We’ve all seen it too many times — the outspoken public school proponents who send their children to private schools while inner-city and poor school systems repeatedly report abysmal numbers of failing students.
The pastors and family-values candidates who have an unfortunate history of infidelity. The prosecutors who get hundreds of marijuana users convicted, yet joke about their own pot use. The ministers who tell us to live like Jesus and politicians who preach against income inequality, yet own multimillion-dollar properties.
The climate activists who insist on using private jets. The elected officials and ministers who exhibit greed and pride while being lauded by Christians. The politicians who proclaim how prayers are answered through successful fertility treatments, yet endorse bills that allow a decision to end the life of any baby for any reason the day before delivery.
People of faith who gloss over cruel words and the divisive nature of heated rhetoric. Leaders who tell us our skin color alone, not our character or convictions, determine our vote, our thinking and our culpability but that immutable characteristics should not define us.
Of course, we tend to notice the hypocrisy in others more than we recognize it in ourselves. We could rattle off more than the list above about ways our words do not align with our actions or logic. All of us who believe in a higher standard fail to live up to our ideals; we’re all hypocrites in some measure.
Jesus knew human nature all too well, including our propensity not to practice what we preach. He warned his followers to avoid doing good things just for show and to stop harming others with our mixed messages.
“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So, when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18
“For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” Matthew 23:12-14
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