These past several days I, like you, have experienced a level of anxiety that is beyond my collective experience with anxiety. Of all the things that I have noticed in my inner life, I have noticed the presence of righteousness in a new way. Because I am anxious over the situation, I begin to read and listen to all sorts of voices, only to come to the conclusion that I am now an expert on the situation. I have been transformed into a world-class epidemiologist in just five days, and I know what is right and what is wrong about people’s actions and motives. And, because I am so confident in my judgement of right and wrong, I begin to feel more and more righteous in my actions (or non-actions). And the more righteous I feel the more I am able to condemn others for their actions (or non-actions).
I have noticed that my sense of righteousness is really just a veil that I use to separate myself as superior to others. Righteousness is the rationalization I use to justify my anger toward others and even the reasoning I lean on to cut people from my life. In the weaker moments, I find that I even am willing to kill a relationship under the banner of my own sense of righteousness. It is for this reason that perhaps what I, and maybe you feel, is “unholy righteousness.”
The more I am convinced of my own righteousness more consumed I am with anger. Of course the irony is that being consumed with anger moves us farther from righteousness. This is the cycle, allure and power of unholy righteousness. It makes you feel powerful while also accelerating anger and loneliness. The more angry and lonely I become the more I am sure that others are wrong, thus fueling my unholy righteousness.
So what to do in this unholy righteousness cycle? I do what I normally do in such times and look to the desert.
Abba Poemen said to Abba Isaac, “Let go of a small part of your righteousness and in a few days you will be at peace.”
There is wisdom in this to be sure. Letting go of many things leads to peace, even letting go of righteousness. Perhaps the lack of peace in our world is how addicted we all are to our (unholy) righteousness. Perhaps this season of a collective heighten anxiety will give us the courage to let go of a small part of our righteousness and discover the peace that passes all understanding was with us the whole time.