80. Hypocrisy

Romans 2:1 You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.

I was having an off day, in fact one of several in a row.  During this time I was talking with my brother who is a follower of this blog.  I was discussing a particular thorn in my side and talking about the pleasure that could be had in stapling this woman’s lips and tongue to her desk.  It would an effective way to stop the woman and the malicious gossip and half truths she spreads about the agency and those who work with me.

          My brother expressed shock, mostly in jest, referring to me as the guy who writes about love.  He then asked, “Aren’t you the guy that wrote about taking logs from our eyes?”

          I replied, “Yes, I wrote that when we take the logs from our eyes we are not then free to judge, but I did not say anything about clobbering the other person with them.”

          It has been one of the weeks.

One might call me a hypocrite for entertaining thoughts of harming an other person.  And although my declaration that I am not a hypocrite might be self serving, I believe that there is not a lot of hypocrisy to me.  Let me explain.

Romans 7:19 & 20 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

There are myriad behaviours that I wish I could stop.  Some days are better than others, other days less so.  At this point in my life I am better behaved than when I was younger, and I will grant you that may have to do with my getting older and having less energy than my becoming more righteous. 

          So, if I am given to flights of imagination of doing harm, am I not contradicting my writings about love?  I look at this situation like when I was smoking.  If you asked me, I would tell you that smoking was bad for my health.  I would even tell you as I lit up and started coughing.  My smoking did not mean that it was any less harmful, just underlined my stupidity.

          And yes, when I take a while to settle myself down so that I can earnestly pray for someone one, even though I think they are a waste of skin, it does not make the call to love our enemies any less of a good thing to do.  It just means that I am not where I or God or others would like me to be.

My hypocrisy lies not in my sin, but in my judgment of others.  My judgment of others tries to set myself apart from them, to make me different, and in my eyes better. 

          I find it curious that while most Christians are aware of the laundry list of sins the Paul lists in the first chapter of Romans, most are unable to identify more than maybe one or two sins.  Even more curious is that most Christians who are aware of this laundry list of sins, are almost ignorant of the verse that I used to open this post.  The verse that tells us that by judging others we condemn ourselves.

          I have written that my relationship with Christ, while being intensely personal, is not a matter of a solitary practice.  We are called to worship, to pray and to work out our faith together.  And as I have written before, the more honest and vulnerable I can be with you, the more space there is for God to enter the relationship.

          By judging you, by trying to separate myself from you, it is myself that I am isolating. 

          Friends of mine practice a spiritual tradition where each person is recognized as being the divine.  These days I do have difficulty looking at someone and stating “Thou art God” or “Thou art Goddess.” But the sentiment of “When you did this for the least of these you did so for me.” has me look for the Christ in others. It recognizes that if I want to see God, that I should start with those already around me.

          To separate others from me, I limit the presence of God in my own life.  Hypocrisy, the epitome of this separation, lies not within my sin but within my judgment.  For it is my judgment that leaves alone with my sin, and not with the fellowship of my fellow Christians. To lay myself open, to be honest and vulnerable, opens me to the healing Grace of God, and maybe, just maybe, the myriad nonsense I do becomes even less.