The Bullet of Truth: Recognizing Our Hypocrisy
One of the most frequent charges leveled at Christians is that the church is full of hypocrites. As a pastor, I would agree. I would qualify as a candidate for chief hypocrite. My dictionary defines hypocrisy as pretending to be what one is not. I’m sure all of us would agree that no one is perfect (yet all of us have our times of thinking we are!) Therefore, if on one is perfect, all of us have our moments (minutes, hours, days?!) of pretense and imperfection. No one is totally what he claims to be or wants to be. Our reluctance to be honest about our failures and our attempts to cover up would classify all of us as hypocrites or pretenders.
Everyone pretends (or plays the hypocrite) in the concerns of life he values most. The woman whose passion is clothing or the man who is possessed with financial success will pretend that these values are more important than others. They will act accordingly. The real question concerning hypocrisy is not if you will be a hypocrite but what kind of hypocrite are you going to be? If pretense, imperfection and hypocrisy are inevitable in life, then we should at least strive to live our lives at the highest level of hypocrisy. This is exactly where Jesus Christ comes in with His liberation truth about sin and forgiveness.
In short, the teaching of our Lord says that man is a mess. But if he’ll admit his condition, respond to God’s love and aim for greatness, he will find increasing peace, purpose, pardon and power. Even though man’s problem of hypocrisy will continue to be with him on earth, it will be lessened if he will become a hypocrite for God rather than being a hypocrite for lesser and lower values.
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