Some Current Reading 

Recently, I’ve been focusing on two areas in my reading.

• In my daily Bible reading, I’ve been meditating on the Gospel narratives of Jesus and the Pharisees.

• In my extra-biblical reading, I’ve been focused on Christian resources about mental health challenges.

I did not anticipate an overlap between these two topics. Yet, I’ve seen quite the intersect.

In the Gospels, I’ve seen how the Pharisees repeatedly “otherized” people—stigmatizing them with pejorative labels related to “spiritual illness.”

In reading about mental health challenges, I’ve repeatedly seen how our Western culture “otherizes” people—stigmatizing them with harmful labels related to mental illness.

Let’s take a look…

5 Marks of the Pharisaical Mindset: “I Thank God That I Am Not Like Other People!” 

Consider Luke 18:9-14.

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable:

“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14).

Ponder 5 hallmarks of the pharisaical mindset (from Luke 15; Luke 18; Matthew 23, and many other Gospel narratives):

1. Otherizing: Looking down on others who are outside our in group. “I am not like other people!”

2. Self-righteousness: Clinging to our own rightness and trusting in our own righteousness.

3. Arrogance and Pride: Deeming ourself and our group as above others. Diagnosing one’s self as not needing a physician.

4. Stigmatizing Labels, Lenses, and Language: Framing others as sinners (robbers, evildoers, adulterers, tax collectors, sinners) while framing ourselves as righteous.

5. Blindness: Being ignorant of our own neediness and sinfulness, blind to our own blindness, refusing to see the log in our own eye.

Jesus approves of discernment as long as we begin with our own hearts and beliefs. Jesus disapproves of and confronts stigmatizing judgments of others while we remain blind to our own self-righteousness.

12 Signs of Sinfully Stigmatizing Others 

As I’ve read about mental illness stigmatizing and spiritual illness stigmatizing, I’ve collated the following overlapping bullet points. 

1. Stigmatizing and “Otherizing”: We frame and label those who disagree with us or differ from us as “the other”—in a pejorative, judgmental, arrogant way. Our labels invalidate, ostracize, shun, blacklist, nullify, and cancel others as “the other.” Others become opponents and enemies. We place boundaries, walls, guardrails, and parameters of separation around others who we deem to be unacceptable. We are the “insiders;” they are the “outsiders.” 

2. Separatism and Canceling: Built into stigmatizing language is a sense of presumed otherness, wrongness, and sickness. We stigmatize others as virus-carrying, contagious, spiritually ill people who need to be separated from, called out, and isolated lest they infect others. It is not just, “You are different from us.” It is, “You are different, and that difference is wrong, bad, even evil.” We arrogantly deem ourselves wise enough to distinguish between the sheep and the goats. “You are the goats; we are the sheep!”

3. Spiritually Ill Versus Spiritually Self-Righteous: We label others as spiritually ill. “Your inner core is sick. You are uniquely separated from and rejected by God. But we are uniquely aligned with and accepted by God.” “Your beliefs are depraved; our beliefs are authoritative, sufficient, inerrant, unquestionable.” “You must repent and join us.”

4. False Framing: We frame people as the enemy, as the unhealthy ones, as spiritually sick and theologically deficient.

5. Pejorative Labeling: Our labels reify—you are your diagnosis. “Your whole being is corrupted,” rather than “you struggle with this challenge.” Labels have power; they shape how we see others, how we speak of others, how we relate to and treat others.

6. Lying Lens: Our stigmatizing labels become the lens (and the only lens) through which we look at and perceive others.

7. Dehumanizing: Stigmatizing is pathogenic. It is a description/label that actively causes harm. It dehumanizes. Stigmatizing reduces people from the whole being to a mere part. It reduces people to a caricature. They are not complex persons; they are “tax collectors and sinners.” Stigmatizing involves a reductive explanation of others as “other,” which then eliminates richer ways of looking at others. Once I explain how I perceive you, then I exclude other, better, richer ways of seeing you.

8. Reclassifying: Stigmas become a reclassification of others—downward, lesser, malignant, uniquely diseased, and a carrier of illness/virus. Stigmatizing frames people in opposition—in opposition to those who are in the in group, in opposition to those who perceive themselves to be right, righteous, good, wise, healthy.

