Not Like the Rest of Men

One of the most fundamental human problems is our ability to persuade ourselves that we know better than the others.

Proverbs says it in a sentence worth saying twice. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.“ Proverbs 14.12, and again at Proverbs 16.25.

The shallow reading is that this describes people who know better and sin anyway. Sometimes we do sin with our eyes wide open. But that is not what the proverb says. The way seems right. The Hebrew is yashar, straight, level, a road with no bend in it. From where the man is standing it runs clean to the horizon. He is not squinting past a warning sign. The sign is there. He reads it as scenery.

Socrates found the same wound, and he found it without Moses. No prophets, no gospel. An oracle at Delphi and a stubborn habit of asking questions.

“This man thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas I, as I do not know anything, do not think I do either.“ ~ Plato, Apology 21d

The danger is not an empty cup. It is a cup a man is certain is full. And if a Greek with none of our advantages could see that much, this is not a church problem or a political problem. It is a human one.

Now notice who Luke says the parable is for, before the parable even starts. He told this to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated the others with contempt. Luke 18.9.

The others. In Greek, tous loipous. The rest. The ones left over. And then the Pharisee walks into the temple and prays it out loud. God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of men.

He gives an honest account. He fasts twice a week. He tithes everything he takes in. Ask anyone in his synagogue and they will tell you the man is the real thing. His conduct is not the problem. His arithmetic is. He has divided the world into himself and the rest, and he did it so long ago that he can now say it to God as a prayer without hearing what it sounds like.

The tax collector does arithmetic too. God, be merciful to me, the sinner. Not a sinner. The Greek has the article. Luke 18.13. He does not sort himself into a category with anyone. There is no rest of men in his prayer, because he never lifts his head long enough to count them.

One of them goes home justified. It is not the one who was right about the facts.

If you have been reading this and aiming it at somebody, so have I. I had a name in mind before I finished the first paragraph, and I want you to sit with how fast that happened. That reflex is the thing itself. We call it discernment when it flatters us, conviction when it protects us, and courage when it keeps us from listening.

Humility is not the absence of conviction. Saying we are all wrong about something is not repentance. It is a shrug wearing repentance for a coat.

But being right does not protect us here. A man can go back to the source and still be the Pharisee. If anything, the people most confident they have gotten the text right are the people most likely to mistake their own eyes for the light. The Pharisee had the right book.

So try this. The brother whose criticism you dismissed in two seconds because of who he is. Your wife’s read on the decision, which you heard as an obstacle instead of a warning. Your daughter asking why we do it this way, answered before you understood what she was asking.

Go back to one of them this week and ask them to say it again. Then do not answer.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. Not the certainty that we are right. And for most of us it starts as the fear that we may be wrong in ways we cannot yet see.

~PW 🌮🛶