Hypocrites All

Over the last 45 years or so, people have been leaving Christian churches much faster than they can be replaced. From figures one of our elders compiled a decade ago, it was clear that once our church reached 250 members, we have lost an average of 25 members per year. This includes deaths, relocation of families, students who graduate and move away, people who get frustrated and leave, people who become attracted to a different church in the area, and those whose commitment to worship and participation in the church begins to wane until the time arrives that they have become fully inactive.
That figure of 25 members lost per year to our congregation, though, represents our history from about 1918 through 1997. What if we looked just at the last 45 years? My guess is that we’d find the figure to be even higher.
One of the reasons cited by people who cease to be active in any Christian church is that they become weary of the hypocrisy that they encounter in the church. Sadly, they can often tell a number of stories that illustrate that hypocrisy all too vividly. It really is a problem in churches across the board.
I would define hypocrisy in two ways. First, it is when people profess to hold a standard of belief or behavior and then fail (especially when they do so dramatically) to actually live by it. Secondly, it is when someone seeks to hold others to be accountable to a certain standard of behavior, while at the same time failing to abide by that standard themselves.
In the church, there are countless examples of when pastors, church officers and leaders, and church members have acted hypocritically. It’s something we dare not take lightly. Our hypocrisy disillusions people and tempts them to give up on the church. One of our goals of Christian growth, then, should be to become more aware of the ways in which we act hypocritically and then try to get our actions more in line with what we profess we believe.
Certainly the time has come for us to really understand that being a member of a church or even being involved in a church no more makes us Christians than being in a garage or being involved with a car makes us an automobile. To be a Christian is to be one who relies on God’s grace, is open to the Spirit’s work of transformation, and strives to follow where Jesus leads, loving the people he loves and serving in the way he serves.
However, it also strikes me that the very accusation of hypocrisy upon one person or group puts the accuser at great risk of becoming a hypocrite him (or her)- self! After all, isn’t the accuser implying that he consistently lives up to the standard he proclaims he believes? If that’s actually true, might it just mean that he’s simply adopted really low standards?
No doubt, egregious sins are created in the church by members and leaders alike. This is no treatise being offered up to go soft on bad behavior.
It is also true that people outside the church live and act in ways that are often more inspiring than what one can see in most churches most of the time. Racial and socio-economic barriers are often crossed more easily outside the church than in it. People often live more sacrificially on behalf of the common good in the armed services or in an environmentalist group than in the church. The people with the greatest zeal in caring for those who are handicapped or otherwise “different” from the norm are often outside the church.
But may part of the challenge be that in the church we are more open to the accusation of hypocrisy because we strive to hold ourselves to a much higher standard? There are many “dividing walls” that separate people: age, race, gender, economic status, education, and political ideology, just to name a few. While groups outside the church focus in on crossing one or two boundaries and do so in inspiring ways, are they also comfortably refusing to cross other “dividing walls”? For example, I heard the term “inclusive” used quite a bit in my seminary days, but found that those who used it most weren’t noticeably more inclusive; they simply drew their boundaries differently.
In short, living into the call of the gospel is hard work. While we don’t excuse away our failures to live consistently by Christ’s call, neither should we assume that hypocrisy is a condition unique to Christians. At least in the church, we are frequently confronted with our hypocrisy and challenged to overcome it. May we stay open to that challenge as we reach out in love to an equally flawed world.