Hypocrisy is defined as “the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform.”
Put more simply, hypocrisy is when what we preach does not line up with what we practice. It is an inconsistency between our words and our actions.
Having spent a great deal of my adult life — actually, all of my adult life — in and around local churches, I’ve heard this word thrown around quite a bit. Both those of us who identify as Christians and those who do not, however, struggle at times to consistently make sure our actions align with our message.
An honest inventory of each of our lives will bring us to an undeniable truth: None of us are hypocrisy-free. We all have standards of right and wrong or good and evil to which we subscribe, and we all fail to live up to those standards with greater regularity than we would care to admit. None of us is perfect. We are, each of us, works in progress.
The expectations and ideals of Christianity do tend to put us in the proverbial no-win situation. We pursue and proclaim a moral standard that is literally unattainable. We aspire to nothing less that perfection as expressed in the pages of the Bible. It is the standard to which we are called.
I Peter 1:15-16 says, “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’” As Christians, we are constantly caught in the struggle of proclaiming and pursuing what we should be but have yet to become. Living in that state of limbo makes it easy to fall into hypocrisy.
My experience tells me most people don’t take issue with the pursuit of perfection. Nor do most people take issue with the faults and failures that mar our lives. In general, people have much less of a problem with the moments of hypocrisy when our actions fail to match our message.
Of much greater concern is when our persistent attitudes fail to match our message. We proclaim a compassionate Christ, yet demonstrate attitudes of contempt. We proclaim a Christ who is for the world, yet we are often best known for what we are against. We proclaim a God of grace and forgiveness, yet we demonstrate attitudes of condescension and condemnation. The greatest and most damaging hypocrisy of Christianity is our failure to love one another.
In John 13:35, Jesus says, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” My mind has been continually drawn to this verse in recent weeks. It is very interesting to me that Jesus didn’t say his disciples would be known by their pious and holy lives.
Though being and doing good are certainly important, it is not what distinguishes followers of Jesus. Self-sacrificing love is supposed to be the defining feature of followers of Jesus. It is the outworking of the second half of the great commandment: Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
Christians are to be identified by their love. It is perfectly reasonable then for those inside and outside of the Christian tradition to expect our attitudes and actions to align with this ideal. I would hope for a little bit of grace, understanding that we are flawed and will at times fall short. We will have moments of hypocrisy.
If we are known for our love, however, and we are regularly demonstrating the grace we have been given, it will more than likely be reciprocated. As the saying goes, “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” The most persuasive and powerful message we have is the love we show.