9. Warfare Language: Stigmatizing language becomes a gaze, a diagnostic lens which places people into groups in an us-versus-them and a right-versus-wrong perspective. It is a warfare/enemy gaze that sees everyone as either within your camp, tribe, military unit, or otherwise outside your camp. Therefore, others are the enemy, the opposition, who must be taken down, exposed, defeated, or at the very least quarantined so they do not infect others. Everything becomes a “good-versus-evil,” an “ally-versus-enemy,” a “friend-versus-foe” separation of everyone into camps, tribes, groups.

10. Delegitimizing and Demonizing: Stigmatizing labels seek to delegitimize dissenters and intimidate innovators. Stigmas are tribal tribunals which cancel and oust others from the “in group.” Stigmatizing others highlights an authoritarian impulse to demonize differences and to ostracized others as evil outsiders. “We are the chosen ones; you are the rejected ones.”

11. Judging: Stigmatizing thins our vision and hardens our hearts. It destroys concern in the supposed name of concern—like the Pharisees of Matthew 23. It is quick to try to expose wrongs in others; it is defensive about any possible wrong in oneself. It is big on identifying specs in the eyes of others; it ignores logs in our own eyes.

12. The Astigmatism of Stigmatizing: We are blind to our own blindness, even as we accuse others of spiritual blindness. The Pharisees had astigmatism—blurry or distorted vision—about themselves, about others, and about God. Jesus in Luke 15 offers a spiritual eye exam, a spiritual eye chart, designed to open the eyes of the blind Pharisees.

4 Current Examples of Spiritual Stigmatizing 

What does this look like today? What are modern examples of this stigmatizing mindset and language?

This blog post could be an example! Am I stigmatizing anyone who disagrees with me by labeling them a Pharisee? I don’t want to be blind to my own potential astigmatism.

“Conversative Christians” (itself a possible example of stigmatic language) can use stigmatizing language about other Christians who they deem to be outside their camp, group, or tribe, such as:

1. “Big Eva”: A pejorative term for Evangelicals which caricatures them as being theologically weak and accuses them of compromising truth because of a people-pleasing desire to be liked by the world.

2. “Zombie-Infected,” “So-Called Biblical Counselors,” “Integrationists,” “Neo-Integrationists”: In the modern biblical counseling world, these are terms that are lobbed at and labeled onto others—identifying their whole approach as dangerous and diseased. These labels characterize and caricature those not in their group as “the other,” as outside the bounds of biblical counseling orthodoxy. It is not, “Your model is different than mine, and clearly neither of our models are fully biblical because none of us is inerrant.” Instead, it is, “Your model is diseased, infected by the virus of the world. Our model is uniquely healthy and wise. If you question our superior model, then you prove how blind you are.”

“Progressive Evangelicals” (itself a possible example of stigmatic language) can use stigmatizing language about other Christians who they deem to be outside their camp, group, or tribe, such as:

1. “Fundamentalists, “Neo-Fundamentalists,” “Pharisaical,” “Pharisees,” “Separatists”: These are pejorative terms and labels that characterized and caricature others as outside the bounds of Christlike love. “You’re all about supposed truth, but you ignore the greatest biblical command to love.”

2. “Nouthetic,” “Biblicists,” “Narrow,” “Shallow”: In the modern biblical counseling world, these pejorative terms can become the lens through which we see others whose counseling approach differ from ours. We frame others with these caricatures and we use these words as a shorthand accusation that labels others as engaged in a stunted, shallow, unloving, limited, non-comprehensive, man-made approach to soul care.

2 Spiritual “Soul-u-tions”

Jesus, our great Physician, offers healing for our spiritual sickness. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31-32). We are all sinners in need of a Savior. We are all spiritually sick in need of a Soul Physician.

1. Spiritual Eye Surgery 

Jesus corrects our astigmatism—our spiritual blindness to our own spiritual blindness. We all need to look at life through the gaze, the lens, of Christ. His gaze provides the new eyes, the new frames, through which we view one another.

