own political struggles and upheavals. It wasn’t just disagreement… it was an identity marker. To be part of the enlightened class, you had to despise America.
Writers like Roland Huntford warned that this isn’t random… it’s engineered. In Brave New World, Huxley described societies manipulated to love and hate on command, all to keep people under control. Please read or reread these two books. Hatred is always used as a lever of power.
And here’s the kicker: both sides in every era believe they’re on the right side of history because they’ve learned to condemn “correctly.” But Jesus’ parable says otherwise.
The Law Twisted Into a Weapon
What’s going on here is more than bad manners… it’s a distortion of righteousness itself.
God gave the law as a reflection of His holiness. Its purpose was to point people toward Him. But the Pharisees stripped the law from the Lawgiver. They used it as a tool to build their own smug superiority, maintain social order, and justify their pride.
And don’t think that’s ancient history. Churches, political movements… and even corporations… still do the same thing today. They use false morality, intergroup rules, or slogans as a way to prove worth. To show who really belongs. They always arbitrarily draw lines between the “righteous” and the “condemned” according to their group’s rules.
It’s a sociological justification only. Not divine. Not biblical. Not eternal. Just another way of playing the same Pharisee game: “I matter because I hate who I’m supposed to hate.”
The Treadmill of Supercilious Superiority
But here’s where this path always ends up: exhaustion. That’s my experience with social media. On one level, I enjoy all the opinions and interactions. But the truth is… after some scrolling… I’m tired and often confused by how crazy it all is.
Listen, if your sense of righteousness depends on hating the right enemies and loving the right tribe, you’ll never stop. In fact, you may wake up in the morning only to find the tribe you loved has broken into a million pieces overnight. But more than that…you’ll always need a new enemy to fight, a new badge of loyalty to flash, another pithy speech or post proving you’re still on the right side.
It’s like a treadmill with no “off” button. You run, sweat, even collapse—but you never arrive.
That’s why Isaiah’s words ring true: “There is no rest for the wicked.” Because human-centered righteousness is a cruel master, it keeps you performing, comparing, and competing with other autonomous, humanistic belief systems.
And when you finally run out of energy, you look for an artificial Sabbath: numbing yourself with distractions, drugs, entertainment, or another stupid utopian promise. But none of it works. The treadmill still hums. The mindless quest for the right tribal position on an issue never stops.
Grace: The Way Off the Treadmill
The gospel smashes through all of this.
Now, David was an interesting character in the bible. What’s impressive is that he didn’t harbor personal hatred for those who hated him. (many did, by the way) He did, however, hate those who hated God. You can read what he said in the Psalms here.
But the message of Jesus is clear: righteousness and salvation are gifts. You can’t earn them by hating your personal enemies. You can’t buy salvation with good works. You can’t fake it by aligning with the right tribe. It comes by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
That’s why the tax collector went home justified. He wasn’t playing the comparison game. He wasn’t proving anything. He just came empty, desperate, honest. And God filled him with mercy.
That’s how it works.
A Warning We Can’t Ignore
But let’s not miss the warning. The temptation to define ourselves by our loves and hatreds isn’t just “out there” on social media. It’s in the church. It’s in our businesses. It’s in our politics. It’s in us.
Think about it: how often do we feel more righteous because of who we’re against? How often do we measure our worth by the causes we support… or the enemies we despise?
We may not stand in a temple like the Pharisee, but our social media feeds are littered with the same kind of boasting: “Thank God I’m not like those people.” It’s the same old trap, just digitized now and a lot easier to hurl some vitriol with a click.
And Jesus is still saying: drop it. It won’t change your status or save you.
Real Rest at Last
The good news? The gospel offers what nothing else can: rest.
Not the restless striving of tribal loyalty. Not the empty buzz of winning arguments. But real, deep rest. The kind that frees you from performing, comparing, and hating. That’s why Hebrews talks about entering God’s Sabbath. It’s the end of self-justification. The end of treadmill religion. The end of “salvation by being smug and superior.”
In Christ, we don’t just stop longing and lunging for more tribal favor… we receive. We receive His righteousness as a gift. We receive His peace. We receive His joy.
And suddenly, life changes. Gratitude replaces pride. Mercy replaces contempt. Love… real love, not tribal loyalty… flows out of us. Because righteousness and salvation were never meant to be earned, it was always meant to be given. Once you grasp this, you can be a Charlie Kirk and smile when you engage. Most remarkable!
The Final Word
Look, I’m not saying as Christians that we shouldn’t hate evil. I’m simply asking what David would ask. What’s your filter? Is it ego and pride? Are you hating God’s enemies or yours? Should Nick Fuentes hate Candace Owens because she comes to a different conclusion on an issue than he does? Should I then hate Nick because he hates Candace? On and on, right?
The fact is that the world will keep running on cycles of love and hate. Politicians will weaponize it. Movements will demand it. Churches often fall for it. But the kingdom of God runs on grace. Always has. Always will.
And that’s the only way to peace, freedom, and joy. So if you’re tired of the treadmill, take the tax collector’s prayer on your lips: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” That’s the prayer God always answers. And that’s the only path to righteousness and salvation.
That said, relax in love, smile, and engage!
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