Self-righteous and unrighteous people have one thing in common—both are bad people. The difference is that unrighteous people know that they are bad while self-righteous people do not.
Sometimes people want to be able to wear the good-person feather in their cap, but without going through the work and inconvenience of actually being good. As such, they will find loopholes in the “moral code” that will allow them to do bad things to people and yet still view themselves — and be viewed by others — as good decent people. Over time, they may bury themselves deep in delusions that their destructive behaviors are okay. Rationalization could easily be the most common tool that self-righteous people use to deceive themselves, and others, into believing that their evil behaviors are okay.
Self-righteousness can be dangerous in ways that unrighteousness is not, as is explained by a quote from C.S. Lewis, which compares robber barons (wealthy powerful businessmen) to a certain kind of self-righteous people called moral busybodies:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
Here C.S. Lewis explains that the worst forms of oppression can be from the self-righteous crowd.
Destructive behaviors of the self-righteous
- Seeing fault in others that is not there
- Imposition of unnecessary behavioral standards onto others
- Hypocrisy
- A false feeling that others are indebted to them
When a bad person is buried in the delusion that he/she is righteous, and presents him/herself as the pinnacle of goodness, it is an ugly sight to see. It is analogous to a schizophrenic presenting himself as the pinnacle of mental soundness.
Self-righteous people often know deep down that they are not as good as they like to think that they are. Rather than acknowledge their shortcomings, they often project their faults onto others. For example, let us say a self-righteous person wants to get her way all the time, and yells at people if she does not get her way. She may project her faults onto her husband, telling her husband that he is such a hot head whenever he expresses the slightest bit of aggravation about anything, even if that feeling of aggravation is warranted. She may also accuse him of expecting everyone to always agree with him. Does he actually expect everyone to always agree with him? Not necessarily, but his self-righteous wife does.
By seeing fault in others that is not there, the self-righteous person can divert his/her own attention (and the attention of others) away from his/her own hidden faults. The worse the other person looks, the better the self-righteous person looks in his/her own eyes.
Self-righteous people are known for pushing unnecessary rules of behavior onto others, and they may or may not be following those rules themselves. For example, a self-righteous family member may council you to act as if you enjoy someone’s company more than you actually do. He/she may tell you to make sure that you appear very sad when the other person has to leave. After all, you want to make sure that the other person feels loved by you and walks away believing that you are just dying to see him/her again. Of course nobody benefits from this rule of behavior. If everyone behaved this way, then you would have no way of knowing whether someone wants your company! You could be around people who hate your guts and never even know.
A self-righteous person may express great disgust if you so much as slurp while you are eating your soup. The self-righteous person may roll his/her eyes when you shove food into your mouth, not caring that maybe you are in a hurry and have to eat really fast. If, heaven forbid, you violate one of their petty rules of politeness, you may get a long, cold, scornful stare.
The strict rules of behavior that are imposed by self-righteous people do not necessarily benefit anybody. Why? Because these rules of behavior are not meant to benefit anybody, but rather are meant to maintain the moral high ground of the self-righteous people who are imposing these rules. Looking behind the curtain, you may find that these self-righteous people do not always follow these rules of behavior themselves.
Self-righteous people can be bad hosts and hostesses. Just by setting foot into their house, they may believe that you are indebted to them for having their roof over your head for any length of time. If you happen to be in their house for a really long time, and you start to go hungry, judgment from your self-righteous host may be hard to avoid. If you do ask for food, then your self-righteous host may judge you for being an imposition. If you do not ask for food, then you may be insulting the host by assuming that he/she has no food to give to you and the other guests. When the self-righteous host serves food and you have diet restrictions, then you are more vulnerable prey. The self-righteous host may single you out as being more indebted to him/her than any of the other guests. Even if the self-righteous host serves you the wrong food by accident, in his/her mind, you are still indebted to him/her for just trying to accommodate you — even if you get sick afterwards.
When a self-righteous person does something nice for you, it can be uncertain whether he/she actually cares about you, or if perhaps you are just a vessel through which he/she is flaunting his/her goodness. Hint: if the deed is done in plain view of others, then the more likely motive is the latter.
Self-righteous people have a way of throwing a fuss over little things while overlooking the things that do matter. For example, say you are sending out a memo at work. The memo presents a message of high urgency about a deadline coming up. A self-righteous colleague may call attention to some minor grammatical errors in the memo, and ignore the content of the actual message.