In Luke 15 passages, the Pharisees use the stigmatizing language of “tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 15:1-2). The Pharisees were right that Jesus did hang out, eat with, fellowship with tax collectors and sinners.

They were wrong to assume they themselves were not sinners. They were wrong to assume that the Father’s attitude toward sinners was one of rejection.

Where the Pharisees focused on labeling others as “sinners,” Jesus focused on seeing others as valued wandering sheep, treasured lost silver coins, loved prodigal sons (Luke 15:3-32).

Jesus saw both the older pharisaical, self-righteous son and the younger, rebellious son as beloved prodigals invited back into the Father’s home. Jesus’s parable frames them both as wandering, lost sons looked for by the forgiving Father—who welcomes all sinners home because of Christ.

When we stigmatize others, we show our own astigmatism. We reveal our blindness to our neediness and sinfulness. We expose our blindness to our forgiving Father’s grace.

2. Spiritual Heart Surgery

Jesus demands not only spiritual eye surgery, but even more, spiritual heart surgery.

Jesus commands that we repent of stigmatizing others as diseased sinners, while we arrogantly see ourselves as self-righteous persons not needed a physician.

Let’s heed His admonition. Let’s yield to His diagnosis of our heart condition. Let’s listen as He reads our cardiogram.

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 18:14).

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean” (Matthew 23:25-26).

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness” (Matthew 23:27-28).

Jesus calls us to repent of our pharisaical ways of relating to one another, such as:

• We relate like Pharisees when we view our writings, our views, our models, our approaches as the plumbline by which everyone else must measure their models.

• We relate like Pharisees when we obsessively defend our approach as beyond reproach.

• We relate like Pharisees when we refuse to be humbly approachable and open to feedback.

• We relate like Pharisees when we arrogantly see ourselves as the prophetic guardian calling others to repentance (because they differ from us).

• We relate like Pharisees when our responses to the views of others degenerate into preachy monologues rather than becoming invitations to mutually respectful conversations.

• We relate like Pharisees when we highlight perceived weaknesses in the views of others, and refuse to call attention to the strengths of the views of others.

• We relate like Pharisees when we focus on building our air-tight cases against the views of others, rather than opening our hearts to the wisdom of others.

• We relate like Pharisees when our focus on truth denies and belies the biblical focus on love. We strain at a gnat (picking apart our “opponent’s” view) while swallowing a camel. We neglect the more important matters of Scripture—justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

Returning to Our Vocation: Naming Accurately, Faithfully, Fairly, and Graciously 

God called Adam to steward His creation. In this stewardship calling, we often overlook the role of naming.

“Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals” (Genesis 2:19-20).

John Swinton summarizes our calling this way.

“Part of Adam’s responsibility to care and tend for the world was to name things faithfully and properly” (Finding Jesus in the Storm, 160).

Astutely, Swinton contrasts this naming with stigmatizing.

“A primal responsibility of human beings is to name things properly. The way we describe and name things is a matter of faithfulness. We have seen that stigma takes away one’s name and replaces it with a caricature or stereotype based on a personal diagnosis…. Stigma in all its forms is deeply sinful. It is a distortion of human beings’ primal responsibility to name creation properly” (160).

Called to discern? Yes. Called to name accurately, faithfully, fairly, and graciously? Yes. Called to mis-label, caricature, and mischaracterize? No. Called to label without grace? No. Called to use false labels as weapons to cancel others? No. Called to expose the spec in another’s eyes while ignoring the log in our own eyes? No.

We are sinning when we stigmatize one another with purposefully pejorative caricatures like “Big Eva,” or “zombie-infected,” or “neo-fundamentalists,” or “biblicists.” God calls us to repent and to return to our stewardship calling to name others accurately, faithfully, fairly, and graciously (Genesis 2:19-20).

 

4 Self-Reflection Questions 

1. Which of the 5 marks of the pharisaical mindset do I need to repent of and receive Christ’s grace?

2. Which of the 12 signs of sinfully stigmatizing others do I need to repent of and receive Christ’s grace?

3. Which of the 4 examples of spiritual stigmatizing do I need to repent of and receive Christ’s grace?

4. How would my spiritual health and my relationship to God and others be different if I underwent Christ’s two spiritual surgeries?