Hypocrisy Made Respectable
Where Opposites Find Their Ultimate Attraction
It’s not often that I take the time to either watch or listen to
a another preacher’s sermon online, but a family member urged me
to watch a young man on SermonAudio which demonstrated more than
compromise, but hypocrisy made perfectly acceptable. His message was at
a SBC youth rally and he preached an excellent message against
worldliness for which he speculated that he would probably never be
invited to speak there again. It was an admirable effort,
preached with passion and calling the young people present to change
their ways and serve the Lord, but something didn’t seem quite
right.
As I dug back to the church website from which this young man
ministered I found a strange assortment of descriptions of its
ministries. On the one hand, it was a Baptist Church, but it held a
Reformed perspective in doctrine. Their self description of worship
style was “charismatic.” The music ministry obviously
included a praise band, much like the one I saw behind this young man
at the SBC youth rally video. The Church, of course, staked a claim for
preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As I watched the video, I
could not help but wonder if those who heard his powerful message were
as confused as I was, when he extended an invitation to repent of the
very things engaged and endorsed in the rally’s program.
Hypocrisy is one of the strongest terms used in the Bible. Wherever we
read it in the New Testament, it was a term of strongest rebuke and
criticism, because it questioned a person’s truthfulness,
consistency and sincerity of heart. The word derives from the
role-playing by actors in first century theater. It is about
play-acting so as to pretend to be something we are not, which was
facilitated in the first century by the wearing of masks, so as to set
forth an illusion by both words and appearance for the entertainment of
the audience.
Jesus used the term repeatedly in the Gospel accounts, including some
15 times in Matthew alone, but it was never directed to the secular
world. More often than not, the Pharisees were His target because they
perpetually hid behind the masks of piety and put on a religious show
from the synagogues to the street corners to impress other people with
their professed intellectual and spiritual superiority. As our Lord
pointed out, they professed allegiance and service unto the Truth, but
their practice not only fell short of the standards of Scripture, but
also directly contradicted the Truth in the service of their own will
and pleasure. No wonder Jesus repeatedly exposed them publicly for the
imposters they really were, but the Gospels tell us that despite
the miracles performed by Jesus, the people still naturally gravitated
towards the pomp and ceremony of their religious theater. In such
hindsight, it would appear that most of the recent innovations in
church and worship going on around us are far from anything new. In
fact, their dubious heritage of the acceptability of deception and fair
speeches being justified by the ends sought, should have given pause to
those tempted to follow suit in our lifetime.
Through the 20th century, the efforts to overcome the charges of
hypocrisy consisted of outright attacks upon the Word of God as the
standard for Truth. Since the end of the Civil War, Darwinism, Higher
Criticism and the Social Gospel all did their best to escape the
condemnation of being called hypocritical by rejecting any absolute
Scriptural standard of measure from being of Christianity applied to
their ministries or programs. For one to apply an absolute standard
that was not culturally sensitive was to be declared irrelevant to the
needs of society and be labeled a legalist. While the subsequent
movements of Modernism, Liberalism and Evangelicalism did much
harm to undermine the clarity of the Gospel and the cause of Christ, at
least their leaders were still sensitive and responsive to the charges
of hypocrisy leveled against them. They just changed the rules rather
than change their conduct.
Toward the second half of the 20th century we can mark the beginning of
Neo-Evangelicalism which began to build the foundation for where we
find ourselves now. The world’s methods, even its forms of
entertainment, become fair game as acceptable means towards the end of
reaching young people with the Gospel message. No matter if the
“Christian” artists have reputations of broken lives and
abandoned marriages. No matter if the lyrics of their songs are so
generic as to be applied to any god or religious system. No matter if
the message is discovering God’s plan for your life. It is the
beginning of the acceptance of Christianity as nothing more than
addition to all the worldly things that already preoccupy our lives. An
adjunct or a postscript, more focused upon the end of life than about
living now as a Christian. The necessity of “old things are
passed away” is redefined so that not everything must become new.
