Is Christian arrogance a hindrance?

Question

I mean self-righteousness seems to have become rampant among many Christians. Christians, especially a lot of fundamental Christians, are amazingly aggressive and arrogant regarding claiming that every single detail of whatever they believe is absolutely right and cannot be questioned under any circumstances! Does this hamper their growth in knowledge and Christians?

Answer 1

Absoluetly. It really bothers me how there are two levels of Christians: cookie cutter Christians who walk around thinking they are literally God's gift to earth, who completely miss the point of scripture, and put on a really good show of faith, and the kinds of normal folks who acknowledge they are utter screwups, but who cling to faith and who are just hungry to know more and do better every new day. The sad thing is, those arrogant Christians are the only ones that non-believers see, and therefore we are all steriotyped as those sorts of people. Those noisy Christians turn more folks off to faith than they do help anyone.
And the thing is, God sees that....those sorts of folks are too busy putting on a good show that they lose sight of God's power and authority....they forget how small we all are, and how pointless we are without grace.
It completely incapacitates their growth to be so arrogant.

Answer 2

I don't think that I am infallible. There are many things that I believe because I haven't been convinced to believe otherwise, and to quote Martin Luther, "to go against conscience is neither safe nor right". Does that mean I'm not wrong? Not at all. But there are other things that are made perfectly clear, and to believe otherwise is to be apostate. I think we can vigorously debate non-essentials, we should not divide over them. But the things which are essential cannot be compromised, to do so is to deny the very word of God. As far as being a "self righteous Christian", to be like this is to be a walking oxymoron

Answer 3

First you must know the real definition of self-righteousness -- 1. Piously sure of one's own righteousness; moralistic. 2. Exhibiting pious self-assurance:

I've found that when someone posts an answer to a question and the asker doesn't like the answer they deem the person who answers as being self-righteous. When in reality it's the asker who's angry with the answer.

A "true" Christian knows that we are fallible and make mistakes. We are NOT perfect however, we are forgiven when we ask for it and repent of it.

I would say that if you're that thinned skinned about answers given -- well, Dee says: "If you aren't going to like the answer then, don't ask the question"

Answer 4

Self-righteousness is a filthy sin and God strictly Hates the sin of self righteousness, so a real Born Again Christian would never ever want to appear self righteous to anyone. EVER.

What you need to realise is that Christians are not arrogant, (We are also told by God to not be arrogant). The thing is that everything that is happening around the world right now has all been foretold in the Bible. So because we Born Again Christians always read the Bible, we are so conifedent that God is God because He says so in the Bible.

We know everything in the Bible is correct because all the things that the Bible says is going to happen always happens. So when it says in the Bible that we are to forgive all our enemies- we do it because thats what it says in the Bible. And when it says that in order to get to Heaven you have to be Born Again in your spirit by asking Jesus to forgive your sins, we know it to be true because it says it in the Bible.

Jesus loves you, so therefore Born Again Christians also love you because the Spirit of Jesus lives inside us. All you need to do is ask Jesus to forgive your sins and ask Him into your Spirit then you will be saved. Look at John 3:3

Remember Jesus Loves You

Answer 5

Arrogance in any form is another form of Pride!

Those who lean unto there own understanding of scripture are leading others astray and blinded by their "pride!" But this has to occur for the Kingdom of God is coming to this earth and establish His way as the only way.

Pride is man's downfall. The End of the circle of man's self rule will be the beginning of Christ's Kingdom but that "pride" must be broken first!

Answer 6

Being closed-minded within Christianity can be a hindrance. Everyone has different interpretations of the same text. Thus, why we have Catholics, Protestants, and lots of different denominations of Protestants: Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, etc. Questioning your faith and studying it makes you stronger in it.

Not wanting to be questioned in your faith shows you're not willing to challenge it, which to me is ignorant, and shows that you're not all that strong in your faith. Be able to back it up.

Answer 7

A self-righteous Christian has missed one of the principal understanding that Christ came to reveal to us, we are all guilty and deserve Hell. If not for grace that he freely gives to us, so we as Christians should give grace to others as God has to us.

