A few years ago, one of our daughters came home from school upset about an incident that occurred on the bus that day. One of the children got in a lot of trouble for cursing at another child. Fortunately, our daughter wasn’t involved, but she was confused. She wanted to know why the boy got in so much trouble just for saying a word.
As a father, I figured I would use it as a teaching opportunity. This was a great opportunity to be a wise father, and explain to my daughter that they are ways we should talk, and ways we shouldn’t talk. I pictured myself as being like Bob Saget at the end of an episode of “Full House,” sitting on the end of the bed and being all gentle and understanding, with soft music playing in the background.
“Tell me what happened on the bus, honey.”
My daughter recounted how a boy starting teasing another boy and used a bad word.
“Well, sweetie, that was wrong of him. There some words we shouldn’t use because they hurt people and make them feel bad.”
She explained how she understood that.
“Remember honey, Daddy doesn’t want you using bad words, even if the other kids do. I want to make sure you understand, what word did the little boy say?”
My daughter looked at me for a moment, somewhat puzzled. “You know Dad. It’s that word you always say to your computer.”
In moments like that, we fathers are always tempted to pull out the old “do as I say, not as I do” speech. Except that in this case, I didn’t want her doing as I did or saying what I said.
Nothing undermines one’s credibility or authority more than saying one thing while doing another. Few of us bat an eye, when a Hollywood star is discovered to be cheating on his wife. We may think he’s a jerk, but we’ve grown to expect such behavior since we seldom hear movie stars preaching the value of marital fidelity anyway. However, when a family values politician is arrested for indecent behavior in a public restroom, or a preacher is caught with a prostitute, we react with disgust.
As well we should. It’s bad enough when a person commits adultery, lies or steals. But the offense is magnified when it’s a person who has spent their life condemning those things, or worse, passing judgment on those who do them. We sometimes even react with glee to see a judgmental person knocked down a few pegs. Personally, my day just gets a little brighter whenever a homophobic preacher whose made a career out of degrading people gets caught in a sex scandal. I know those sorts of incidents weaken many people’s faith but for me it’s like, “Wow, there really is a God.”
Overall though, hypocrisy makes us angry. When it does, we are in good company because it made Jesus angry too. This month, we’ve been exploring the Angry Jesus. The idea of Jesus getting angry may make us uncomfortable, yet the Gospels record several incidents of it. What is most instructive is uncovering those things which made Jesus angry. As Jesus’ followers, we are called to hold the same values which he held. Consequently that means, not walking around angry all the time, but being angry with the same things that angered him. Hypocrisy, especially among religious folks, angered Jesus.
In confronting the religious leaders of his day, Jesus compares them to cups that have been polished to look clean on the outside, but inside are filthy and disgusting, filled with greed and self-indulgence. In Jesus’ culture, how one ate a meal was of religious significance. There were rules about washing ones hands, cups and plate. There was even a debate as to which should be washed first, the plate or the cup. In Jesus’ rant in Matthew 23, he tells the religious leaders they have it all wrong. They worry about external things, like washing the outside of the cup, but neglect to wash the inside. Once again, it would be easy to file Jesus’ criticism away as if it only addressed a first century issue, a shortcoming of the Pharisees. But the sin of the Pharisees is our sin too.
We can work to make our lives look good on the outside. We can have a perfect fashion sense, a beautiful home, get our nails done, earn a lot of money or work out. We can even make ourselves look religious by going to church, reading the right books, or saying the right things. Yet inside, our hearts are filled with greed and self-indulgence. That leads to us messing up our lives. It leads to perfect couples with beautiful homes, who are having affairs. It leads to us spouting God-talk while harboring hatred and selfishness in our hearts. It leads to people calling us hypocrites and to calling ourselves hypocrites. Then we feel awful about ourselves and get caught in downward spirals of guilt and shame.
Here’s the funny thing about hypocrisy. We get hypocrisy wrong. We reduce hypocrisy to merely saying one thing while doing another. As a remedy, we think we need to just change what we do. If we just change what we do to match what we say, then everything will be all right. But it’s more than that. That’s not the remedy Jesus proposes. Jesus doesn’t tell the Pharisees to just practice better what they preach. That would just be polishing the outside of the cup again.
Instead Jesus attacks the core of the problem. The problem is not in our actions. It’s not even in what we preach. The problem, Jesus says, is inside us. In another part of the Gospels, he talks about how what we say and do comes out of our hearts. If things are right inside us, our words and actions will be right. If things are wrong inside of us, our words and actions will reflect that too. Jesus got angry about hypocrisy because it revealed what was really in the hypocrite’s heart.
When we see incongruity between the what a politician or preacher says, and what they do, it’s easy to just focus on their actions. But Jesus tells us the real problem is not in their actions, it’s in their heart. The reason many fallen preachers were so stridently vocal about particular the immoralities of others was because they were secretly engaging in the same behavior. It’s easy to pin that on them.
Here’s the hard part. Jesus isn’t just talking about preachers and politicians. He’s talking about all of us. Even though you may not be someone who goes around telling people to live a moral life, that doesn’t excuse you from living one. In fact, you don’t even have to be religious to suffer from the malady Jesus describes. Think of person of whom you are critical for a moment. What is it that they do that irritates you so much? By any chance is it a shortcoming with which you struggle yourself?
The anger that Jesus displayed toward hypocrisy should never be an excuse for us to be satisfied in merely pointing out the hypocrisy of others. The truth is we are all hypocrites. We all fall short of living out our ideals, and always will.
This is not the kind of thing we fix about ourselves by just trying harder. Instead we must turn our judgmental gaze inward at our own hearts. What greed and self-indulgence lies there? What’s rotting and filthy inside of us?
The only cure is to have our hearts cleansed of all that dirt. We need to be wiped clean of all our negativity. That is not something we can do ourselves. Only God can do that. When we open ourselves to the power of the Holy Spirit, when we let Christ in, God changes our hearts and creates something new within us. Then, from our new transformed hearts we can live a new authentic life of integrity.
Jesus told us, first clean the inside, and the outside will take care of itself.
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