How Do You Handle Hypocrisy? (part 1) IN THE garden of Gethsemane, Judas Iscariot went up to Jesus and “kissed him very tenderly.” This was a customary expression of warm affection. But Judas’ gesture was only a pretense to identify Jesus to those who had come in the night to arrest him. (Matthew 26:48, 49) Judas was a hypocrite—a person who pretends to be what he is not, someone who hides his bad motives behind a mask of sincerity. The Greek word rendered “hypocrite” means “one who answers” and also denotes a stage actor. In time, the word came to refer to anyone who was simply putting on an act in order to deceive others. How do you react to hypocrisy? Do you get angry, for example, when you see cigarette manufacturers promote smoking despite medical evidence that their product is harmful? Are you incensed at the hypocrisy of caretakers who abuse those entrusted to their care? Do you feel hurt when a friend who you thought was genuine turns out to be false? How does religious hypocrisy affect you? “Woe to You . . . Hypocrites!” Consider the religious climate that existed when Jesus was on earth. The scribes and Pharisees pretended to be loyal teachers of God’s Law, but in reality they filled people’s minds with human teachings that drew attention away from God. The scribes and Pharisees scrupulously insisted on the letter of the law, but they ignored fundamental principles that reflected love and compassion. In public they pretended to be devoted to God, but in private they were full of badness. Their deeds never measured up to their words. Their objective in doing things was “to be viewed by men.” They resembled “whitewashed graves, which outwardly indeed appear beautiful but inside are full of dead men’s bones and of every sort of uncleanness.” Boldly exposing their hypocrisy, Jesus repeatedly said to them: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!”—Matthew 23:5, 13-31. If you had lived in those days, like other honesthearted people you might have been truly sickened by such religious hypocrisy. (Romans 2:21-24; 2 Peter 2:1-3) But would you have allowed the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees to embitter you to the extent that you would reject all religion, including that which was taught and practiced by Jesus Christ and his disciples? Would that not have been to your disadvantage? Hypocritical conduct on the part of religious people may turn us away from religion in disgust. However, this response would also blind us to the sincerity of true worshipers. The very barriers that we build for protection against hypocrisy can, in effect, turn us away from genuine friends. Our response to hypocrisy, then, should be reasonable and balanced.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 23:39:57 +0000
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