Unrighteous people
Unrighteous people can turn good at any time, but they are most likely to turn good when they have hit rock bottom, such as when they have committed a heinous crime and are sentenced to prison for life or for a very long time. A number of criminals have turned good while in prison, most often because they have found God, the one being that will forgive them no matter how many terrible things they have done in the past.
Dave Maynard’s article presents stories of six different violent criminals who turned to God while in prison, some of whom went on to help other prisoners turn to God as well. One of these criminals was David Berkowitz who randomly shot a group of people in New York City, killing 6 and injuring 7. He was sentenced to 300 years in prison. Ten years into his prison sentence, a fellow inmate urged him to read the Bible. After reading the Bible for some time, David prayed to God: Jesus, God, I don’t know who you are, I don’t know if You have any interest in me. I don’t know if You hate me or what, but I just want you to know how sorry I am for the things that I’ve done wrong, how I hurt people, how I hurt my family.
After David Berkowitz converted to the Christian faith, he became a counselor to young people and fellow inmates. He would go to parole hearings to apologize and own responsibility for the crimes he committed. God’s forgiveness was what motivated him to turn away from his evil ways and move on to a righteous life.
Jeffrey Dahmer murdered 17 people, and also committed rape, cannibalism and necrophilia (sexual intercourse with dead bodies). One day, a pastor sent Dahmer a Bible study course, and Dahmer completed it. Next, a pastor was visiting Dahmer once a week for Bible lessons. Dahmer eventually got baptized. In his interview with MSNBC, he said “If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges?”
Karla Faye Tucker had been abusing drugs since the age of 8, and she ended up killing her friend and his girlfriend with a pickaxe. A year after she committed the crime, someone spoke about Jesus Christ at Karla’s prison. Karla accepted Jesus Christ as her savior, and afterwards she taught the Bible to fellow inmates, leading them to the faith. She also ended up apologizing to the families of the people that she had killed.
Susan Atkins participated in what was known as the Tate-LaBianca murders of 1969. She stabbed a woman 16 times who was in the later stages of pregnancy. She also participated in the killing of two grocery store owners, a music teacher and Abigail Folger (of Folger’s coffee). In 1974, when she was in her prison cell, she had a vision of Jesus and became a born-again Christian. According to the article, “She went on to write the book ‘Child of Satan, Child of God’ about her salvation testimony. She then devoted herself to Bible studies and chapel services. She prayed with other inmates and even some guards. She started an online newsletter that spoke of God’s forgiveness, love and hope. By all accounts, she became a model prisoner, ministering to many people. Even the family members of the people she killed said so and praised her efforts behind bars.”
In all of these stories, the people committed crimes that are recognized by our culture as evil. They received strong messages from the world around them that what they did was terrible. They all were sentenced to life in prison. The way that the world reacted to their crimes was probably a major factor that lead to their changes in character.
I think that a bad person can become a good moral person without converting to Christianity, but it is harder to find such stories. If a prisoner were to become good, he/she would exhibit good behavior as a prisoner no doubt, but good behavior does not attract as much attention as bad behavior. Stories of baptism, however, attract more attention and are more likely to generate stories that people write about.
Self-righteous people do not become good as easily
The process of turning good is more complicated for self-righteous people because people cannot turn good if they do not know that they are a bad people to begin with. In order to turn good, one has to know that one is not good. Hence, when it comes to turning good, self-righteous people have an extra step to take that is not necessary for the unrighteous people. That extra step is not easy because it involves putting aside one’s pride and admitting to one’s own shortcomings.
Dolores Umbridge of the Harry Potter novel series is an example of a self-righteous person. Dolores gravitated towards positions of high power, and often liked to think of herself as an unspoken hero whenever she exercised that power to pull off one of her schemes. For example, after Harry Potter witnessed the return of Lord Voldemort, wizards and witches in the Ministry of Magic wanted to silence Harry because they did not want to stir up a panic in the wizarding community; but they did not know how best to silence Harry, so Dolores took matters into her own hands and sent two dementors to Privet Drive where Harry lived with his cousin, Dudley. The goal was to force Harry to use his magical powers against the dementors, get Harry into trouble for violating the law against underage use of magic outside of school, and then get Harry expelled from Hogwarts.
For those of you who do not know, dementors are dangerous creatures who have the ability to suck the soul out of a human with a kiss. Both Harry and Dudley almost got kissed by the dementors. Harry had to use his magic to save them. Meanwhile, Dolores did not tell her superiors at the Ministry of Magic that she had sent the dementors, and she let them believe that the dementors wound up on Privet Drive by coincidence. In her self-righteousness, she thought that what they don’t know won’t hurt them.
