Self-Righteousness And Arrogance Can Destroy Your Faith

But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.” (Luke 15:20)

Have you ever been angry with God? I have. In fact, the last two months have been the most difficult two months of my life. I confessed to my pastor that I wondered if God really cared about me. His silence made me question the truth of Deism, a belief that God just sits in heaven and lets life happen. “Perhaps the Deists are right, I told him.”

God foresaw the circumstances that would turn my life upside down, and yet he let it happen. I asked my pastor, “What father would let a child suffer like this, and just sit there and do nothing? It seemed to me that if the prodigal son’s father (who represents God in the parable) ran to his child, God should run to me in my time of great need.”

For the first time in my Christian life, my faith in God was shattered. I couldn’t pray, and I wouldn’t pray, thinking, “What good would it do?” When I attended church, I was so angry that when my pastors led the congregation in prayer, I stared in open defiance. God had let me down, and I wanted nothing to do with him.

Another pastor in my church called me and asked me to come by and meet with him. I did not want to go, but I respected him too much to say no. When we met, I told him the same thing I had shared with my lead pastor about the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

He then said to me that the father only ran to his son after his son acknowledged his sin and took the first step home. I then remembered something another pastor once told me. “The Holy Spirit is a gentleman, and does not go where he is not invited.”

The only things standing between God and me was my own self-righteousness and arrogance. Once I got them out of the way, my relationship with God was fresh again. But I learned three things about my faith:

1. I am no Job! I don’t have the faith that Job had and will never pretend that I do.

2. Satan is alive and real! When others mentioned their belief that Satan was behind all evil, I did not believe it. I thought mankind was wicked enough to perpetrate evil all by itself. Interestingly, while I did not see God in my circumstances, I experienced Satan’s evil in the most powerful way. I finally realized that it was Satan and only Satan who perpetrates evil. The Bible is right. He is the enemy and has come to steal, kill and destroy.

3. God is never farther than a prayer away! Just like salvation, we must take the first step when we are seeking God’s help. My pastor helped me realize this truth and once I sought God’s help, God let me know he cared. The pain is still present, but the burden has been lifted.

My self-righteousness and arrogance almost destroyed my faith. Author Shannon Alder said, “The road to righteousness and arrogance is a parallel road that can intersect each other several times throughout a person’s life. It’s often hard to recognize one road from another. What makes them different is the road to righteousness is paved with the love of humanity. The road to arrogance is paved with the love of self.”

I regret how I felt about God, but am grateful he is loving and merciful, and said, “I forgive you.”