Truth's Biggest Adversary

“Believe whatever they teach you and follow it, but do not do as they do. For they do not practice what they teach.” — Jesus, Matthew 23:3

My working mother hired women, all of whom were black, to take care of my brother and me. I look back on two of those women particularly with enormous gratitude, fondness, wonder, and respect. Long lost to me is the context in which she said it, but one of those women taught me the word “hypocrite.” I’ve no idea what her motivation was, although it was quite likely to reprove me for some bad behavior.

Armed with the word “hypocrite,” I limped to Sunday School one week with one shoe off because I had a blister on my heel. As a conforming seven-year-old, I was mortally embarrassed to be hobbling. So, I did what a defensive little male would do: I put on a tough mug and harrumphed my way into class. A couple of girls were sitting in the circle when I walked in with one shoe off. One of them asked what was the matter with my foot, and the other chimed in with some question showing concern. My muttered response to them: “Hypocrites.”

That’s all I remember.

“Hypocrite” for me was a word of accusation. It was an insult to hurl at somebody else. I doubt that I understood much, but think I got the idea that a hypocrite was somebody who was critical of, well, me. I’m quite certain that never entering my head was the bizarre thought that I might be a hypocrite myself.

And that is why hypocrisy is the archenemy of Truth. One of Jesus’ most attractive, oft quoted, and revered sayings is “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” The corollary to that, it seems to me, is that if we do not know the truth, we will not be free. And we cannot know the truth if we think that the truth is something external to ourselves, “objective” reality having nothing to do with us except to reject or endorse it.

No. Truth pervades everything because it has to do with everything. And everybody. So, I cannot weasel my way out of the hand of truth by imagining that I can get by without being truthful with myself.

And that is a problem. How can I be truthful with myself? It requires at some level overriding my built-in defense mechanisms that are busy, like computers on automatic back-up, constantly attacking those things that consciously and unconsciously threaten my self-understanding, my self-perception, my façade, my reputation, my social standing, my power, my autonomy.

Self-awareness is another name for consciousness. Or, I should say, a dimension of consciousness. I had a therapist, a psychoanalyst, many years ago who said about one of my dreams that the dream itself was a message from my unconscious that I was attempting to be too conscious. My therapist and I worked on that notion. The outcome was my conceding that I simply couldn’t and wouldn’t ever be conscious of everything about myself. Rather obvious, isn’t it? Yet, somehow we humans operate as if we are functionally in charge of our motivations and decisions.

The truth is I am capable of being a hypocrite and so are you. I’m tempted to say that we just flat-out are hypocrites. OK. Maybe so. But the point really is whether we want to do something about that, something like stopping being hypocrites.

Here’s where the Bible comes in handy. You might think that the Bible has a lot to say about hypocrites and hypocrisy. Not so much. Almost all references to hypocrites and hypocrisy are in the New Testament. In fact, only one use of the word exists in the English of the New Revised Standard Version of the Old Testament.[1] That passage in Psalm 26:4: “I do not sit with the worthless, nor do I consort with hypocrites.” The other non-New Testament reference is in the book of Sirach, not a canonical book for the Jewish people, in which the passage is “the wise will not hate the law, but the one who is hypocritical about it is like a boat in a storm.” (Sirach 33:2) A footnote in the NRSV notes that the Hebrew does not literally read that way, suggesting that the English word “hypocritical” is being used by translators to express the most probable meaning of the passage.

At the risk of being a little heady and pedantic, I will point out that the old King James Version (the “Authorized Version”) uses the English words hypocrite, hypocrisy, and hypocritical frequently when translating the Hebrew word חנפ. Modern versions translate derivations from that root with words like wicked, ungodly, godless, etc. That’s instructive. There’s no linguistic connection between those Hebrew words and the Greek υποκρισις = hypokrisis from which English gets hypocrisy and its relatives. But is there some other kind of connection?

New Testament Greek tells a different story. There are still not very many references to hypocrites or hypocrisy in the New Testament, but we can say a couple of general things about them all. In the entire New Testament, there is only one passage in Matthew and its doublet in Luke that mentions “hypocrite” in the singular. It is the familiar passage in the Sermon on the Mount (Sermon on the Plain in Luke) in which Jesus says, “You hypocrite! First take the log out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye” (Matthew 7:5; Luke 6:42). The locus of the most references—seven in all—of the use of the plural “hypocrites” is in Matthew 23. I have printed the NRSVUE text of the whole passage at the bottom of this blog entry. I encourage you to read it.

