Sometime back, I was walking my dogs. I try to take a walk up the mountain each morning. It is good for my heart, and the two basset hounds, Dixie and Belle, the wonder-dogs, seem to put up with it, though their natural inclination is to sleep. It is really the only exercise I get, and so my goal is to get my heart rate up and keep it up for about 30 minutes. I walk up a street that has a handful of houses on it, and as I walked past a particular house that morning, a dog came racing out of the front-yard.

He wasn’t ferocious; in fact, he was far from it. He was happy and friendly. He just wanted to join the pack. He would circle in and greet Dixie and Belle, the way only dogs greet other dogs. Then he would dash up in the woods beside the street, and back in the street again. Then he would race up ahead of us and turn around and bound back and greet us again. He was just having a grand old time, but it was all to his owner’s great frustration. All the while (I have forgotten his name, so we’ll just call him Rover) Rover was running and dancing and playing, a teenage boy kept yelling his name. “Rover, get back here. Rover, stop running and come here. Rover, Rover, come here, boy.” Unfortunately, Rover was having the time of his life, and was completely ignoring this boy’s pleas.

Now, mind you, while all of this is going on, I’m still taking my walk, trying to keep up my pace, trying to get my exercise and keep my heart rate up. And as I keep walking, Rover keeps up with our pace. He doesn’t really join us, per se; but he certainly doesn’t run back to his owner. Dixie and Belle and I keep up our walk and Rover is in and out, up and down, side to side, but he is generally near, or even with, us. At some point, this frustrated teenager runs up the street in his bare feet and finally catches poor Rover by the scruff of his neck. When he does, he huff-and-puffs to me his out-of-breath frustration. “Mister, you could have stopped.” “Look, he wasn’t following me; he was doing his own thing,” I said. “Well, he would have stopped if you would have stopped.” All of this conversation was taking place while I was walking and keeping up my pace. And then the boy scooped Rover up and walked back to his house.

Now, I am old enough to be the kid’s father (and almost his grandfather), so I didn’t want to admit it, but he was right. If I had stopped walking, Rover would have probably stopped running around, and the boy could have retrieved his dog. But I was on my walk, trying to get my exercise, and I had to keep my pace to keep my heartrate up. But, in my heart, I knew that I should have stopped. And so, pretty quickly, I began this argument in my head. “Well, it is not my responsibility to keep up with somebody else’s dog. I’m just out here trying to get my exercise, taking my morning walk. Besides, he needs to control his animal (suddenly, in my mind, Rover went from a dog to an animal). He ought to have him in the house or behind a fence or on a leash. My dogs are on a leash. I keep control of my dogs. People need to keep control of their animals like I do.” And, everything in my little head-bound argument was right. Rover was not my responsibility. My purpose that morning was not somebody else’s animal; it was my exercise and my heartrate. And Rover’s owners really should keep him under control. Those were all true statements.

So, I got to the top of the mountain, where the road makes a cul-de-sac. It is at this point, as I start to walk back down, that I begin to pray. I have a prayer list, but I can’t start it until I get to the top. There’s too much huffing and puffing going on till I get to the top. As I started to walk down and began to pray, God just stopped me. I really couldn’t begin to pray about friends and family and their needs. God would not let me. He forced me to deal with my heart, and with Rover and the teenaged boy. I tried once more to justify my actions, but God would have none of it. He said, “Alan, you are a self-righteous Pharisee.” I said, “Excuse me!” He said, “Your actions were right, but they weren’t loving, and that is a classic mark of a Pharisee. All you had to do was stop and let the boy catch his dog. But your exercise was more important that being kind to that boy.”

By the time I got back close to the boy’s house, he was inside, and I haven’t seen him since. He probably went to school that morning cursing that old curmudgeon that walks up his street every morning, and I deserved those curses. You see, in my mind, it was more important to be right that it was to be loving. But Jesus disagrees.

Jesus summarized the whole Old Testament law by saying that we should love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. But not once did he mention being right. Jesus never talked much about being right or doing right or thinking right. When given the chance to tell us what God expects of us, he focused on love.

Folks, you can tell if you are leaning toward self-righteousness if your tendency is toward rightness rather than toward love. If you are prone to defend yourself and your actions (especially to yourself), you are probably getting close to self-righteousness. If you lean toward what you feel you deserve rather than how you should serve, then you are probably getting close to self-righteousness. If you emphasize your right actions in comparison to others’ poor choices, then you are probably getting close to self-righteousness. If your first thought is “what is the right thing?” rather than “what is the most loving thing?”, then you are probably getting close to self-righteousness. (Now, in saying that, I’m not saying that we should disregard truth in place of sympathetic feelings. Love and truth go hand-in-hand. The most truthful thing is the most loving thing, and vice versa. Following the truths of God’s Word are always the most loving thing to do.) Self-righteous people tend to focus more on personal rights than on sacrificial service.

I finally did get around to praying, but it was mostly confession. I admitted to God my anger. I admitted my pettiness. I admitted my demanding spirit. And then God made me look at the cross, and when I did, I saw my Savior. I saw a man who was never angry (except when the glory of his Father was at stake. In fact, Jesus was always angry at how others were treated, rather than how he was treated.). I saw a man who allowed himself to be taken advantage of, who never claimed his rights, who never demanded to be served. I saw a man who stood before his accusers and never defended himself, though he was right from start to finish. I saw a man who loved others all the way to the cross. I saw a man—a man who was also fully God—who went to the cross because of my self-righteousness. And it broke my heart.