Self Righteous Christians Quotes & Sayings

The irony of Christianity is that believers get so angry, and self righteous toward other Christians who sin differently than they do. Christianity is like one large fraternity where brother and sisterhood is tested by hazing. — Shannon L. Alder

"Being most concerned with God's righteous judgments rather than the biased judgments of mere men, I have been standing...for the cause of Christ".

~ R. Alan Woods [2012] — R. Alan Woods

More than half described Christians as literalistic, anti-intellectual, judgmental, self-righteous, and bigoted. — Marcus J. Borg

Biblical righteousness is more than a private and personal affair; it includes social righteousness as well ... Thus Christians are committed to hunger for righteousness in the whole human community as something pleasing to a righteous God. — John Stott

No sensitive Christian can be satisfied with a distinction between righteousness and unrighteousness drawn only between communities, with each individual belonging unambiguously on one or the other side of the line. The behavior of "the righteous" is often very disappointing, while "the unrighteous" regularly perform in a manner that is much better than our theology might lead us to expect of them. Thus the need for a perspective that allows for both a rather slow process of sanctification in the Christian life and some sort of divine restraint on the power of sin in the unbelieving community. These theological adjustments to a religious perspective that might otherwise betray strong Manichean tones provide us with yet another reason for openness to a broad-ranging dialogue: Christians have good grounds for believing that their own weakness can be corrected by encountering the strengths of others. — Richard J. Mouw

Your religion is not what you do on Sunday. It is how you live Monday through Saturday. — Shannon L. Alder

I've come to see that just as the Doctrine of Discovery was used to justify white Christian supremacy and the exploitation of nonwhites and non-Christians, the "doctrine of dominion" (Genesis 1:28) is still being used to justify human supremacy and the exploitation of the earth and all its creatures. Aided and abetted by harmful doctrines about the future (especially "left behind" dispensationalist eschatology), industrial-era Christians have used toxic, industrial-strength beliefs to legitimize the plundering of the earth, without concern for future generations of humans, much less our fellow creatures. After all, if Jesus is coming back soon, and if God will soon destroy the earth and take righteous souls to heaven, who cares about the earth? What's a little human domination in comparison to divine damnation? — Brian D. McLaren

Do you think that every time you make a mistake, He is mad at you and won't talk to you ... or that you must somehow make up for it? ... Many Christians fail to experience real peace because they don't understand that they are righteous in Christ. Until people stop living according to the way they feel and stand on who they are in Christ, they will never find true happiness. — Joyce Meyer

The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians
when they are sombre and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecration, when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths. But, though it is just to condemn some Christians for these things, perhaps, after all, it is not just, though very easy, to condemn Christianity itself for them. Indeed, there are impressive indications that the positive quality of joy is in Christianity
and possibly nowhere else. If that were certain, it would be proof of a very high order — Sheldon Vanauken

Christians have been beaten, whipped, starved, humiliated, mutilated, tortured, hung, burned at the stake, crucified, and fed to lions; yet two thousand years after a man called Jesus of Nazareth walked the streets of Jerusalem, 1,734 million people alive on this earth today call themselves by the ever-dividing, ever-uniting word: Christian. God is still scattering the seeds a few righteous renegades planted in a city called Antioch. Had they only known what they were starting. — Beth Moore

The least of the muscular Christians has hold of the old chivalrous and Christian belief, that a man's body is given him to be trained and brought into subjection, and then used for the protection of the weak, the advancement of all righteous causes, and the subduing of the earth which God has given to the children of men. He does not hold that mere strength or activity are in themselves worthy of any respect or worship, or that one man is a bit better than another because he can knock him down, or carry a bigger sack of potatoes than he. — Thomas Hughes

I know two kinds of Christians, those that love and those that love to be right. — Jim Sterling

I couldn't allow myself to think about her very long; if I had I would have jumped off the bridge. It's strange. I had become so reconciled to this life without her, and yet if I thought about her only for a minute it was enough to pierce the bone and marrow of my contentment and shove me back again into the agonizing gutter of my wretched past. — Henry Miller

The store had a hand-painted sign the read: MOOSE PASS GAS. "That's just wrong," Frank said. — Rick Riordan

The church maintained that having been founded by Christ, who was God incarnate, it alone, through its bishops, was the final and authoritative instrument of divine revelation. Allegiance to the church and obedience to its ordinances were the sole means to salvation. No salvation was therefore possible to anyone who remained outside the church - nulla salus extra ecclesiam. Likewise, Islam placed the main emphasis upon the Koran as the final revelation of God's will. Adherence to the teachings of the Koran, together with the recognition of Allah as God, and Mohammed as the greatest of prophets, constituted for the Moslems the sine qua non of salvation.

