Hypocrisy; Or, How to Live as you Think or Believe

Hypocrisy is part and parcel of the religious life. To my knowledge, every religion eschews hypocrisy, although every critic of religion accuses religion of hypocrisy. That is, according to the critics, religious people are hypocritical of their own hypocrisy...which in a double-negative sort-of-way makes some sense.

But what is "hypocrisy?" Basically, hypocrisy is an incongruity between how one thinks, feels, believes, and how one acts or behaves. "Putting on a good face" is a hypocritical activity. You don't really feel good, but you pretend to for some reason or another. In religious terms, saying you believe in God or love or forgiveness, but never living or behaving as if God matters to you, or never loving or forgiving anyone or anything is hypocritical. Jesus was a fervent opponent of hypocrisy.

So hypocrisy is bad. OK. But why do we do it? Although there are many answers to such a question, as a theologian it comes down to a couple of things: 1) we haven't thought enough about what we actually believe so that we do not know how hypocritically we behave. Fortunately, we have many critics of religion who are willing to help us think about what we might actually believe. So there is that.

2) We don't actually trust enough in the God we believe to change our behavior. In fact, when we do have those levels of trust that change our behavior, there are often a plethora of critics who assert that we are "crazy," or "religious fanatics." But for most of us, a little hypocrisy is a lot easier on the pocketbook and our life expectancy. Christian Liberation theologians have long advocated that God has a "preferential option for the poor." But do we actually behave as if that is true? Does God really love poor people more than others? If we really believed that was true, and we wanted to be on God's side, wouldn't we all strive to be poor? That we are not is just evidence of our hypocrisy.

One of the great hypocrisies Lutherans are responsible for, although Christians in general were not shown in a good light either, is the rise of National Socialism and Adolph Hitler in the first third of the 20th Century. Although many Lutheran theologians at the time claimed to be following the Lutheran theological tradition (more on that in an upcoming post) they wound up betraying that theological tradition by behaving in very quietistic and evil-enabling ways. In other words, they were hypocrites.

As far as Christians go, Lutherans have one of the most obvious ways of avoiding charges of hypocrisy. Since our theological tradition claims that works of love and righteousness are not directly connected to our belief in God and God's love, our behavior does not need to be justified theologically. We can own up to our failures in behavior because we believe that our behaviors, even our best ones, do not condition God's love for us. In other words, you could murder somebody and we believe that God may still love that person. I once saw a very Lutheran sign on a vending machine-- "You're lucky God loves you, no one else does." In our theological tradition the worst-behaved person is still loved by God, and that belief can eliminate a lot of need for hypocrisy.

If you can say whatever needs to be said or do whatever needs to be done because you believe that your words or behaviors do not condition God's love for you, you can do a lot of things other people cannot do because they are afraid of God. You can forgive somebody, for example. So if you believe in forgiveness, and in the process of living you are harmed, you can actually behave in a forgiving way towards your enemy. You don't have to pretend in order to have God not judge you, you can actually behave as the situation calls for because your behavior does not affect God's love for you. You may still be judged by God, but you won't be a hypocrite to the rest of us.

Hypocrisy is revealed when the incongruity of thought and behavior rises to the surface. Jesus of Nazareth once said that one is judged by their fruit. And that is true. But one is not loved by their fruit, and that's the difference between being a hypocrite and being a witness to your faith. When you live with an understanding that God loves you, and that behaviors can be judged good or bad and not affect that love, you are on the way to eliminating hypocrisy in your life. Because in this case what you think or believe does make a difference in how you behave, but not because you think or believe properly, but rather because you trust that what you think or believe is actually true.

May your table be full, and your conversations be true.