In the book of Luke, our Lord tells us a story about a well-educated, well to do man of the church. He thanks God for all His blessings and for his fortune in life. The prayer sounds very familiar, even holy, if you don't pay much attention. But God is not pleased.
We live in an age where this style of Christianity is not only accepted, but exalted. Being proud of our superiority over our unenlightened neighbors is normal. Removing ourselves and our families from those around us because of our superior Christianity is seen as the expected way to raise our children and lead our families. We look at those in the church with us, as this Pharisee did and we thank God we aren't them. We remove ourselves from their presence and stand alone, proud of our Christianity, our conservative way of life, our knowledge, our wisdom and our humility. We isolate ourselves from the regular Christian rabble and pat ourselves on the back about how much God has blessed us. We thank God we aren't one of 'those people' and avoid those people as much as possible.
This form of worshipping our own selves is one of the most destructive to the church. It corrupts it from the inside, causing pain and suffering to all the members of the body we cut ourselves off from. It destroys the witness of the community of believers and harms the growth of those who are still growing in the faith. It teaches our children that God has 'good children' and 'bad children' and that they should avoid these lesser Christians.
Some of the first red flags of this Pharisee's prayer are the isolationism. He stands alone, proud of his way of life. He equates his lifestyle with God's favor, and assumes those who are different are less Godly. He praises God, not for God's sake, but for his own; his praise is not of God at all but really praise of his own standing.
This prayer, and the lifestyle therein, is all too common today as well. We assume that our comfortable Conservative Evangelical lifestyle is the hand of God blessing us because we are so great. We avoid and distain those who are different, keeping our selves and our families from the worldly influence of anything that isn't exactly our own ideology.
Instead, we should do as the publican, admit we are nothing before God. Our lifestyle - liberal, conservative, urban, rural - none of these will impress God. We need to remember we are not any better than the people around us, and treat them accordingly. Isolation in the Christian faith is dangerous: We are called to be one body; not many. As soon as we avoid parts of the body that we find less spiritual than ourselves, we fall for the same trap this Pharisee did. We become trapped by our own spiritualness, instead of God's grace. We become of the world, but not in it. We avoid being 'in the world' because it is less spiritual than we are, yet we strive for the same material comfort and prestige as the world around us, showing we are just as much of the world as our neighbor. Instead, we should value our neighbor more, and value our own comforts and position less.
