In general there are two key religious mind-sets
– those of the ‘saint’ and the pharisee. We all have something
of each in us, and the potential to be either. Both may be ‘orthodox’
theologically, even ‘evangelical’. Both pursue ‘goodness’ but
by different means, for different ends. (Someone said pharisees
were ‘good’ people in the worst sense of the word!).

Saints (like Jesus) emphasize love and grace, pharisees
law and (their interpretation of) ‘truth’. Saints are comfortable
with ‘doctrine’, but for the pharisee doctrine becomes dogma,
law becomes legalism, ritual (the celebration of belonging) becomes
ritualism. The saint lives easily with questions, paradox, antinomy,
mystery; pharisees try to be ‘wiser than God’ and resolve all
mysteries into neat formulas: they want answers, now.

The saint listens, in solitude and silence; the pharisee
fills the void with sound. For the saints it’s ‘rising by dying’,
for the pharisees ‘rising by doing’.

With Jesus, acceptance preceded repentance, with
the pharisees it was the other way round. The saint, like Jesus,
says first ‘I do not condemn you’. Pharisees find that difficult:
they’d prefer ‘go and sin no more’. Jesus welcomes sinners; sinners
get the impression they’re not loved by pharisees. For the pharisee,
sins of the flesh and ‘heresy’ are worst, and they are experts
on the sins of others. For the saint, sins of the spirit – one’s
own spirit – are worst. Saints are ‘Creation-centred’; pharisees
‘Fall-centred’.

For the pharisee ‘my people’ = ‘people like me’,
for the saint ‘my people’ = all God’s people. Pharisees are insecure
(needing ‘God-plus’ other things); the saints are secure (needing
‘God only’). The pharisees’ audience is other people: their kudos
provides a measure of security (psychologists call it ‘impression
management’; Jesus calls it hypocrisy); the saints’ only audience
is God: their inner and outer persons are congruent.

Pharisees hate prophets (‘noisy saints’) and their
call to social justice; saints love justice. (Saints aren’t into
writing creeds very much, which is why the two things most important
for Jesus – love and justice – don’t appear in them).

So saints remind you of Jesus; the pharisees of the
devil (demons are ‘orthodox’). Saints see Jesus in every person:
they haven’t any problem believing we’re all made in the image
of God (= Jesus) although they’re realistic about that image being
marred by sin. Saints are spread through all the churches: the
closer they are to Jesus, the closer to, the more accepting they
are, of others. ‘Ambition’ for them means ‘union with Christ’:
they call nothing else ‘success’. In their prayer they mostly
‘listen’, ‘wait on the Lord’; the pharisee needs words, words,
words. Pharisees have a tendency to complain about many things;
for the saints life is ‘serendipitous’: they have a well-developed
theology of gratitude.

Pharisees are static, unteachable, believing they
have monopoly on the truth, saints are committed to growing. (Nature,
they say, abhors a vacuum; the Spirit abhors fullness – particularly
of oneself). Jesus was full of grace and truth; Peters says grow
in grace and knowledge: pharisees aren’t strong on grace, but
for saints ‘grace is everywhere’.

The religion of the saints is salugenic, growth-and-health
-producing; that of the pharisee is pathogenic.

Only one thing is important: to be a saint.