Did I Forget to Tell You… that God Hates Hypocrisy?

I am a big fan of standards.

What I cannot abide is DOUBLE standards.
And I am in good company.
God hates hypocrisy.

Throughout the Scripture, God calls out hypocrisy.  The words of the prophets are full of warnings that God sees right through hypocrisy and finds it galling.  Pick any of the Old Testament prophets and you will find a word of warning:  God hates self-righteousness and hypocrisy.  

 It is sad to me that many people picture Jesus the way of sermons they have heard preached in church:  that Jesus denounces sinners.  When you actually read the Gospels, you find the consistent theme is that Jesus LOVES sinners. The people He denounces are the religious hypocrites.  His criticism of them is scathing.  Nothing that they didn’t deserve from the constant barrage of ways they set Him up for public embarrassment and failure.  Jesus does denounce people.  But it is not the sinners that people usually think of.  It is the religious people who cover their hard hearts with religious language.  Jesus will have none of it.

Let me be sure that this is clear.  It is good to have standards.  The Christian faith does have standards – standards that are healing and important for salvation and healthy living and relationships.  And when people uphold and commend Christian standards, that is a good thing.

When people claim and uphold and commend Christian standards, however, they do not then have a right to violate those standards as if the standards only apply to others.  That is not the way this works.  When we commend (and sometimes insist on) Christian standards, then we ourselves must follow those same standards.

As best I can tell as I look around these days, too many religious people who insist on Christian standards think those standards don’t apply to their own behavior, words and attitudes.  No wonder people are walking away from churches in droves.  My Uncle Bill was a highly revered physician – brilliant and compassionate.  His vulnerability was that he did not take care of himself.  And, due to his erratic and insufficient tending his own diabetes, he died at age 46.  Tragic.  But long before his death, patients all over the county knew his mantra: “ Do as I say—not as I do.”

My Uncle Bill was a saint to the people he cared for.  And I bless him for his remarkable healing work.  But “Do as I say—not as I do” is not the way it can work for Christian faith.  People need to show that they are DOING what they RECOMMEND others to do.  It may be imperfect.  But don’t demand that others do what you are not willing to do.

In my denomination, the United Methodist Church, we are in the middle of a painful and longstanding fight.  Church fights – just like family fights—are especially painful.  My heart is on both sides.  On one side, I am a lifelong United Methodist finishing 47 years of ministry (my father, 74 years as a Methodist pastor and his father 44 years as a Methodist pastor).  On the other side, all our family’s religious heritage is in the evangelical/conservative family of faith.  It is the evangelical family that shaped the convictions and values that I live and preach to this very day.  My debt to both “sides” is long and deep.

The organized evangelical side is forming its own “new” Methodism which will launch in May.  The fight is largely (though not exclusively) over conservative opposition to inclusion to gay people.  Since 1972, the conservative “side” has initiated and passed condemning language and increasing restrictions on the participation of gay persons in the church and punitive measures to anyone who participates in anything that is prohibited.  As the restrictions have increasingly tightened and punitive measures to anyone who disagrees have been applied, resistance has grown.  And my conservative brothers and sisters are correct:  there are people on the progressive side who have not followed the Discipline.   And their condemnation against the progressives for not following the Discipline is loud and intense.  To read their publications and hear their speeches, not following the Discipline is the unpardonable sin.

I personally believe in following the Discipline.  But I’ve got to tell you, it sounds really strange to me to hear conservatives demand that people follow the Discipline.  It seems strange because these are the same people who all my life have defied and resisted following the Discipline. When it came to following the Discipline to dismantle the racially segregated Annual Conferences and Jurisdictions, these are the same people who fought integration tooth and nail.  For years, the conference I was a part of then (North Mississippi) openly, defiantly defied and disobeyed the Discipline.  

And all my life in the church, it has been my conservative family who defied and disregarded the Discipline when it came to full clergy rights for women.  There are still conservative churches that refuse to follow the Discipline on that one.  (One of my many interesting experiences as a DS was a Pastor-Parish Relations Committee telling me that they would not accept a woman.  Really?  That was an interesting discussion.  My clarification about the Disciplinary standards did not matter.  They did not give a flying flip about what the Disciplinesaid.  And that was in 2010.   

And, right now, there are some leaders in the movement to start a new church who openly violate the Discipline.  They have publicly renounced infant baptism and refuse to practice that sacrament in their church.  That is a direct violation of the Discipline.  

When it was the conservatives in the church that defied the Discipline,  I did not agree with them.  But I – and others across the church—did not attack them or publicly denounce them or organize against them.   We did not publicly spotlight every mis-step they took.  We did not file charges against them.  We did not misrepresent them or exaggerate their faults or take their words/actions out of context.  We prayed.  We supported one another.  We worked for good every way God led us.  We extended grace.

So now, I hear them pointing a finger at how the “liberals” have taken over and are defying the Discipline and wonder if I am on the same planet.  Apparently, it is okay for them to defy the Discipline.  But if anybody else defies the Discipline, that is a sin that is unforgiveable, intolerable and justification for breaking up the denomination.  My faith family who have been the recepients of grace for decades are unwilling to extend grace to anyone who disagrees with them.

Friends, that is stark hypocrisy.  No one is perfect, for sure.  But without a word of acknowledgement or repentance that conservatives have a long history of defying the Discipline; without any recognition that they, too, presently defy the Discipline, my brothers and sisters in my faith heritage demand that others obey the Discipline.  That is hypocrisy.

I fear that my suspicion is right:  Maybe while people were busy believing that Jesus spent his life on earth denouncing sinners, they did not get the biblically true picture. It is right there in the Gospels – repeated over and over. Jesus loves sinners. He loves people who have disappointed Him.  He loves people who are wounded and broken.  He loves sinners who have committed all kinds of sin.  What He denounces is hypocrisy.

So in case I haven’t told you, it is great to have standards.  But you can’t please God and have double standards.  With repentance, God opens a door to redemption from the worst sin.  With hypocrisy that is not recognized/faced, the road to restoration is untraveled and littered with pain both for the hypocrite and for the damage that hypocrites inflict on others.