“Judge Not”: Christians, Sinning and Hypocrisy
John Jankowski
In the spirit of the late great St. Thomas Aquinas, I’d like to offer the following postulate: Every Christian is a hypocrite because every Christian is a sinner. Following this postulate’s logic, less hypocrisy would generate fewer sins and thus makes us all better Christians. Make sense? Well, then, I suppose in the dialectical manner or spirit of Socrates, I’d like to challenge the “Thomist” postulate with this supposition: “Being hypocritical” is a fundamentally sound Christian activity, and we would all do well to practice more of it. Here’s why.
Hypocrisy, as we all know, connotes judgment. As Christians, our ultimate judgment is that of God’s; in the here and now, it is that of society in general and that of our fellow Christians in particular. By claiming that we are Christian, we profess to live lives that are “Christ-like,” and we can look to His life lived and those of the Saints for inspiration and imitation. The more passionate our faith and the more vibrant and active it becomes, the greater the chances we have to be exposed as hypocrites. In other words, in revealing and thereby professing our faith, we become living targets, not only for the jealous, petty and churlish of our own congregations, but for the secular world that eschews and often denigrates “taking a stand” on so-called “moral issues.”
“Objectivity,” seemingly our society’s and especially our corporate media’s only abiding virtue, is not only a ruse but an “out” for its upholders. By claiming to be free from both internal and external “subjective” interests, our mediators can lay claim to “moral unaccountability.” The flaks and hacks that defend an imagined zone of non-culpability profess to be non-professors, claiming no privileged possession or conveyance of the truth, just a dutiful reportage of the facts. (Note how our society as a whole has come to mirror our media’s amorality…or is it the other way around?)
The upshot of this, of course, is that by refusing to acknowledge truth-claims, our media refuses to acknowledge any lie-claims, to speak. For if there is no “truth” — or at least pretensions there of — on its pages or appearing via other mediating implements, how can there be lies? And maybe this is fine, at least ostensibly. As Christians, we shouldn’t be turning to the media for “truth” anyway, especially truth with a capitalized “T.” But if we do just want the so-called facts and consult some media outlet for them, just remember that the fix is in. For to be free of bias or what we formerly referred to as prejudice is to be free of sin; and I’ve got to believe that there is no shortage of sin at The New York Times, et. al.
Bringing this back home again, I would then encourage all of us Christians to embrace our hypocrisy, because we are in effect embracing our faith. “Tolerance” may be an appropriate liberal or secular virtue; it has never been a Christian one. And if our Christian intolerance — our unabidance of societal morality — elicits secular or even “holy” approbation, let us welcome it. For as the perhaps not-so-great but certainly not-late John Cougar Mellencamp once tunefully quipped, “If you don’t stand for something, you’re gonna fall for anything.” And as Christians, we are called to indeed take stands. We must not only talk His talk, we must walk His walk. And if in the process we happen to stumble as we trundle, or if our gait appears weak at times, let our brother in faith nudge us on. Let our conscience remind us. Let the Holy Spirit guide us — back to a path more befitting of that of our Lord’s.
Don’t be tempted to lay down your cross because of our societal “slivers.” They are one and the same. Don’t be afraid to be a hypocrite.
TAGS:
Judging Others
Christianity
Sinning
Hypocrisy
Tolerance