Dolores’s plan to get Harry expelled did not work, but Dolores continued to cause trouble in her new position as Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts. The Defense Against the Dark Arts class no longer taught students how to use magic to defend against evil. When Harry kept insisting that Lord Voldemort had returned, Dolores punished Harry by making him write in his own blood “I must not tell lies.” Harry was to write the message repeatedly until its words formed a scar on the back of Harry’s hand.
In her mind, Dolores Umbridge was just preventing Harry from stirring up trouble by telling tales that Lord Voldemort returned. In reality, she had no reason to believe that Harry was lying. She and the other witches and wizards at the Ministry of Magic simply believed what they wanted to believe.
Overlooked evil — a breeding ground for self-righteousness
Think about the self-righteous characters on television. One reason these self-righteous people are not as likely to turn good is that they are receiving messages from the world around them that their behavior is okay. Indeed, when our culture overlooks evil behaviors, or views evil behaviors as okay, a breeding ground for self-righteousness emerges.
The truly good person will refrain from behaviors that seem to hurt people — even if the surrounding culture sends messages that those behaviors are okay. The truly good person is motivated by care and compassion for fellow human beings as opposed to the individual who refrains from bad behaviors just to keep people off of their case or keep from being yelled at. Do you genuinely care about your fellow human beings? Or do you just not want to be yelled at or hated? The self-righteous person often falls somewhere in between. Self-righteous people do have some good in them, but they believe that they are much more good than they actually are.
Murderers — are they that much worse than the rest of us?
We tend to think of murderers as being among the worst of people, but some self-righteous people may not be any less evil. In actuality, there are selfish reasons to not kill people. The self-righteous person knows that if he/she kills someone, he/she can get caught, get prosecuted and either spend life in prison or get executed. Furthermore, everyone will think of him/her as a monster. These are very powerful motivations to not kill people that have nothing to do with actual goodness.
Self-righteous people will often say that they cringe at the thought of killing someone with a knife or a gun, and may even faint or become squeamish at the sight of blood, but that does not make the individual any more good of a person than someone who is desensitized to the sight of blood, such as doctors and nurses who do life-saving work or soldiers who fight for our country.
Just wanting someone to be dead is an indication of the mindset of a murderer. Alternatively, the self-righteous person may be in denial that another person’s life has value. If the self-righteous person is a narcissist, then he/she may believe that others have no value as human beings, but rather exist only for the purpose of meeting his/her wants and needs.
What our culture recognizes as some of the worst evils — murder, pedophilia, terrorism, rape — tend to be evils that have immediate bad effects. They cause harm in the very same moment that they are committed. Some evil deeds, however, have harmful effects that are delayed. Self-righteous people sometimes do acts of evil that do not cause any visible harm the moment they are committed, but cause harm perhaps years later. Because the harm caused by the evil deed is delayed, the self-righteous person can more easily evade accountability and even deny to him/herself that he/she did anything wrong.
One evil deed that can have delayed harmful effects is exposing a child to cigarette smoke over a period of many years. While the child is inhaling the cigarette smoke, the child does not show any signs of ill effects. The bad effects accumulate over time and are eventually noticeable. When the bad effects become noticeable, such as the onset of an illness, it is harder to trace the illness to cigarette smoke because there are so many other factors that can cause tobacco-related illnesses. Because of the harmful effects are so delayed, it is easier for the self-righteous person to deny to him/herself that any harm came about from the second-hand smoke.
Evil deeds with delayed bad effects could be done by an individual or an organization. For example, an employer may overwork their employees to the point that they die premature death. The employer, in their self-righteousness, may see this exploitation of workers as “business as usual.” The self-righteous employer does not necessarily care that their employees die prematurely, as long as they get the most work out of their employees while their employees are still alive. Fortunately, this kind of overwork does not happen as much in the developed world today because of the labor laws that have been passed.
Summary
To conclude, self-righteousness is farther away from turning good than unrighteousness because one cannot turn good if one does not know that one is a bad person to begin with. Certain environments that allow self-righteousness to flourish are environments that overlook certain evil behaviors and/or view certain evil behaviors as being okay. Friends and family also can be enablers of self-righteousness by not saying anything to the individual and continuing in a relationship with the individual despite harmful behaviors.