There’s a kind of superiority that masquerades as faith. The people that follow this version of religion aren’t worried about belief; it’s about being “set apart,” about feeling chosen, exceptional, above the fray. And those impulses aren’t born in Scripture so much as in the world’s whisper: that power and status prove your worth. That sense of being different, of being self-righteous, is built out of arrogance, not holiness.

We all can confuse justice with dominance. In this country, culture has taught us that might makes right, and we’ve learned to wield power as though it were an instrument of faith. But that’s not what faith is for. Faith isn’t a hammer. It’s not meant to flatten every problem into a nail. It’s meant to hold tension, to wrestle with complexity, to sit in the discomfort of not knowing. Yet the world drives us toward certainty, and so we build our identities around moral clarity even when it costs us compassion.

We override clear Scripture with cultural priorities, or we retreat into excuses: “I can’t do that because of the world.” We forget Jesus prayed we’d live in the world but not be of it (John 17:14–16). We swallow the world’s measures of success, like wealth, influence, and victory, and forget that every command to love, to serve, and to suffer was issued to people who were already surrounded by temptation.

This is why judgment must begin with ourselves. Scripture doesn’t call us to police the world. It calls us to examine our own hearts. “For if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged” (1 Corinthians 11:31). That’s not a loophole. It’s a warning: if we don’t start with self-examination, we become the very thing we claim to oppose; blind guides, straining out gnats and swallowing camels (Matthew 23:24).

Then we are to judge our leaders, not with tribal loyalty or viral outrage, but with sober truth. Paul elevates the office of elder by insisting that those who lead well deserve double honor, while also erecting firm safeguards to preserve integrity. Any accusation against an elder must rest on the testimony of two or three witnesses, protecting against false or hasty charges. Should an elder persist in sin, his wrongdoing is to be rebuked publicly so the whole community takes grave notice. And above all, these directives are delivered in the presence of God, Christ Jesus, and the elect angels, to be upheld impartially, with no room for favoritism (1 Timothy 5:17–21).

Only then do we turn to others in the church. Not to shame them, but to restore them. “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently” (Galatians 6:1). Gently. Not triumphantly. Not with smugness or superiority. With humility, knowing that we too are vulnerable and that the world delights in tearing down those it deems weak.

And as for outsiders? That’s not our jurisdiction. “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?” (1 Corinthians 5:12). Culture demands we condemn, that we draw battle lines and brand the other side as unworthy. But Scripture says leave the outsiders in God’s hands. That’s not indifference: it’s trust. Trust that God sees more than we do, that He understands the nuances we refuse to acknowledge.

If we’re honest, throughout the centuries, we’ve used Christianity as a weapon because that’s what we were taught to do: not by Scripture, but by culture. We were taught that power proves righteousness, that winning is holy, that being right is more important than being kind. But that’s not the gospel. The gospel is about surrender, about love, about truth that humbles us rather than elevates us.

So we have to step back. We have to ask what we’re really doing, who we’re really serving, and whether our faith is a mirror reflecting the Kingdom or a mask hiding our ambition. Because if we don’t, we’ll keep confusing arrogance for righteousness — and we’ll keep calling it holy.