Are Christians’ Hypocrites? What a Christian is, What a Christian is Not, and Why You (Probably) Don’t Need to Fear the Born-Again Nutjob Next Door (Part 1)
If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, an unbeliever may have noticed a discrepancy between your behavior and what you profess to believe about right and wrong. It’s quite natural that such observations should arise – it touches upon what is undeniably true. No Christian should be surprised by questions and even rebukes about these discrepancies, or be the least bit defensive about them. Honesty demands that we admit to them.
A non-Christian recently told me she knew a Christian mom who didn’t want her 15-year-old son to have a friendship with a non-Christian girl he’d been spending time with. The person sharing this said it was un-Christian of the mom to bar her son’s friendship with an unbeliever. For all I know, the Christian mom was fully justified in her concern about her son’s relationship with this girl, particularly in the light of surging teen hormones. But, for the sake of argument, let’s just say the unbeliever’s assessment of the mom as behaving “un-Christian” is correct. What should we conclude when Christians fail to live up to their “billing”?
A Common Misunderstanding of What Makes One a Christian
Christianity addresses the problem of God’s moral perfection and our radical imperfection. As unbelievers move toward faith, their awareness of the vast chasm between God and themselves deepens. Their desperate need for a way to traverse that impossible distance is revealed to them by grace. They become believers only because God makes known to them their need for a merciful go-between – that is, Christ, who bridges that chasm on their behalf. They are broken sinners who find mercy and begin on the path of restoration and newness of life. This is the starting point of a lifetime journey of faith and repentance.
It’s not hard for those outside the faith to see the inevitable contradictions between how Christians live and the righteousness that God demands. And so, the charge of hypocrisy is often leveled: “You believe you should live this way, but you do not,” unbelievers may think, or even say out loud. This reaction is understandable, despite being deeply mistaken.
It would be hypocritical if Christians claimed to be perfectly righteous. The very fact they are not is what brings them to Christ. They agree that He is right, and their way of living is wrong. But, as is often the case in 21st century American culture, merely professing a belief in moral truth is enough to elicit charges of being judgmental and self-righteous.
That response typically is a defense mechanism. Folks naturally feel threatened when anyone holds to absolute moral standards – and what it implies for themselves. Few welcome the news that they are accountable to a perfectly Holy God. Hence, the reactionary and incoherent charge: “Hypocrite!” – thus reassuring unbelievers that, since Christians don’t keep their own moral precepts, no one else is required to, either.
A valid – but not necessarily recommended — response to such an accusation might be: “I envy you. No one can ever accuse you of being a hypocrite, since you don’t subscribe to any unbending moral standards. It must be nice to have a pliable morality that accommodates new circumstances.”
Of course, when someone who rejects moral truth is lied to, stolen from, or cheated on, all of a sudden those fixed moral laws seem fairly self-evident, and even quite practical.
Okay, so now we know, as the bumper sticker says, “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.” But then what is expected of believers, aside from plastering a cheesy bumper sticker on the back of the minivan? We’ll look at that in our next post, which will also soon be available in both text and audio formats.
SpoofsandProofs.com is written and produced by David Culver Brenner. For a free subscription to SpoofsandProofs.com, enter your email in the “Subscribe” box on the right sidebar. To learn more about his novella exposing the dangers of socialism, go here.