It creates an artificial partnership between the Old Man and the New
Man within believers which simply need to learn how to coexist through
a measure of mutual respect for the contributions each offers for the
welfare of the Christian. The walls are broken down and like those in
Nehemiah’s day, there are yet many content to live in the squalor
of a decrepit Jerusalem, open to anything and everything, so long as it
is still known as Jerusalem. Why should anyone be surprised that
the Ecumenical Movement was spawned during this period of time. All the
doctrinal differences and distinctions can- yea must be- sacrificed for
the sake of spiritual unity. No doctrine dare be held so precious as to
not be expendable for the greater good of one world-wide Church. Unity
doesn’t just trump hypocrisy. It expunges it from our vocabulary.
Since the close of the 20th century until now, we come to the last and
final stage of the process with the Emergent Church Movement, where
hypocrisy is neither denied, nor expunged, but rather it has become the
hallmark and self-professed glory of the movement. Contrary doctrines,
contrary forms of worship, contrary lifestyles all become the norms
where attendants may freely pick and choose what they will or what they
like, so long as they are willing to let everyone else there make their
own choices as well. No one is judged, neither would it be good taste
to criticize other choices as wrong or hypocritical to some absolute
system of Truth. Church is thus made into a spiritual Build-A
Bear” store where everybody comes together for a presumed
identical purpose, but each one leaves with their own design, conformed
to their own wants and needs. It is the ultimate achievement of
consumer religion.
Lastly, to not only accept, but revel in hypocrisy is the ultimate
success of worldliness over Godliness. It seems hardly necessary to say
that politicians have been liars and hypocrites for a long time. For
them to say one thing do another, prescribe a law for the rest of us,
yet exempt themselves from the same law, merely adds arrogance to
hypocrisy, but it has become so commonplace that we accept it as the
norm in modern society. If we would be discerning at all, it is to seek
the lesser degree of arrogance and hypocrisy in a political candidate
whom we might support in an election. But consider a broaden
perspective.
If Islam sincerely hates Western decadence and resents its corrupting
influence found in Islamic nations, why have there never been terrorist
threats against Hollywood? Why not attack Los Angeles, instead of New
York? Perhaps it is a matter of expediency. Hollywood personalities
speak out against the wars in the Middle East. Hollywood’s age
old support for Israel has swung in recent years to condemnation
of Israel and support for the Palestinian cause. It’s like all
the Feminist movements, whose silence about the treatment of women in
the Middle East is deafening, whose true agenda must be different from
that first professed to maintain such prolonged silence in the face of
such profound abuse. These are but political variations of the
hypocrisy now commonly accepted as normal.
Two final things; First, Hypocrisy is never about the welfare of
others, it is always about accruing power over people. In that quest
for power, any absolute Authority whether of the Word of God, or God
Himself, must be plausibly dismantled, set aside or compelled into
subjection to the asserted authority of men. Absolutes cannot be
tolerated in a world governed by Relativism because the absolute
standards would clearly mark the compromises and hypocrisy of
Relativism.. Second, we can never forget that God hates
Hypocrisy. Whether we read the Old Testament or the New, there has
never been tolerance for the contrary or contradictory. It has always
been that our yea be yea, and our nay be nay. While we struggle within
ourselves daily over the contradictions we face between our Old and New
natures, the Scripture is abundantly clear that we must perpetually do
battle with ourselves, with the unbelieving world and with Satan
himself to “die daily,” lest we come to some cease fire
that will bring more confusion than clarity to what it means to live as
God’s child in this present age. It also should be clear that we
cannot countenance movements, churches, authors or ministries that have
surrendered Biblical distinctions to the cliche “all things to
all people.” The exaltation of acceptable contradictions and
confusion will put more souls on the broad way that leads unto
destruction than ever before. Furthermore, the longer we linger in the
company of the confused, the more we lend our own credibility to a
placebo gospel, devoid of any saving grace because it denies the Truth
of the Gospel found in Scripture. Such hesitation marks the weakness of
our discernment and the elevation of other things such as unity or
acceptable hypocrisy above the simple Truth of the Gospel of
Jesus Christ.
Dr. Charles L. Dear
Editor, THE REVIEW