by Michael A. Graham
Yesterday I wrote about Philip Yancey’s adultery and why grace feels especially contested right now. What struck me wasn’t only the sin itself, but how quickly the conversation moved toward moral sorting—who is clean, who is contaminated, who can speak, who should be silent, and when grace is allowed to show up.
Today, something very different but strangely connected has weighed on me. The horrific shooting in Minnesota, and the way it has been processed almost immediately online, surfaced the same deeper issue—again, not first at the level of facts or politics, but at the level of righteousness.
In the middle of that, I saw this post:
“There is a growing and palpable bloodlust and desire to see ideological opponents quite literally eradicated that should give us all extreme pause. It’s been a long time since the most meaningful divide in American political and cultural life was between ‘left’ and ‘right.’ It’s not even so much about ‘sane’ vs. ‘insane’ anymore, as it so often was circa 2020. The fundamental split today is between the decent and the indecent. It is monstrous to desire, excuse, sanitize, whitewash avoidable killing even of one’s perceived foes.”
I agree with the alarm in that post. The language of eradication and moral permission should stop us cold. At the same time, I’m uneasy with where it lands. Framing the divide as decent versus indecent still feels too thin. It names something real, but it stays at the surface.
The deeper problem isn’t that some people are decent and others are indecent. The deeper, blinding sin underneath that way of seeing the world is our sense of righteousness. Once I divide the world into decent people like me and indecent people like you, I’m already standing in the very place the gospel is meant to dismantle.
That’s the same pattern I was wrestling with yesterday in a very different setting. This language of decent or indecent brought to mind something Jack Miller used to repeat. I can’t remember who he was quoting—maybe Luther, maybe Whitefield, maybe Spurgeon—but the point itself has stayed with me for years:
Repenting of our bad deeds can get us up to being Pharisees.
It’s when we start repenting of why we do good deeds that we become Christians.
Here’s why that line matters so much right now.
Repenting of bad behavior can still leave me morally superior. I admit my failures, feel appropriately ashamed, and quietly assume I’m now on the right side. Repenting of why I do good deeds goes much deeper. It means repenting of my being right, my decency, my causes, my purity, and the way I use good things to justify myself over others.
That’s the difference between the latest version of Pharisaism and Christianity.
When Miller made that point, he wasn’t attacking righteousness. Scripture is clear that righteousness is good and beautiful. God’s righteousness is holy. Obedience matters. Moral clarity matters.
What he was exposing was self-righteousness—the confidence I place in my goodness, my obedience, or my causes to make me right.
What happens when the language of sin disappears
When a culture loses the language of sin, three things happen almost automatically.
Guilt doesn’t disappear; it relocates. We stop saying “I am a sinner” and start saying “they are evil.”
Righteousness doesn’t disappear either; it weaponizes. Moral clarity turns into moral superiority.
Judgment doesn’t go away; it externalizes. Evil is always out there, never in here.
This is why losing the language of sin hasn’t made us more enlightened, as it originally promised. It has actually stripped us of the language of God’s righteousness as well. What replaces God’s righteousness is a thin righteousness of our own making—one that has to be defended, enforced, and protected.
That’s when being right starts to feel salvific. And once righteousness starts doing the work that only grace can do, violence begins to look more like self-defense.
How “being right” becomes permission to destroy
When I no longer see myself as a sinner, my cause feels pure. My motives feel unquestionable. The people who oppose me start to look like threats to the good. Aggression feels justified. Cruelty feels necessary.
At that point, I’m no longer acting against evil. I’m acting for my righteousness.
That’s how people can excuse violence, clean it up with virtuous and moral language, or even celebrate it, while sincerely believing they’re on the side of the good.
Why repentance that includes our motives is the only brake
This raises the question that keeps coming back for me:
How can I repent of being right when I’m convinced I am right—and convinced others are wrong—and even convinced that my righteousness gives me permission to harm?
I can’t repent of that until something exposes it as sin. And only the gospel does that.
The gospel says things no moral system ever says. It says I can be wrong even when I’m right. It says I can be guilty even when my cause is good. It says I’m capable of evil even while opposing evil. It says I need grace not only for my sins, but for my self-perceived virtues.
