I hear it often. It seems like an auto-response for many when describing the Church; \u00a0“the Church is full of hypocrites.” \u00a0I usually end up smiling as I remember an old friend when faced with the same response. He would smile and warmly reply “Yes! And there is always room for one more! \u00a0Why not join us this Sunday?”<\/p>\n
To be fair, I can understand why the hypocrite card gets played. How often do professing Christians, those who wax eloquently, often self-righteously and condescendingly, get caught with their hands in the coffers, sketchy business dealings, or with their pants down! \u00a0It happens more than it should, and of course, this makes excellent fodder for media and alike to leverage the scandal. \u00a0 These things are not the proprietary domain of the Hollywood pastor and can infect the pulpit and the pew alike. So what is one to do about hypocrisy? \u00a0It is here that Henri Nouwen can provide insight as he writes to Christian leaders:<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not easy to avoid hypocrisy completely because we find ourselves saying things larger than ourselves. \u00a0I often call people to a life I am not fully able to live myself. \u00a0I am learning that the best cure for hypocrisy is community. \u00a0Hypocrisy is not so much the result of not living what I preach, but much more of not confessing my inability to fully live up to my own words. \u00a0– (Sabbatical Journey. Crossroads, New York 1998. pg. 219-20)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
For me, I have some pretty big ideas and dreams around authentic love; God as the source of that love. \u00a0I dream of a new way of being human, of being community founded on a love that transforms us and makes us whole. No sappy sentimentality or romanticism could ever do this, these ideas demand BIG love \u2013 divine love. In the words of the modern day psalmist and penny philosopher, Neil Peart “In a world that seems so small, I can’t help thinking big.” \u00a0The problem is, the idea(s) are so big, and I am so small that I cannot live this kind of love the way I wished I could all the time. As I continue to learn and mature I do make some progress towards living this idea better, and more consistently. \u00a0However, it is undeniable. I cannot live all the things I dream of, aspire to and write about. \u00a0The truth is that, for every loving and heroic thing I do, there are many times I fail to love well. I want to do much better, and I identify with the Apostle Paul’s lament that he does not do the things he wants to do, and does the things he does not want to.<\/p>\n
As Christians, we often fail to live up to our big dreams and ideals. We all fall short of the glory of God. \u00a0We stumble; we fail and\u2026 we get up and try again. \u00a0This is not hypocrisy; this is being human on a journey. \u00a0Hypocrisy is not the failing or falling down; it is the pretending that we do not fail. \u00a0It is the posture of self-righteousness, arrogance and condescension of insisting others take the speck out of their eye while denying the log in our own.<\/p>\n
This does not mean we lose our voice. It is silly to suggest that if you’re not perfect, you have no right to share your opinion or conviction because there is no such thing as a perfect human being. \u00a0 If this were the case, no one could ever speak. We cannot be dissuaded from standing for our big ideas but in a posture of genuine humility and love.<\/p>\n
So where do we go from here? \u00a0Even though we will continue to make mistakes, safe in the faithful, forgiving love of God, we need to own our stuff \u2013 take responsibility for our mistakes \u2013 get up and try again. \u00a0As wonderful as achieving our high ideals will be, the achievement of trying and failing, and trying again makes for a most excellent character and testimony of the loving goodness of our God. It also produces a genuine empathy for those who struggle, those who make mistakes, and makes us more likely to offer a hand up rather than a boot of condemnation.<\/p>\n
Any genuinely transformative idea is really big. The Good News of the Kingdom of God is really big. When we aspire to live in these big ways, we will make mistakes. \u00a0I contend; it is better to try to live for something bigger like love and fail, than to live for nothing any bigger than our own selfish interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is the Church full of hypocrites? I hear it often. It seems like an auto-response for many when describing the Church; \u00a0“the Church is full of hypocrites.” \u00a0I usually end up smiling as I remember an old friend when faced with the same response. He would smile and warmly reply “Yes! And there is always…","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":10730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,32],"tags":[58,93,152,167,179,363,482],"class_list":["post-10065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sole-significance","category-significant-sustenance","tag-authentic-living","tag-character-of-a-leader","tag-discipleship","tag-everyday-spirituality","tag-faith-in-real-life","tag-maturity","tag-spiritual-formation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}