Angry righteousness is a term I use to describe the condition or state of mind a person unfortunately adopts when he or she struggles with some commandment or rule and, since they struggle with it, they feel angry about it. This disposition, when combined with a fearful desire to hide their struggle, produces anger. The result, angry righteousness, is an effort to compensate for their inner fears by choosing to "police" everyone else. (The thought process is along the lines of "If I have to do this, then everybody else does too!!!")
Typically, when a person is in "angry righteousness" mode, they don't think twice about harshly rebuking someone else in an embarassing way for not doing whatever it is that is at the core of the "angry" person's personal struggle. (ex. If the angry person really struggles with, say, coming to church, then if they see someone else not come to church they may actually confront that person later on in a very aggressive and/or public manner.) Their anger either prevents them from authentically seeing how they are being disrespectful to others or it is of such an intensity that they just don't care whether they are respectful or not.
The key to overcoming this sad tendency, if it comes up, is learning acceptance of one's self. It's okay to not want to always do whatever is the right thing - but then we still need do it anyway. If we acknowledge our negative feelings to ourselves and then still push ahead by doing the thing we know we need to do, we will not feel such a strong inner conflict because our negative feelings will not be demanding our acknowledgement. We can give them their acknowledgement (which eliminates their power) without acting on them.
Over time, the negative feelings will eventually die off and we can find genuine joy in doing the right thing. However, if we never acknowledge our negative feelings, we set ourselves up for a potentially dangerous blow up when we finally do have to acknowledge them. If we come to the point of "having" to do so, we may not be capable of giving those feelings acknowlegement without acting on them. In other words, denial of such feelings over time makes them quite powerful such that they may actually become "too much" for us to handle when we do finally acknowledge their existence (like a dam building up water). This can be a dangerous position to put one's self in because it can then lead to bad decisions - rationalized in the name of being "honest". (ex. Sometimes a person who holds in a lot of negativity finally gives in and chooses to be negative and rude to other people in a very berating manner. Then he or she excuses their behavior in the name of being "honest". What they fail to realize is that, though being honest is a good thing, being a jerk is not.) The trick is to be "honest" with ourselves all along the way while not acting on our negative feelings and still doing those things that we know are right and good (sort of a prevention rather than cure approach).
Usually, a healthy sense of humor about one's own imperfections accompanies a person who has learned how this works. This stands in stark contrast to the overly "serious" person who is in angry righteousness mode and who feels incapable of joking about him or herself.
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