Never are our own blind spots less apparent to us than when we criticize others. Our collective conscience today is highly critical, in fact there are whole swats of society that live in a hyper-critical echo chamber. Political and other forms tribalism is in ascendance.

Yet scripture tells us to avoid this as when St. Paul tells us “Look to yourself, lest you also be tempted” and Jesus saying “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”

Reading scripture, with a special focus on the four Gospels, is an essential part of my life and the fulcrum of my daily routine. Reading roughly a chapter a day became a daily habit for me in earnest once I arrived in college and had the freedom to establish my plan of life to aid in my religious improvement. If you add in the many readings I’ve heard over my lifetime at all the masses and other religious activities, I’ve lost count at how many times I’ve been through the Gospels.

For all of those years of reading and listening I held and was led to the traditional and judgmental interpretation of the Pharisees. The traditional interpretation holds that the Pharisees were obsessed with man-made rules, they were hypocritical politico-religious leaders who separated themselves from others due to a growing sense of superiority. After resisting both John the Baptist and Jesus at every turn, this group makes cause with the Herodians to ensure the betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus. Using this traditional interpretation we can come to understand Jesus and his righteous anger against the established leadership of the time.

This interpretation is seductive and comforting for any religious person living in today’s world which so easily rejects faith. In the contemporary consumerist milieu it is easy to turn religion into a consumable good instead of the constructive renewal of the world at the heart of most faiths. It is effortless for our minds to use the Pharisees as a metaphor representing the ills of society, no matter what society or time you live in. This is one reason why they are enduring as a depiction of hypocrisy and institutional rot. Our minds can live painlessly in a world where everyone else, be they individuals, social institutions, or even the faceless society itself is the problem. In this manner, one can remain an idealist, holding fast to their morals and ideals without really dealing with the hard truths of our contorted natures.

The Pharisees are the prominent foils, if not outright villains, of the Gospel. The three synoptic Gospels contain forty-four passages mentioning them. They are seen as resisting Jesus’ preaching from the very beginning and most notably after the cleansing of the temple in Jerusalem. They enter into long Lincoln-Douglas styles debates about the finer points of theology with Jesus in an attempt to trip him and turn the crowds against him.

The Pharisees were the established vested religious authority of the time. They had interests to defend and traditions to uphold. Not all reacted violently to the teachings of the Jesus. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were Pharisees, there are references to St. Paul being a Pharisee before his conversion on the road to Damascus. There are even some that speculate that the constant disputes with Pharisees may show that Jesus was a Pharisee himself embroiled in the debates of the movement of that time.

The fact remains though, that the Pharisees did not recognize the great event of the Incarnation and eventually hardened their hearts to the point of rejecting Jesus’ teaching leading him to Calvary instead of embracing the new law. This central rejection would seem to definitively support the traditional interpretation that the Pharisees are evil, the villains of the story.

The l I asked myself the uncomfortable question: would I have done any differently?

Would I have been able to lift my eyes up from the scripture enough to recognize that God was with me through the miracle of the Incarnation? This led me to an even more uncomfortable question, do I today lift my eyes from Scripture to recognize God in the people who surround me? Do I, like the Pharisees, externally follow the letter of the law while at the same reject God and lead him to Calvary? The answer, since I am a sinner in need of salvation, is clear.

Why do idealists want to change the world? Because they don’t want to clean their own bedrooms.

How many times have I demanded a sign from God in the manner in which they did? How many times I, or an organization I am part of, been hypocritical using technicalities to defend a position?

After my apparent epiphany I began to read the Gospels from a different perspective, that of a Pharisee. I have come to see them as the established power of the time which could not open itself to having their power challenged as so many institutions do when they reject valid criticism outright for fear of seeming vulnerable. They are less villains to me now, an interpretation that was once used to justify anti-Semitism, and more as misguided purists who believed they were defending their faith from a heretic. There are substantial differences in the teachings of the two, I understand, but I am more focused on their reaction to Jesus. Do we reaction in a proper manner to the exhortations of Christ?

I now imagine Jesus speaking to me during his famous diatribe against the group in St. Matthew’s Chapter 23. Here he identifies their principal vices and corrupt practices, he confronts them and speaks of their “woes” which are the reverse of the beatitudes, and tells them no can escape unless they change their behavior. In other places where Jesus rails against the lack of virtue of society, I don’t think of all the people I wish would heed his message, instead I come to understand that I do not stand apart from society. I am society. I am the one in need of a deeper conversion and must give greater heed to the warnings present in the Gospel.

GK Chesterton, the famed religious writer, in response to a newspaper query “What is wrong the world?” Answered succinctly, “Dear Sir or Madam, I am.” I invite all of us live the spirit of Chesterton and look with fresh eyes upon the Gospels as a personal message to us, not to others. Especially in these days where tribalism is found daily in the headlines. Where one group relishes in the moral downfalls of their opposition instead of attacking the vice itself. Upon an honest inspection of our hearts we will find that we are all Pharisees in one manner or another. Jesus was not condemning them, but exhorting them to action and the proper virtues of leadership. The world will improve not when others start living better, but when our own conversion of heart is compete.