There’s a shadow side to being “in the world but not of it”—and if we’re honest, we’ve all seen it: Christians so focused on being set apart that they’ve become self-righteous, judgmental, and looking down on everyone else. In this episode, we dig into Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector and discover that you can do all the right things and still miss the point entirely. The Pharisee wasn’t lying about his obedience; he just needed someone to look down on to make his righteousness feel meaningful. Three experiments—the contempt inventory, the reputation test, and the dinner table test—help us examine whether our holiness is making us more like Jesus or more like the Pharisee. Because the goal isn’t to be set apart from people; it’s to be set apart for people.

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