On Self-Righteousness

     Self-righteousness helps no one, least of all the person who is self-righteous. Why? Because it's a lie the ego/mind/identity tells itself in order to stay relatively sane in its malfunctioning state.
     The EMI is driven to attachment to that which is likes, agrees with, and thus accepts as "good." It is also driven to aversion to that which it dislikes, disagrees with, and thus rejects as "evil." It treats these things as either survival necessities or survival threats and the brain responds accordingly. Self-righteousness reassures the EMI that "I am 'good'" and thus not to be rejected as "evil." When the EMI registers the self as "bad" or "evil," it registers itself as a threat and therefore to be rejected, feared, driven away, or destroyed. This causes a "panic" in the system because of the contradiction which must be resolved. The like/dislike or "good/bad" must be adjusted to compensate, which we call "justifying oneself." It is this panic and the complex difficulty in resolution which is the source of many if not most psychological disorders.
     Self-righteousness is the lie the EMI tells itself that, if you follow these rules or this code of conduct that you agree with, then you will be "good" and thus a survival necessity to be protected and/or hoarded. Self-righteousness is a lie because it does not actually fix the underlying error and cannot. It is literally the error trying to compensate for itself and failing miserably. It is also harmful because it cannot easily take into account moral contradictions where following the rule or code of conduct results in harm to someone or an undesirable outcome which is deemed a threat to the EMI. It produces a nonsensical result to the EMI which then triggers that same existential panic which must be resolved in order to maintain relatively normal operations.
     This is why where Paul writes that "The Torah is good," he is absolutely correct. There is nothing wrong with the codes of conduct laid out in the Torah (at least in the society of the ancient world). Not murdering people, not stealing, not craving what isn't yours, and loving your neighbor as yourself are in fact good things to practice. If there was a code of conduct which could have delivered someone from their malfunction, then it would have been the Torah, as Paul writes. The problem isn't the Torah. The problem is the malfunctioning EMI that takes the code of conduct, agrees with it, and then decides that there's nothing wrong with itself as long as it keeps those rules. But because it is not actually governed by those rules, but by its own like/dislike, that is what it considers to be a survival necessity or a survival threat and either craving or aversion in reaction, it cannot hold. "Because the Torah is 'spiritual,' but I am fleshly, sold as a slave subject to the malfunction." Attempting to define your goodness, your own personal right state of being, by keeping the Torah, the instructions of the New Testament, or any moral code of conduct only triggers the malfunctioning EMI to more malfunctioning responses whether in compliance with that code of conduct or defiance of it. The moral code of conduct can do nothing, absolutely nothing, about the hardwired human malfunction which afflicts each one of us.
     Thus, self-righteousness from rule-keeping of any kind, or anything which allows the EMI to place itself in the category of "good," is a self-deception produced by the malfunctioning EMI in order to maintain its own relative sanity (in the programming sense).
     In order to actually deal with the malfunctioning EMI, it has to be bypassed altogether, and a new origin or source of responses and behaviors inserted. Thus the cross, the union with the Spirit of Christ, and the voluntary ability to submit to and cooperate with the Spirit of Christ so that it is He who acts and speaks through us, thus giving those words and actions a genuinely, correctly functioning source from His genuine right state of being.