Thursday, May 19th - Yep, I'm a Hypocrite Too...

#thestruggleisreal - Joining in the Hypocrisy

Over the next six weeks, Toni Ruth and I will be preaching a series based on Paul's letter to the Galatians (called #thestruggleisreal).  During this series, I'm going to make every effort to post every day with some brief thoughts on various passages from Galatians.  I hope that you follow along as we look for God's grace in the midst of some very real struggles!

I definitely had one of these shirts

Way back in 1992, as a 15-year-old new Christian, I was learning how to be a part of the Christian youth sub-culture. This meant learning the boundaries - what I should say, watch, read, listen to, and wear.  I never really got too deep into all of that - I listened to DC Talk and Petra, had a few Christian t-shirts and posters, and was able to speak some of the lingo (I was, after all, "on fire for Jesus").  Much of this stuff I learned through becoming friends with my classmates in my high school's FCA program* and not  in my local church. Hewing to a cultural model and observing all of the "codes" was never really my thing.  Besides, they all seemed to have a very Southern Baptist flavor to them - kind of an ill-fit for a lifelong United Methodist.  Not talking junk about my Southern Baptist friends, I'm just not one.

Anyway, what I did pick up on quickly was that one of the WORST things that you could possibly be was a hypocrite.  Maybe a hypocrite wasn't as bad as an atheist, a believer in evolution, or a liberal (the horror!), but it was plenty bad.  One major area of concern for me and many of my Christian friends (who were always kind to me and took their faith very seriously - I'm not making fun), was our witness.  We took our witness very seriously.  It was the reason we wore the t-shirts, didn’t cuss, didn't party, asked our biology teacher about God's role in creation, etc. Besides our own potential moral failings, we were convinced that the greatest enemies of our witness as Christians were hypocrites.**

We weren't without Scriptural warrant.  For example, Jesus uses this word to great effect in Matthew 6 and 23. Paul uses the word once ('hypocrisy' to be exact) and it also carries a lot of weight. Paul's not referring to fake believers or Pharisees - he's talking about Peter.  That took no small amount of courage and perhaps a lot of foolishness as well, which Paul admitted to possessing in abundance.  Technically speaking, "hypocrite" referred to a mask that a performer would wear on stage.  Everybody knew that the mask wasn't the real face of the performer, but to reveal the true identity of the performer would shatter the illusion and ruin the narrative.  In Christian terms, a hypocrite is also a performer who wears a 'mask' and is trying to maintain a fictional narrative (one which usually serves to highlight hypocrite's moral superiority in comparison to others, while keeping the truth well-hidden).  Or as we used to say: they were 'talking the talk' but not 'walking the walk'. 

For Paul, the hypocrisy of Peter and the "other Jews" in Antioch were guilty of acting one way in the presence of the Antioch Christians and acting another way when some of James' guys showed up.  Play-acting. Being deceitful. Being two-faced.  Peter was more than happy to share table fellowship (and likely share in the Lord's Supper) with the Gentiles in Antioch, but refused to do so when those Jerusalem guys dropped by. This made Paul see red.  Paul took community very seriously.  Without unity in the church, there wasn't any hope.  By their hypocrisy, Peter and his friends were threatening the very existence of the church in Antioch.

You might as well lump me in with those guys, too. Like everybody else, I wear my fair share of masks. My 'persona' on Sunday mornings, during pastoral visits, on Facebook - is that always who I really and truly am on the inside?  Usually not.  I'm guessing that goes for you, too.  The more I turn this over in my head/heart, the more I find Tertullian's take on it to be pretty compelling.*** He thought that Paul was overreacting to Peter's actions. Maybe…who knows?  None of us were there.  I do know that before I start slinging around accusations of hypocrisy, I better be honest about my own masks…

*The Fellowship of Christian Athletes.  I probably didn't need more than two hands to count the number of actual athletes in our FCA - I definitely wasn't - but it was the only real Christian club offered by my high school.

** For the record, I still believe that a Christian witness is a powerful, important thing. However, I've grown to understand that it's less about bearing witness to my moral commitments and more about bearing witness to God's love revealed in Jesus Christ.  The Christian t-shirts of my youth didn't do a very good job of that…

***This might actually be the first time I've agreed with anything Tertullian had to say. Though to be fair, it's not like I've read a whole lot of Tertullian.