The Evil of Pharisaism

This week, was talking to my cousin about things like family, religion, and politics, my three favorite topics (sounds like a faux pas, I know, but that’s life). But one of things we talked about was the sort of insanity of this world and about the Catholic Church’s answer to it. In particular, we talked about the sort of insincerity we see in everyday life: the fake kindness, the fake generosity, and the fake charity.

One of the things that greatly annoys me about society and socializing is this sort of “peacocking” that I find with people. They’ll act like they’re playing to a crowd at all times. They’ll make big shows of virtue while doing very little in the way of changing their own behavior. The perfect example of this are rich companies like Amazon that supposedly support black lives by donating to “anti-racist” groups while not practicing what they preach. Hypocrisy is unattractive, no matter your politics.

All of this brings to mind the Pharisees from Gospels. For those of you not in the know, the Pharisees were a social movement and a school of thought that emphasized the priesthood of all Jews in accordance to Exodus 19:6 and 2 Maccabees 2:17; believed that the Oral Torah was on par with Scripture; militated against the Hellenization of Judaism; and emphasized the importance of Mosaic Laws besides the rites and services of the Second Temple. Modern day Rabbinical Judaism traces its roots to this school of thought.

However, when I and most people speak of “Pharisaism” nowadays, we are not talking about the religious beliefs of this sect of Judaism, but of the actions of those groups in the New Testament. Both Jesus Christ and St. John the Baptist verbally castigated them with viciousness that may have been condemned as un-Christian if stated today. As the story goes, the crime of the Pharisees was hypocrisy. They talked a good game, but they didn’t practice what they preached. They offloaded burdensome moral regulations onto others, yet they expected to get praised for what amounted to basic decency. They made a big show of being virtuous, but their hearts were full of wickedness.

Nowadays, the Pharisees are considered to be evil because of their legalism. True morality, some would say, is not about following some set of rules, but by having just intentions. But I don’t think this is correct. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, after all. Furthermore, while having burdensome laws and regulations is kind of annoying, isn’t it better to have strict, clear laws than none at all?

No, I think Jesus’ critique of the Pharisees was far more radical. He was criticizing the idea of an aristocracy of virtue. See, in Jesus’ time, societies were organized as aristocracies of the sword. Social status was generally determined by inherited wealth and power, so violent warlords known as noblemen and their descendants were the ones in charge. This was why the Kingdom of Heaven Jesus preached was so appealing: it promised to shake things up so that “the last become first and the first become last.” Everyone, whether they admit it or not, desires social status and feels they deserve more of it.

You’d think that the solution to this problem would be to try and construct something on Earth similar to Heaven: an aristocracy where the most virtuous, the godliest among us, are on top. Good behavior is what is rewarded, not being born in the right family or having the biggest army. But we can see why this is a bad idea with the Pharisees. They ended up being more concerned with outward professions of virtue than they were with acting virtuous.

The worst among them confuse the appearance of virtue with actually being virtuous. They did the bare minimum yet they believed they were owed the status of holy men. These people are not dishonest but genuinely delusional.

The problem stems, I believe, from the inability of human beings to look into the hearts of others and see what they truly were. Virtue is something inside of us that we have to cultivate. Even if our outward actions are virtuous, they mean nothing if we are dead on the inside. But if they are a really good actor, we cannot know if they are sincere. In actuality, an aristocracy of virtue becomes an aristocracy of liars. As the famous vaudeville performer George Burns once noted, “The key to success is sincerity. If you can fake that you’ve got it made.”  

I believe that this sort of falseness is what Jesus was trying to attack. He saw that the struggle for moral approval was particularly nasty. In a world of status by wealth, one might hope to work their way up to the top 10%. But in a world of status by virtue, the goal is to make yourself look virtuous, either by faking it or by eliminating the top 10% of one’s competitors who either have made too many embarrassing statements on record or are unable to go along with what is morally fashionable this week. It’s a game of attack first to be eaten last.

Sound familiar? This is what happens all the time in politics nowadays. People are losing their jobs to those modern-day Pharisees that chase after the latest trends. Frankly, I find it disgraceful. Rather than participate in this rat race, we ought to take after Christ. We must become humbler and more forgiving if we are going to make the world a better place.