stemelbow Posted March 22, 2017 Posted March 22, 2017 3 hours ago, ksfisher said: 2. (lowercase) practicing or advocating strict observance of external forms and ceremonies of religion or conduct without regard to the spirit; self-righteous; hypocritical. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/pharisaic?s=t Out of curiosity, what is it that you find pharisaic about your stake? I don't know that my stake is any more pharisaic than any others, if that's what you're wondering. Every religious person must carry some elements of pharisaic, since all are to some extent hypocritical in this world. Self-righteous? The same. I think out of everyone in my stake boundaries the most self-righteous and hypocritical are those that go to the LDS Church at least as much as anyone else in it. And, they all practice and advocate strict observance or external forms and ceremonies of their religion or conduct often without regard to the spirit, probably moreso than anyone else within the stake boundaries--since so many don't do anything religious. I'd wager the same could be said of every stake in the Church, with perhaps some pretty rare exceptions. I don't know how else to spell it out. Mormons tend to be very self-righteous, even if some of us do better at avoiding it than others. We tend to be strict in observance of our forms, ceremonies and customs. We tend to do a lot of it sometimes without regard to the spirit or sometimes with too much feigning appeals to the spirit. My take is more of a historical perspective of pharisaic, though. I'd suggest the Pharisees became some sort of example to those who wrote the NT years and years after the apostles and Jesus lived. I don't think they were any worse than most of us, but the authors always get to caricaturize "the others"-just get in a conversation with old strict LDS people about homosexuality and you'll see the unfair caricaturing first hand. And it certainly seems obvious the poor Pharisees became the example of bad behavior for stories told about Jesus. As it is it's like the Pharisees were much like our modern LDS Church goers. THey were religious and felt like they were "set apart" (that's what the term is derived from as I recall) much like our LDS members feel set apart from the world, particularly blessed to have something others do not. The attitude seems equal among the two groups, at least as reported in the NT. Maybe they weren't as bad at that stuff as we are, but all we have are the stories saying they were probably close to as bad at it as modern day LDS people are. We add to hypocrisy and self-righteousness strict commands and traditions and we often note when those among us don't follow appropriately. I find the comparison and parallel between the two groups so devastatingly similar I'm surprised we so often miss it.
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