“We are Taught to Hate Hypocrisy. We Shouldn’t.”
That’s the title of a recent essay by Lydia Polgreen.
The piece begins with a personal story, an anecdote
that had me nodding vigorously in recognition. The
author describes that she once lived near a busy
highway exit that had, in her words, a generous merge
lane. Nevertheless, drivers would often cut in at the
last possible moment, making the wait longer for
everyone who exercised a little common decency and
followed the rules. Polgreen recalls how she would
descend into a rage over the inconsiderate, selfish
drivers each time she took that exit headed home.
She also confesses that her rage was tinged with a
self-congratulatory smugness. I would never do such
a thing. She continues, “Except of course I have, I do,
many times, and doubtless will again…Just the other
day I snuck off the highway with a quick, opportunistic
swerve into a honking line of waiting drivers. I was in
a hurry. What can I say? I’m a hypocrite.”
It’s possible that you might relate. Now maybe
your hypocrisy of choice is not aggressive driving
(but maybe it is). My guess is you have one. I’ll go
next. I can be fierce and uncompromising in harsh
assessment of those who are overly attached to
their phones. I find myself rolling my eyes when I see
people who seem distracted and disengaged from
what is literally happening right in front of them IRL
(In Real Life). Families out to dinner staring down at
their devices rather than engaging in conversation
with their loved ones. Missing precious moments. I
would never do such a thing. Except I have. I do. More
often than I care to admit, I catch myself doing the
very thing I condemn. That’s not quite true. Usually
someone else catches me doing that thing. Usually
one of our boys, after he has repeated a question
three times and been given no response. “Dad! Look
up! Listen to me!” What can I say? I’m a hypocrite.
In these polarized and tension-tinged times, it’s
perhaps the most pervasive polemic, particularly
in public life. Polgreen calls ours the “golden age of
allegations of hypocrisy.” It has never been easier to
compare the words and deeds of people we don’t
personally know. We live in an era of permanent
records, and those records accessible to anyone with
WIFI, offering (hear Polgreen’s words again) “an allyou-can-eat buffet of human inconsistency.”
The Christian movement has been at the tip of the
spear in recent hypocrisy wars. The Church was once
assumed immune from human judgment. Instead,
the Church (or, more accurately, its leaders) did the
judging. Our sacred texts describe high standards of
ethical behavior and moral purity, standards that we
have often been better at preaching than practicing.
And as that gap between words and actions was
increasingly exposed, the reputation of religion
(and, again, its leaders) had farther to fall than other
institutions. And fall it has. Crash landing. To the
delight of some and the horror of others. As a pastor,
I hear the criticism often. Churches are filled with
hypocrites. A hypocrite on every pew, and especially
behind the pulpit, where they preach grace while
practicing hostility. In this golden age, allegations of
hypocrisy abound.
I am not here to defend those who twist the gospel
into knots, trying to justify judgment that finds
no basis in scripture or in the life of Jesus Christ.
Those of us who are trying to be his followers must
oppose such voices. But when we do, we must
be spiritually mature enough to know and name
our own brokenness, our own sinfulness, yes, our
own hypocrisy. Friends, the demands of Christian
discipleship are costly. They include sacrificing our
self-righteousness: wagging the finger, pointing out
somebody else’s inconsistencies, or perhaps worst of
all, taking delight in the fall of another.
The Apostle Paul spent much of his life thinking
about how life in Christian community works. Two
thousand years later we must not construe his
letters as grand detached dissertations intentionally
designed to set the course of Christian theology for
all of time. Not so. The epistles of Paul were written
to small, struggling bands of newly formed believers
who, like the apostle, had been transformed by an
encounter with Jesus Christ and were struggling
to understand what this might mean for how they
should live their lives. They were trying to embody
a new way of being together. Paul’s letters provide
encouragement and instruction for a fledgling
movement in the shadow of the Roman Empire.
The letter to the Romans is written to such a
community. Though Paul did not launch the church
and had never visited its members, he knew their
struggles because their struggles are human
struggles. Among them was this: the congregation
in Rome was made up of an odd mixed-up group
of people. People from different backgrounds who
had just recently held divergent perspectives on
important—even essential—matters. A group of Jews
and Gentiles who came from different backgrounds.
