The greater our deficits in true self-knowledge, the greater our tendency to judge and harshly condemn others. This tendency underscores the fact that true self-knowledge includes a deep awareness of our own inherent weaknesses and propensity for sin—either by offending against love of God and/or love of neighbor. Accordingly, the deeper we know ourselves, the more fully and readily we rely on God’s grace to prevent us from sinning. So too, the more complete our self-knowledge, the greater our compassion and mercy in judging the sins and failings of others. Lacking this self-knowledge, the Scribes and Pharisees flatter themselves into believing that they would not have shed the prophets’ blood, as did their ancestors. Thus it is, that the measure of our compassionate mercy towards our neighbors in their weaknesses and sins, is also the measure of our self-knowledge and freedom from the hypocrisy that Jesus saw so clearly exhibited in the Scribes and the Pharisees. And so the question becomes: How free are we from a similar hypocrisy?