Ensnared by Contempt
The Rev. Dr. Karin J. Ekholm, October 26, 2025
We live in a culture saturated with contempt. On all political sides, we sense fear of what might become of our country, and in sincere efforts to stop what feels like the dark encroaching of catastrophe, we have stopped engaging in good faith. It has become almost impossible to have meaningful conversations across our differences. In the extreme, outrage takes pride in superiority and dehumanizes others.
In the summer of 2024, the media host Jack Posobiec and ghostwriter Joshua Lisec published a book titled Unhuman. Their central claim is that their political opponents do not hold the status of human beings — that they are, as the title says, “unhumans” who are waging war against all that is good and decent.
Posobiec, who has a long history of promoting white supremacist content, is hardly on the fringes of public discourse. He has garnered well over three million followers on X (formerly Twitter), and JD Vance and Tucker Carlson are among several powerful voices who promoted his book in which he hails far-right nationalist leaders, including Augusto Pinochet and Francisco Franco, as political models for today.
In his discussion of Franco, Posobiec characterizes the Spanish Civil War as, “a righteous, justified war for the sake of the cross—that is, for the honor and glory of Jesus Christ.” He condones violence for the advancement of Christian nationalism and insist on the complete dehumanization of political opponents. The book is rife with contempt for those whom he dismisses as “unhumans,” and in reading, I, in turn, find myself flooded with contempt for Posobiec’s views.
If we were to meet, one of the few things might have in common would be the thought,
“God, I thank you that I am not like that person.”
Today’s Gospel reading posits a challenge to all of us who find ourselves in a continual state of outrage over the current political and social climate in our country.
Jesus tells a parable to an unidentified group who were confident in their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else. In the story, two men in Jerusalem of the same faith go up from the city to the Temple to pray. The hearer is expected to recognize the Pharisee as a devout person—an insider—and the tax collector as a stereotypical sinner—an outsider. But we learn something more about who these two men by the way they pray.
The Pharisees were a Jewish movement that emphasized the importance of obedience to the law of Moses. Their attention to ritual was part of a larger effort to encounter God’s holiness in everyday life. They debated how exactly Jewish values should express themselves in a changing cultural landscape, and their emphasis on interpreting the law and providing practical guidelines helps explain why they were continually interacting with Jesus. In fact, many followers of the Jesus’ movement were Pharisees (Lk 13:33, 19:39; Acts 15: 5, 23:6).
In this particular story, the Pharisee is a man who sees himself as having followed the law, which required observant Jews to separate themselves from others to maintain their purity before God. When the Pharisee in the parable stands by himself in the Temple, he is taking a position that reflects his identity.
The tax collector, by contrast, stands “far off”, a position that anticipates his confession of unworthiness before God. Tax collectors were targets of scorn both for colluding with the Roman oppressors and exhorting a fee on top of tolls, tariffs, and custom fees owed to the Empire. We are to see this man as unjust, treasonous, and exploitative. His position, posture, and prayer reflect that he knows this about himself.
The narrator’s initial characterization of the Pharisee as regarding others with contempt is confirmed by his own words. While he ostensibly offers thanksgiving, his is a self-serving prayer thanking God that he’s not like other people, including the tax collector. His prayer brims with virtue signaling: in a string of “I” statements he boats how he outdoes others in religious practices. His rigorous fasting and tithing are evidence of his piety, and he may, in fact, be doing all the right things.
The tax collector cannot even bring himself to adopt the customary prayer position of looking up to God with hands raised. His head is bowed in shame and he beats his breast as a sign of remorse or grief. It seems he has good reason to cower before God.
While the Pharisee asks nothing of God, the tax collector identifies as a sinner and begs for clemency. His prayer echoes the opening words of Psalm 51, “Have mercy on me, O God”, and we find echoes here of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, where the younger son who broke his father’s heart and squandered his inheritance is welcomed upon his return with open arms and a celebration, while the dutiful brother is ensnared by contempt.
Recently, when our LCF class reflected on the latter story, some of us who identified with the responsible elder brother conceded that we found it difficult to accept that the reckless brother is welcomed and feted. The same might be said for the men praying in the Temple.
In the end, the tax collector is justified while the Pharisee is not, though the rationale for this judgment is not altogether clear. After all, it seems that the Pharisee had done what was expected of him. The parable leaves the hearer with questions to ponder.
Does his separating himself from others separate him from God?
Does his lack of humility or confidence in his own virtue exclude him from God’s grace?
The final coda generalizes the teaching and prevents us from disparaging any one group. The point of the parable is not to call out Pharisees but rather to invite internalization by every reader because it speaks to something deep within the heart of every human. What comes from God can so easily be turned into self-accomplishment; our striving to do the right thing can so easily turn into conceit.
While the Pharisee functions as an embodiment of contempt and arrogance, in looking down on him we fall prey to the very contempt that the story warns against. The story compels us to confront the attitude of the Pharisee in our own hearts. In our outrage we will find ourselves cut off from our neighbor and from God. As long as we fixated on judging others as wretched, we will struggle to recognize our own dependence on grace. The antidote to dehumanizing others lies in the humility and the recognition of our own need for mercy.
While this parable taken in isolation might suggest that we should focus only on our own shortcomings and not call out injustices of others, this interpretation skews the story by taking it out of the larger context. Luke’s gospel is characterized by great reversals calling out for transformation. From the Song of Mary’s proclamation that the humble shall be raised up, to the Beatitudes and Woes, and all throughout the parables, we discover God continually reaching out in mercy to draw near the poor, the marginalized, and the stranger. The Gospels cannot be reconciled with dehumanizing contempt or supremacist agendas.
In the words of the prophet Micah, as inscribed on the signs outside our church doors, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
Navigating the tension between justice, mercy, and humility entails continual discernment. The former Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, has said that we need to learn to stand and kneel at the same time. What he meant is that we, as Christians, are to stand for what we believe is right and to challenge injustice, but to do so with a humble spirit that recognizes the inherent dignity and humanity in every person.