Their traditions and their customs were radically
different and often opposed to one another. How
does Paul approach this divided congregation? Well,
as a former high school debater, I am impressed
with Paul’s strategy here. At the outset, the apostle
begins to enumerate a distinctly Gentile list of sins. He
names them one by one, and he piles them on. You
can almost hear the other half of the congregation,
those who were faithful, dedicated followers of the
Levitical law, applauding the bold preaching of
Paul, enjoying this catalog of their neighbors’ most
unfortunate shortcomings. Things are looking good
until, well, after Chapter One comes Chapter Two.
And here, Paul’s next move is to my mind his most
brilliant. He shifts the focus from the sins of one group
to the judgment of the other. He boldly announces
that those who judge the sins of someone else are
committing what they are condemning. Hypocrisy.
To make Paul’s words particularly poignant for our
time, imagine for a moment that you were in a group
made up of both Democrats and Republicans. On
second thought, you don’t even have to imagine that!
But let’s imagine that I stood in this pulpit listing
all the wrongs and the offenses, the sins and the
shortcomings, of let’s just say the Democrats. Those
in the crowd who are of the other party might find
yourselves feeling pretty good. Increasingly selfassured. Righteous even. Enjoying every moment as
I catalog the shortcomings of your neighbors. Until
after Chapter One comes Chapter Two. The language
shifts. The preacher turns to our Republican folks and
says, “By the way, if you have found yourself judging
the other side, you are just as guilty as they are.” You
see how timely these texts can be!
Again, as a powerful preacher and persuader, Paul
returns to this same topic in the seventh chapter. But
this time he makes it personal. Before this group of
believers, he confesses his own brokenness. With
genuine exasperation, Paul acknowledges that he
often falls short of what God intends, even when he
knows to the core of his soul what that is. Sin dwells
within. This pernicious trap is difficult to slip. What can
Paul say? He’s a hypocrite.
Many criticize and condemn the Church as an
assembly of close-minded judgmental hypocrites.
And you know what? They are right. We are a broken
people, a dim reflection of the community we are
called to be. And that is why, every week, we come
together, and we admit how we have failed. We say
that we are sorry. We lean on the grace we need to
try it all over again. We challenge ourselves to be
changed in time, to be renewed, to see what God
sees, to love as Jesus loves. We know that this is a
slow process. It will take longer than the sum of our
years on earth because our humanity will always get
in the way. We require the support of a community,
the reconciliation and forgiveness that we receive
when we freely admit that we are broken. But the
joy that comes from this striving, the fulfillment that
comes from living for something more than ourselves,
is well worth the inevitable setbacks and failures.
In time, we come to rely not on our own efforts but
on the unconditional love of a forgiving God. And
perhaps we come to extend that love and grace and
forgiveness to others as well.
According to Paul, the world itself has been turned
upside-down by the radical love of God in Jesus
Christ. This is no subtle change—something
significant at the heart of reality has been utterly
transformed, and we cannot live the way we did
before we heard this gospel, this good news. We
cannot go back to our old habits of gossip, division,
cynicism, fear, judgment, hatred, and exclusion. No,
we must care for one another. We must pray for one
another. We must talk to one another. And perhaps
most important of all, we must listen to one another.
God forbid we ever become so puffed up with pride
that we forget how to listen.
David French, who happens to be a colleague of
Lydia Polgreen’s from the other side of the ideological
spectrum, recently wrote an essay titled, “Some
Think What You Preach Matters More Than What You
Do. It Doesn’t.” I think Paul would be cheering if he
could read the final lines of the essay. “The American
church is torn apart by conflict over theology. But it
should be united by the pursuit of virtue. The church
that truly influences a nation will be one that focuses
on doing good more than on being right.”
In the weeks ahead, could we try to make that shift
at Second Church? Could we commit, covenant, to
spend marginally less time pointing out somebody
else’s vice and just a little more time pursuing virtue?
Friends at Second, listen. Constantly seeking out the
hypocrisy of others is a spiritually bankrupt downward
spiral. Not because you’ll be without examples—
there’s an endless supply of them—but because there
will always be a hypocrite in the mirror. That’s the one
you are most able to influence.
So let’s be honest about our failures. Let’s be more
forgiving of the failures of others. Even the ones who
cut us off in traffic. After all, hypocrites are always
welcome on the road of faith. And thanks be to God
for that. Amen.