12 Steps for a Recovering Pharisee (like me)

I have always like John Fischer. He has been a key speaker at Cornerstone Festival many times over the years (the Jesus Rock festival that Jesus People USA, the community I used to live and serve with for in Chicago for several years, puts on) and I've always enjoyed his honesty and ability to share sometimes difficult realities in a lighthearted and gracious manner. This is from a book of his by the same title that he wrote several years back.

The 12 Steps of a Recovering Pharisee (like
me)

by John Fischer

1. We admit that our single most
unmitigated pleasure is to judge other people.

2. Have come to believe that our means of obtaining
greatness is to make everyone lower than ourselves in our own mind.

3. Realize that we detest mercy being given to those who,
unlike us, haven't worked for it and don't deserve it.

4. Have decided that we don't want to get what we deserve
after all, and we don't want anyone else to either.

5. Will cease all attempts to apply teaching and rebuke to
anyone but ourselves.

6. Are ready to have God remove all these defects of
attitude and character.

7. Embrace the belief that we are, and will always be,
experts at sinning.

8. Are looking closely at the lives of famous men and
women of the Bible who turned out to be ordinary sinners like us.

9. Are seeking through prayer and meditation to make a
conscious effort to consider other better than ourselves.

10. Embrace the state of astonishment as a permanent and
glorious reality.

11. 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.