So...to explore the extremes, should we forgo any attempt at being more righteous today than we were yesterday when we experience faults? Should we forgo recongizing and admitting to our sins and striving to overcome them by the power of grace? That should be the opposite of the Pharisee's actions who simple saw and presumed themselves to be righteous to begin with. Or the opposite of Adam who essentially and originally did the same by denying his need for God. IOW, is it wrong to want to be right, or better to simply acknowledge that we're wrong- without possibility of improvement?
In the historic understanding of our faith as I see it, Adam essentially wanted to be right, thought he was right, on his own and apart from God while the gospel promise is that God can and will rectify us Himself as we humbly turn to Him, forsaking the pride that keeps us distant from Him, and therefore distant from any authentic justice/righteousness. Reconciliation, IOW: man was made for communion with God-and that should be the antedote for the ugly self-righteousness that causes all the moral harm and victimization in this world even as we don't get over it all at once-and must keep aware of that fact.
In any case, in Matt 5, the Sermon on the Mount, along with Matt 22, Jesus sheds much light on this. The inside must be changed first of all in order for the outside to be changed and our subsequent actions to be authentic.
You're asking whether my critique of "appearing righteous" implies that Christians should stop striving for righteousness altogether. You rightly insist that authentic righteousness is not a self-curated moral performance but a transformation given by God. Yet this very point shows that we cannot
strive to be righteous through grace. Grace is received, not achieved; it is not a tool for striving but the abolition of striving. Gregory Palamas explains that the soul is deified by participation, not effort.
What human effort can accomplish is obedience to societal law, the fulfilment of one's duties, and the paying of one's taxes. These are commendable and necessary, but they do not earn even a single point on the scale of divine righteousness, only on the scale of societal righteousness. China has formalized such a scale, rating citizens according to their social conformity and usefulness. People who excel in this system have already received their reward, as Jesus says. Their righteousness is horizontal, not vertical; civic, not divine; a matter of social credit rather than spiritual transformation.
Paul teaches maturation, not striving. Growth is participation in Christ's life; transformation is the work of the Spirit; and maturity is the fruit of grace. Striving belongs to the flesh (Gal 3:3; Rom 7:18-25); maturation belongs to the Spirit (Gal 5:16-25). It is God's action, not the ego's project. Paul's point is that religious law belongs to the flesh. It is no better than the Chinese social-credit system. But this does not make it evil: worldly life requires order, discipline, and direction. The law is
milk for spiritual infants who have not yet matured enough to receive the mind of Christ (1 Cor 3:1-2; Gal 3:24-25; 4:1-3; Heb 5:12-14). It earns no credit in the eyes of God.
The moment we
strive to receive grace, we lose it. The ego's striving is always horizontal, and when the horizontal dominates, the vertical dimension collapses. In this sense, the Christian mystics are exactly right.
Your argument is that the real problem is prideful self-righteousness, not the pursuit of righteousness itself. But the moment one
strives, the center of gravity shifts from grace to self-effort. It becomes the spiritual equivalent of saying, "Force yourself to relax." This kind of formulation tries to preserve moral effort, striving, self-examination, progress, and improvement. The ego insists on remaining the agent of righteousness, even while invoking grace. The result is that grace is shut out. When the ego wants to be the protagonist of its own sanctification, it inevitably generates the goodness-narcissism we are analysing, because striving is always self-referential: self-measuring, self-directed, and self-curating.
There is nothing wrong with being a good Christian, if it were possible. The problem is that the ego inevitably identifies with the role of "the good Christian," and once it does, evil grows by parasitizing the good. This is precisely Paul's concern about the law. The law itself is not the problem; the danger arises when the ego appropriates the law's definition of righteousness and turns it into an identity. Once the ego identifies with "being righteous according to the law," it becomes the very thing Paul calls evil. That's why Paul's discussion of the law remains so relevant today: the teachings of Christianity also function as "law," and evil readily feeds on them whenever the ego turns them into a badge of righteousness. The moment striving enters, falsity enters. The ego begins to fabricate righteousness and the lie begins.
That's why there is no such thing as a "good Christian." The ego begins quietly appropriating the identity, and in doing so it exhumes the very evil it intends to avoid. When "being good" becomes an ego-project, the good becomes food for the parasitic shadow. Paul counters this dynamic by saying, "If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit," because "if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law" (Gal 5:18-25). In other words, you are no longer governed by the ego's project of being "good."
But "walking by the Spirit" is easier said than done. This is why many commentators describe Paul as a mystic. He was, however, also a highly educated man with a sharp intellect. In the Platonic tradition, the path of ascent is essentially a process of intellectual maturation. The highest faculty of the soul is
nous, which is detached from the ego. The refinement of
nous does not inflate the ego; if anything, it deflates it, because
nous is oriented towards, and receptive to, the Holy Spirit.
People with weaker intellects, like the disciples, tend to want explicit rules to follow (and Jesus eventually gives them a few). But those with stronger intellects require fewer rules, because they can figure out the path. They do not possess the truth, but they perceive the direction towards truth. This is why
nous does not aggrandize the ego, and why the Platonic path of knowledge is such a healthy endeavour, whereas merely "knowing the law" is not.
A good example of this dynamic appears in research on empathy, often seen as the hallmark of goodness. But genuine empathy requires intellectual understanding. Caring for an animal, for instance, demands that we understand its needs and interpret its signals. This requires cognitive work. Without it, we are left only with instinctual empathy, something every animal can do just as well, or better.