Note that this text presents Jesus as furious with the religious establishment of Israel for one principal reason. The religious leaders, perhaps not all of them but a great many —maybe the majority—have allowed religious practices to override justice. It bears pointing out that these “woes” Jesus levels against the scribes and Pharisees have nothing to do whatsoever with “secularity,” if by that we mean its modern sense of forsaking traditional religion in favor of a looser moral code or a lower moral standard propelled by non-religious or even irreligious attitudes or activities. It is quite the opposite. In each instance, it is getting the true sacred, holy thing wrong. Misplaced priorities, erroneous understanding of the true meaning of the sacred, de-emphasizing critical values and over-emphasizing minor or irrelevant things, thinly veiled hypocrisy and lawlessness are the things that evoke outright wrath from Jesus. Incidentally, it isn’t hard to see, if these denunciations are even close to a historical record of his castigation of the religious authorities of his day, why they would team up with political power to destroy Jesus entirely.

That, I think, is the essence of what White Christian Nationalism in America gets wrong with tragic consequences. Getting people to live by the gospel is by no means a bad goal. I certainly subscribe to it. But attempting to structure society in a way that forces obedience to a power structure that not only polices morality but does so while supplanting the gospel with the very opposite of Jesus’ vision is, in my view, to sign on with the forces he denounced. I can think of no greater betrayal of Jesus and his gospel.

What is hypocritical about all this? Let’s go back to the original concept in the Greek word that becomes hypocrisy in English. It has to do with pretense: pretending to be what you are not. Or, looked at another way, it is masking who you truly are for the purpose of serving somebody or something you’re not honestly revealing. The “hypo” in hypocrisy in the Greek means “under.” Greek actors wore masks and spoke from underneath those masks like the stylized masks denoting tragedy and comedy that you’ve seen thousands of times. Wearing a false face and speaking from behind or beneath it is nothing less than a mockery of truth. Not because all acting is bad, but because Truth demands integrity, what the Book of Common Prayer calls “singleness of heart.” Truth is worth little in a life that is proclaiming allegiance to one god, thing, cause, or person while investing energy in the very things that are opposed to that god, thing, cause, or person.

My observation of those who serve power generally don’t care much about humility. The two don’t mix very well, power and humility. Yet, the only way I know to avoid the trap of hypocrisy and its devastating consequences is, to use Twelve Step language, by continually taking a “fearless moral inventory” of oneself. Although I think it can happen in many ways, I am partial to taking such an inventory in community, most realistically in a community of two (or a few more) who hold each other accountable.

Taking a fearless moral inventory is an act of courage. Acts of courage are tremendously strengthened when they are undertaken with the support, concern, and respect of others whom we care about and who care about us.

[1] I do not disdain calling the Hebrew Scriptures “The Old Testament” because if I continue to call the New Testament “new” it presupposes that something predates it. That something is the Old Testament. I do not object to calling it “The Hebrew Scriptures.” There are some parts of the books therein that are not in fact written in Hebrew (portions of the books of Daniel and Esther, for example), and the Jews themselves produced the Greek version of the Bible that we know as The Septuagint, an enormously important document. The real reason, in my view, that objections are raised about the term “Old Testament” is the assumption that “old” is somehow disparaging. Perhaps to modern Americans and possibly other English speakers it is. But as an octogenarian, I find no fault in being old or in something that is old. Nor do I think old is inherently inferior to being new. Just saying.

This is the second in a series of articles on Truth. Next: “Building Communities of Truth.”

The NRSVUE version of Matthew 23:13-36

13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in you stop them.[a] 15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell[b] as yourselves.

16 “Woe to you, blind guides who say, ‘Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.’ 17 You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? 18 And you say, ‘Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.’ 19 How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20 So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it, 21 and whoever swears by the sanctuary swears by it and by the one who dwells in it, 22 and whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.

23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. 24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!

25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and of the plate,[c] so that the outside also may become clean.

27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of uncleanness. 28 So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

29 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, 30 and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 31 Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your ancestors. 33 You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape the judgment of hell?[d] 34 For this reason I send you prophets, sages, and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town, 35 so that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. 36 Truly I tell you, all this will come upon this generation.