My Life as a Hypocrite

Saying one thing and doing another as Christians can make our faith deeply unappealing to others. Nathan Brown explores this tricky issue.

This song is the lead-in to the preacher. We have worshipped together and now this song is being performed as the youth rally crowd settles back into their seats. The worship band is good and the few hundred young people have sung enthusiastically. With the other aspects of the program coming together, it’s been a great shared experience. For me—as someone who is a visitor to this place—it is good to feel part of this group of people and part of their worship, placed in the front row between the crowd and the band.

The gentleness of the song fits the mood the worship helped create. The singer is a young woman, who sings with eyes closed, concentrating on the words she is singing. The singer is a particularly attractive young woman.

And almost before I have a chance to stop myself, I have looked her over in a way that doesn’t fit with the worship setting. It is perhaps only a second or two—maybe just a small step beyond healthy appreciation of God’s human creation—but this drift in my thoughts is enough to shatter the moment for me. As the song is coming to an end, I am telling myself what a loser I am.
As warm applause fills the church, the singer leaves the stage.

Propelled by the demands of the program sheet, rather than by my state of mind, I pick my way through the spider web of sound and lighting cables, and up the stairs at the other side of the stage. With each step, I am asking myself who I think I am, what credibility I have to try to preach, to try to talk about God and His love, and how He wants us to live His goodness in our world. With every step up to the stage, I am quietly beating myself up. I know what a hypocrite I am.

It’s just one example where, in those circumstances and setting, my thoughts and actions made the reality of my life as a hypocrite obvious. As someone who writes and speaks publicly about God, faith and the difference they should make in our lives and choices, I am painfully aware of my hypocrisy—as are most people with whom I live or work.
It is something we all wrestle with. Anyone who stands up for something almost inevitably doesn’t stand up for it consistently.

In many ways, we all fail—at least occasionally—to live up to what we say we should do, know we should be or feel in our hearts we should be like. And perhaps the greatest hypocrisy is with those of us who don’t pause often enough to confess, with at least a little bit of honesty, our hypocrisy.
But it becomes more obvious to the rest of us when that person is placed on some kind of pedestal, platform or page. Whether by virtue of that person being vocal in expressing their Christianity or by the prominence that some kind of ministry or ability has given them, such a position sometimes serves only to exaggerate their hypocrisy, whether sometimes just to themselves when they are most honest about it or even to the wider and often critical community.
But such recognition of hypocrisy within myself is not new.

Paul—the Bible writer, missionary and great preacher—expressed his frustration with the continuing struggle to do what he knew was right: “I know I am rotten through and through so far as my old sinful nature is concerned. No matter which way I turn, I can’t make myself do right. I want to, but I can’t. When I want to do good, I don’t. And when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway. But if I am doing what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing it; the sin within me is doing it. It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong” (Romans 7:18-21, NLT).
And this struggle continues to be a challenge for Christianity today—both for Christians themselves and for those observing those who say they believe. In recent research of non-Christians’ perceptions of Christianity, 85 per cent of those surveyed criticised Christians for “hypocrisy—saying one thing, doing another.” Comments researcher David Kinnaman, “To the casual observer, it is all too easy to call us hypocrites, because we often fit the bill” (UnChristian: What a new generation really thinks about Christianity . . . And why it matters).

But it is not so much the inconsistency of living that bothers those surveyed; it is more about pretending. Kinnaman describes people who “pretend to be something unreal, conveying a polished image that is not accurate.” By contrast, his research found that, of non-Christians who knew a committed Christian, only 15 per cent reported noticing a significant positive difference in the believers’ lives.

What we believe should make a difference to our lives, priorities and choices and, in some instances and in some people’s lives, these changes can be dramatic. But it is wrong to say that Christianity renders us perfect and thus hypocrisy-proof. “At the most basic level, we all share the human condition with all its brokenness. And we have the hope that Jesus can really transform lives and redeem the future” (Jud Wilhite, “It’s Okay not to be Okay,” UnChristian).

In his short novel Life After God, Douglas Coupland has one of his characters reflect on this answer to our hypocrisy: “My secret is I need God—that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.” This is the same conclusion Paul arrived at in answer to his frustrated question, “Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:24, 25).
In a relationship with Jesus, we find both forgiveness for our alltoo-common failures and power to bring change in our lives. We also trust Him to use, in a positive way, the example we are to others—despite our obvious flaws.

This is the hope that allows me to continue talking and writing about God through the times of honesty and self-realisation when I am tempted to feel like a fraud, painfully aware of the hypocrite that I am. It isn’t the best way to begin preaching but it is another reminder of the amazing grace of God.