That is one of the questions I was asked by the new Christian in my Bible study a week ago. I had said something along the lines of "It's good to be righteous [like Noah], but of course you don't want to be self-righteous" and the gal was confused. She basically assumed righteousness, self-righteousness, and hypocricy were all the same thing.
Several of us stumbled through attempts to explain the difference, but in the end she wasn't satisfied and we had to move on. It's been bothering me since then, though. I searched online for a page that explained the differences, but this post on self-righteousness by Mark Shea was the closest I got. Then I looked up the definitions of these terms online, and found this:
Righteous: characterized by uprightness or morality; morally right or justifiable; acting in an upright, moral way
(Synonyms include good, honest, fair, right)
Self-righteous: confident of one's own righteousness, esp. when smugly moralistic and intolerant of the opinions and behavior of others
(Synonyms include sanctimonious, pharisaical)
Hypocritical: a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess, esp. a person whose actions belie stated beliefs; a person who feigns some desirable or publicly approved attitude, esp. one whose private life, opinions, or statements belie his or her public statements
(Synonyms include deceiver, dissembler, pretender, pharisee)
I was thinking that since the latter two both have synonyms that refer to pharisees, I could try and explain it using them as examples... but she has no background knowledge about the pharisees, so I'm not sure how well that would work. So I'm turning to you, my wise friends.
How would you explain (self-)righteousness to a new Christian?