The Jews were not quite as emphatic as were the Christians and the Moslems in declaring the rest of mankind ineligible to salvation. Rabbinic teaching was inclined to concede that Gentiles, who were righteous or saintly, had a share in the world to come. — Mordecai Menahem Kaplan

I think it's important to bring somebody from outside the system, the judicial system, somebody that hasn't been on the bench and, therefore, there's not a lot of opinions for people to look at. — George W. Bush

Question Eight: Self-righteousness is an insidious spiritual disease which is a betrayer of the gospel of grace and a great hindrance to evangelism. What is self-righteousness? Why is it such a hindrance to evangelism? How does the gospel of grace enable us to repent of our self-righteousness and free us to share the gospel with compassion? Maybe I was all right with it for a while. I read their answers, too, and in those answers Lucy and Jesus walked together as friends. The self-righteous exuded a condescending air of moral superiority that non-Christians are rightly repulsed by. I appreciated that. — Ann Patchett

Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy ... He who is alone with his sins is utterly alone. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Sheldon Vanauken wrote that the strongest argument for Christianity is Christians, when they are drawing life from God. The strongest argument against Christianity? Also Christians, when they become exclusive, self-righteous, and complacent. — John Ortberg

The gospel of justifying faith means that while Christians are, in themselves still sinful and sinning, yet in Christ, in God's sight, they are accepted and righteous. So we can say that we are more wicked than we ever dared believe, but more loved and accepted in Christ than we ever dared hope - at the very same time. This creates a radical new dynamic for personal growth. It means that the more you see your own flaws and sins, the more precious, electrifying, and amazing God's grace appears to you. But on the other hand, the more aware you are of God's grace and acceptance in Christ, the more able you are to drop your denials and self-defenses and admit the true dimensions and character of your sin. — Timothy Keller

[Nietzsche] had the good manners to despise Christianity, in large part, for what it actually was
above all, for its devotion to an ethics of compassion
rather than allow himself the soothing, self-righteous fantasy that Christianity's history had been nothing but an interminable pageant of violence, tyranny, and sexual neurosis. He may have hated many Christians for their hypocrisy, but he hated Christianity itself principally on account of its enfeebling solicitude for the weak, the outcast, the infirm, and the diseased; and, because he was conscious of the historical contingency of all cultural values, he never deluded himself that humanity could do away with Christian faith while simply retaining Christian morality in some diluted form, such as liberal social conscience or innate human sympathy. — David Bentley Hart

Sheldon Van Auken wrote,"The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness." Guess what he said is the best argument against it? "When Christians are sombre, joyless, self-righteous, smug, narrow, repressive - Christianity dies a thousand deaths. — John Ortberg

She looked much younger than her age, indeed, which is almost always the case with women who retain serenity of spirit, sensitiveness and pure sincere warmth of heart to old age. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If her case was pitiable, his was hopeless. His imprudence had made her miserable for a while; but it seemed to have deprived himself of all chance of ever being otherwise. — Jane Austen

You have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you're imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose the grass, you're saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. — John Green

It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final break-through to fellowship does not occur, because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners! — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The world needs to see Christians burning, not with self-righteous fury at the sliding morals in our country, but with passion for God. — Kevin DeYoung

If Christians always seemed to be the most intelligent and the most righteous of men, I'd be a skeptic. — Criss Jami

In abdicating responsibility throughout God's kingdom at large, Christians have created a cultural vacuum of labor, influence, and leadership which the ungodly have come in to fill. The fact of the matter is, someone is going to exercise rulership in the earth. If not the godly, then the ungodly. If the righteous retreat completely, they have no reason to be surprised when they wake up one day to find their inheritance usurped by those who do not know God. — Christian Overman