That’s the offense of Christianity. It refuses to let being right save me.
Once our own version of righteousness replaces grace—through which righteousness comes to us as a gift—the logic becomes chillingly consistent.
If I am righteous, and you threaten what is righteous, then stopping you feels like a duty. Harming you feels justified. Killing you starts to sound defensive.
That’s not a failure of ethics. That’s unrepented self-righteousness.
The Bible names this pattern relentlessly. Jesus saves his sharpest words for people who are right, not for people who are lost. Paul calls his righteousness dung. Luther says our best works are shot through with self-love. Jack Miller pressed that theology into everyday pastoral language: the moment you think you’re right, you’re already in danger.
A word about moral equivalency
At this point, I can already hear the objection from many Christians, especially conservatives: “This sounds like moral equivalency. Surely you’re not saying biblically grounded positions are the same as what violent ideologues are advocating.”
I’m not saying all positions are morally equal. Truth matters. Scripture gives real moral clarity. Some causes really are more righteous than others.
That’s not the question.
The question is what we do with our righteousness—especially in the arenas where it is most publicly displayed and fiercely contested. This often plays out on the battlefield of culture, politics, and social media, where being right quickly becomes identity, currency, and justification.
I’m hard first on conservatives precisely because I am one. Self-critique from the inside is appropriate. I’ve watched people who hold deeply biblical convictions drift from conviction into contempt, from clarity into cruelty, from moral seriousness into a quiet sense of superiority. I’ve done this myself, which is why I recognize it so quickly in others.
At the same time, I’ve watched people on the progressive left become fiercely self-righteous about their compassion. They are convinced they are loving and humane—and that conservatives are heartless and dangerous. Compassion becomes a badge of superiority. Outrage becomes proof of virtue. Violence begins to feel excusable because it’s done “for the right reasons.”
Different ideologies. Same spiritual problem.
Grace doesn’t erase moral distinctions. Grace relocates our confidence. It keeps us from trusting our correctness, our tribe, or our decency to justify us before God or over one another.
That’s not moral equivalency. That’s moral honesty.
Why leading in repentance matters
This is also why leading in repentance matters so much right now.
If self-righteousness is this blinding—if it feels this justified—how would anyone outside the Christian faith ever learn to see it? If I asked non-Christians what they dislike most about Christians, the answer would be consistent: hypocrisy.
Of course everyone is hypocritical. The difference is whether we can admit it.
When Christians lead in repentance—real repentance, not managed apologies—we show something the world doesn’t see elsewhere. We show what it looks like to tell the truth about ourselves without fear. We show that our hope doesn’t rest on being better than others, or more decent, but on being held by grace.
When grace is pushed to the margins, moral confidence replaces moral humility, and correction becomes almost impossible.
Why grace is the only antidote
Grace does something no moral system can do.
Grace levels the field.
Grace exposes self-justification.
Grace disarms righteous violence.
Grace forces me to see myself as more than capable of the very evil I see and fear in others.
Grace lets me say, “I might be right about the issue—and still wrong about myself.”
Without grace, decency turns cruel. Virtue turns brutal. Righteousness turns deadly.
Why this matters now
This is why yesterday’s conversation about adultery and today’s conversation about violence belong together.
In both cases, the same thing is happening beneath the surface. We are reaching for righteousness to save us. We are sorting, judging, defending, and justifying ourselves.
And in the process, grace—and the God of all grace—end up in the crosshairs.
That’s the real danger—now and every day—to find yet another reason to marginalize, delay, or deny grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, while boasting in our own righteousness.
When grace is sidelined—delayed, qualified, or replaced with decency—we don’t become more humane. We begin to bite and devour one another while sincerely believing we are right. Scripture warned us this would happen.
Grace doesn’t make us soft on evil.
Grace lowers us in our own estimation and enables us to see and love others. We see God, ourselves, and others more clearly when we are brought down off our pedestals.
And without that honesty, being right really can destroy us.
That’s why grace—and the God of all grace—matter now more than ever.
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