Self-righteous

To be righteous is to act in accordance with divine or moral law. To be self-righteous, then, is to treat one's self, one's thoughts and feelings and beliefs and opinions and actions as divine and moral, and thus, everything one does is in accord with the divine and moral self that one has set up. To be self-righteous is to break the very first of the Ten Commandments. When we are self-righteous we are setting ourselves up as gods and we are placing ourselves as gods before our Heavenly Father, the one true God. When we allow ourselves to become convinced of our own moral superiority, when we fall in love with the brilliance and infallibility of our own genius, when we feel justified getting to our end goal by any means, when we throw out empathy, compassion, civility and decency and instead will take any measures to push aside, steamroll over or eradicate any that stand against us, then we are worshiping ourselves as false gods. The problem with this is that although we may become so prideful as to think that we matter more than everyone else, including God, but we remain nonetheless flawed and imperfect and fallible and weak creatures, incapable of noticing or understanding the full complexity of a situation, and powerless to act in a manner that perfectly benefited all parties even if we could understand. In essence, we treat ourselves like a god, but have none of the wisdom and power of God. It is much better for us to anchor our righteousness on the actual source of all good, even Jesus Christ. We can safely be convinced of His moral superiority and we can trust that He will direct our actions in a way that will do the most good not only for ourselves but for all of those around us.