Tag Archives: difficulties

The Hypocrisy Problem in Church Today

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Lifeway released some interesting survey results recently. They basically surveyed specific attitudes of people that don’t go to church. This was the stat that caught my attention:

  • 72% of the people surveyed said that they thought the church was full of hypocrites.

Well…. I never. While something like this can seem like an insult, I do have to admit that these people are correct. Churches are full of hypocrites. Before you think you can predict the rest of my thoughts here and think that I am going to decry the amount of hypocrisy in church today, I want to explore a slightly different path here.

What is hypocrisy, anyway? We throw it around a lot – but what does it mean to be a hypocrite? You can basically look at hypocrisy as a lie – you say one thing and do another. This ties in with something else I read today: a study that claims that the average person tells almost 88,000 lies in their life time (3-5 times per day). So, the sad fact is – we are all hypocrites. Churches are full of hypocrites because the world is full of hypocrites.

The real rub here is that one of the functions of a church is to reveal hypocrisy. And this is actually a good thing. Sure – you go to church to worship and pray. But you should also go to get your life examined from an outside perspective, so that your hypocrisy is exposed and you can actually change it. Not to have fingers pointed at you or to get judged, but to actually help you become a better person.

So what this all means is that people who don’t go to church don’t want to come, in part, because they see the hypocrisy in other people’s lives that has already been exposed.

Great. So…. what can you do about the fact that people don’t want to come to church because the church is doing one of the things that the church is supposed to do? Beats me. It’s this big lie that we all believe in America that hypocrisy is worse than any other mistake you can make, and that being a hypocrite means that what you believe in is wrong because of your hypocrisy and not because of any actual truth behind it. Or that you should avoid someone because they don’t actually do what they say they believe. If this were true, I guess we would all have to lock ourselves in our houses, get online jobs, and never interact with other human beings.

But such is the mindset that we have to work with in modern America. How to convince people that they actually need the very thing that is turning them off right now. Luckily, that’s not the real issue here. But it’s one that I’m sure will cause many discouraging conversations around the nation on a daily basis. Most churches will probably work to find a way to be less hypocritical. That’s always a good goal, but one we will have to work on for the rest of our lives. And probably not the quickest way to convince people to visit your church.

Come to think of it, realizing the truth about global hypocrisy, it kind of puts an interesting spin on all the churches that are trying to reach people by just “being real”? In “being real,” wouldn’t that mean they would be letting their hypocrisy hang out in the wind for everyone to see? Wouldn’t that mean that they are actually pushing more people away – since so many people don’t like the realness of hypocrisy? Just some things to ponder on, I guess.

Following God Even When It Is Tough

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This was part of a sermon I preached recently, but the podcast guy is really behind in getting the mp3 up. I was talking about following God even when He asks us to do something hard, or we don’t see an obvious positive outcome, or things just look bad. I used a clip from Joan of Arcadia to illustrate the point. Joan of Arcadia was a television show where “god” appears to a teenage girl named Joan and asks her to do some tough things. Christians sometimes had a hard time with the show because “god” appeared as some weird people some times, and spoke in new-agey terms frequently. But if you got past the Yoda-isms of “god” in the series, they actually had some solid theology. Not always, but better than most shows in Hollywood do.

Anyway, here is the background to the clip I played:

“Joan is asked (by “god”) to take a reclusive bully (Ramsey) to the school dance instead of her boyfriend (Adam). While both her mother and the assistant principal object, Joan follows through with God’s task. At the dance, it is revealed the bully has a bottle of alcohol with him but Joan convinces him not to open it. Despite this the assistant principal later reaches into his jacket and, finding the alcohol, expels him. He runs away and Joan joins him. The bully goes to a secluded area and begins playing with a gun. Joan’s father, a police officer, is able to find the two and talk the bully away from the gun in a very dangerous and tense situation.”

The next day, Joan sees “god” (as a lady handing out cupcakes) in the halls in school and decides to confront her about ruining Joan’s life:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g3m3Vvc6Qo

Our problem is, we don’t get the nice TV wrap-up at the end. If we do the hard stuff that God asks us to, we may never know this side of heaven the impact that those choices had. We might only get to deal with the problems that come with the choice on our end. We may never know that our simple act of befriending the violent bully might have stopped the school shoot out. We might not ever know how taking a different exit on the way to work might stop an accident from happening. We might never know how sticking with church, even when it gets hard, or superficial, or confusing, might make the difference in someone else’s life. Or even our own.