Three Cheers For Hypocrites

Tip of the hat to The Anchoress and her post for this link Alas, hypocrites! Hat tips all around!

There is nothing more tiresome than as a person of faith hearing the charges of Hypocrisy.

Catholic Author Peter Kreeft, wrote a book once(I forget the title) where he stated that the danger was "hypocrisy" but that perhaps people that wanted to make hypocrisy impossible.

In a example he used reaching from my memory he as ked what is worse:

Is it

(a) That pastor that leads a big Church and is found to have an affair and apologizes for this conduct

or

(b) The Pastor that has an affair and tries to justify by it by saying such attitudes about pre martial and extra marital sex are not modern enough for this age

Anyway a good piece here that is worth printing out and consulting from time to time when you hear this idiotic charges lobbed at Welcoming the Hypocrites


Because hypocrisy requires the hypocrite to believe in something or someone outside himself. Hypocrisy requires an aspiration to something higher or better than oneself. That is the meaning of the folk saying, “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.” Hypocrisy is an imperfect, deficient attempt to be better…

It is deceit that makes hypocrisy what it is. The true hypocrite wants others to think better of him/her than is actually justified. Absent this deceit, there is no hypocrisy, just error or human frailty. That’s what the hypocrisy-excuse people don’t understand - or pretend not to understand - about church people. What may appear to be church people’s hypocrisy is almost always just simple failure to meet the standards of our faith rather than deceit. Why? Because the standard is so high:

But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Mt. 5:28).
But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual transgression, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery (Mt. 5:32).

There are many such examples. So I say that if our churches are filled with such “hypocrites,” then let’s have many more. Vice is easy, virtue is hard. It’s no hypocrisy to fall short of a very high standard and such an excellent goal. And I would suggest that the hypocrisy-excuse people have largely chosen the easy way over the hard way, and choose to call that virtue. So who are the hypocrites? Well, we always have room for one more.

The irony in this situation is that the accusation of hypocrisy often comes from someone incapable of hypocrisy — for the simple reason that you cannot fall short of a standard which you do not have:

Thankfully I have known very few non-hypocritical people. They were insufferable. They were entirely self centered, self directed, self oriented, self focused and just plain purely selfish. They recognized no cause, entity or belief higher than themselves, their own desires, wants or needs. You can see, I’m sure, that it is impossible for such people to act hypocritically because they are always looking out for No. 1 in every situation. They never pretend they are acting in someone else’s interests. They don’t seek others’ approval because they don’t fundamentally care about others or what they think.