Book Look – 12 Steps for the Recovering Pharisee.

I found a book called “12 Steps for the Recovering Pharisee” by John Fischer, and found the following chapters somewhat convicting.  Since reading it, I have come to recognize a glaring problem in my life, and you guessed it – I love to “do the Pharisee!”

To do the pharisee is to live a dry, empty and lonely existence.  This book will supply specific attitudes that need to be addressed in each of our lives as we seek to live grace-filled lives.

The following heading for the “12 Steps” supply a general outline of the book.

1. We admit that our single most unmitigated pleasure is to judge other people.
2. We have come to believe that our means of obtaining greatness is to make everyone lower than ourselves in our own mind.
3. We realize that we detest mercy being given to those who, unlike us, haven’t worked for it and don’t deserve it.
4. We have decided that we don’t want to get what we deserve after all, and we don’t want anyone else to either.
5. We will cease all attempts to apply teaching and rebuke to anyone but ourselves.
6. We are ready to have God remove all these defects of attitude and character.
7. We embrace the belief that we are, and will always be, experts at sinning.
8. We are looking closely at the lives of famous men and women of the Bible who turned out to be ordinary sinners like us.
9. We are seeking through prayer and meditation to make a conscious effort to consider others better than ourselves.
10. We embrace the state of astonishment as a permanent and glorious reality.
11. We choose to rid ourselves of any attitude that is not bathed in gratitude.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we will try to carry this message to others who think that Christians are better than everyone else.

One passage that rung so true for me is as follows…

“The only way to save a Pharisee is to break a Pharisees back with the burden of the law.  There was, and is, hope for the Pharisee, and that hope comes in the form of failure.  Failure is the doorway to freedom, but of course this presents a huge dilema, since failure is the one thing a good Pharisee can never accept.

Pick it up if you have ever judged (condemned) anyone in your Christian life.

If any who are reading this and have found what I am describing, please let me know.  Comment as you see fit. I always love hearing from you.

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Thanks again for coming to visit. I hope you found something of interest in this post and would appreciate a comment, to begin a discussion.