Answer 8

I think it definitely hampers their ability to convey a serious/ well informed point. It would be nice if they could have a single intellingent conversation.

Answer 9

~sigh~ Religions with scriptures would do far better to stop trying to claim that their holy book is both historically accurate and scientifically sound. It doesn't help their cause at all, because it leads people to dismiss anything else that the religion may have to offer. If they keep insisting that their holy book is more accurate than what we are discovering every day about how the universe works, it's very easy to dismiss any wisdom that may be found in those holy books when one reads them as allegory and illustrative stories.

We have to understand that scripture literalism is a relatively recent thing. It's essentially a reaction to the post-1900s modern world.

Because we tend to project our own thoughts and reactions backward onto people of earlier ages, most of us don't know that people even as recently as 200 years ago thought very differently than we do. But they did, and spritually, in particular, they were very different than we are today. They had evolved two ways of thinking (knowing, speaking, acquiring knowledge), both of which were considered essential. These two ways of thinking (understanding, looking at the universe) were regarded as complimentary ways of arriving at truth...each had it's own area in the lives of earlier people.

1. Mythos (religious thought, religious practice, religious mysteries, religious rituals) was concerned with what these people thought of as timeless truths and what was constant in human existence. It looked back to the origins of life and the foundations of culture and looked into the deepest levels of the human mind. Mythos provided people with a context that made sense of their day-to-day lives and directed their attention to the eternal and universal. It dealt with *internal* realities - what it is to be human.

2. Logos was the rational and pragmatic; the scientific thought that allowed people to function well in the world. It related exactly to facts and corresponded to external realities. Logos forged ahead and tried to find something new...to gain greater control over the environment, to find out how things worked, to conquer or overthrow the limitations of humans in relationship to our survival. This we are all familliar with, because it's what has lately been accepted as the ONLY path to "truth" in most modern socieities. But Logos has it's limitations. It cannot provide comfort in tragedy. It has nothing to say about the ultimate value of human life.


By the end of the 19th century, the Western world had achieved such astonishing advancements through science and technology that they began to think that Logos was the only means to "truth"...and they began to dismiss Mythos as false and superstitious. And so was born scripture literalism, out of the acceptance that the scientific method of proof is the only valid measure of truth.

It's a bad idea.

It would be far healthier, IMO, to reclaim the separation of mythic/mystic and scientific thought. Religious scriptures were not intended to be science textbooks. And the measuring devices of the scientific method are not applicable to religious insights.


No one thinks that the point of the story of Echo and Narcissus ought to be utterly ignored becuase we know that nymphs never existed. And no one dismisses the insights into human behavior supplied by Aesop's Fables becuase we know, scientifically, that lions and mice don't actually talk to each other, or that wolves don't actually wear the skins of sheep in order to fool other sheep.


Agains, religious truths are not like the proofs of scientific rationalism, but more like the intuitive insignts of poetry or music or art. Conflating the two only results in bad science and bad religion.


But I don't think that it's going to go away, because a lot of people are threateneed by modernism. There are people who, having accepted the scientific method as the only valid path to truth, feel that their most sacred values are being challenged, and who are motivated by fears, anxieties, and desires that are not unpredictable in the face of the modern (and largely secular) world, a world that challenges them to provide the same kind of "proofs that the scientific method does. Their "timeless truths" are now put under the microscope and found to be historically false and/or scientifically invalid.

And so they push back, and try to reclaim the truths of their religious texts by insisting on the literal, material factuality of the stories in those texts. And they become more entrenched in their positions because *they have thrown away* the value of mystic/mythic thought and accepted scientific rationalism where it doesn't belong; where, in fact, it actually destroys the value of religion.



It really is a bad idea.

Answer 10

I think it is...religion is often an excuse for not taking care of yourself and blaming or trusting something to "save" you when it is your own responsibility to "save" yourself through proper behavior...NOTHING will forgive you if you screw up...just DON't screw up. (Most of all...admit that you do screw up sometimes...many christians have a hard time with that.)