Hypocrites in the Church...

Suggested Reading: Matthew 7:13-23

I have had a number of discussions with people about why they no longer believe in God. I am not talking about life-long atheists. I am talking about people who once identified themselves as Christians but now do not believe in God at all. All of those conversations have had basically one thing in common. While these former Christians mention problems with children dying or starvation or too many people suffering, causing them to question God's existence, the biggest hurtle many of these people face is the behavior of Christians.

These people will talk about the fact that Christians pick each other apart, that they are hypocritical, that they don't follow their own standards. They will talk about the fact that many Christians are petty, cruel and hateful. And then they will follow those observations with the conclusion that if Jesus was really God then Christians would live like it. Do you know how I have to respond to these people? I tell them, "You're right. Most people who say  they are Christians behave exactly like you said they do."

The problem that I have with people turning away from God because of the behavior of Christians is not because they are wrong about Christian behavior. In most cases, I think our critics are right. The problem is that Jesus warned us that a large number of people who claimed to follow him would not really be his disciples at all! 

In Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus said,  “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord! ’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father in heaven. On that day many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in Your name, drive out demons in Your name, and do many miracles in Your name? ’ Then I will announce to them, ‘I never knew you! Depart from Me, you lawbreakers!’" (HCSB).  Just a few verses earlier in verse 13-14, Jesus said,  "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it" (NIV).

Jesus warned us that many, if not the majority, of people who claimed to follow him would not really be his disciples. Jesus warned us that few would follow the narrow path that leads to life because it is hard to find. But somehow, we are surprised when large numbers of people who claim to be Christians behave very badly?

We have no way of knowing whether the people around us who claim to be Christians truly are, although Jesus did tell us that you could know a tree by its fruit. But ultimately, it is not our job to sort out the "real" Christians from the "fake" ones. Our job is to follow Jesus.  Ultimately, each and every person is accountable to God alone, not to us. We are responsible for taking up our cross daily and following him, not for pointing out when someone else fails to live up to a certain standard.

As you encounter hypocrites in the church - and you will - keep your eyes on Jesus. Focusing on other people will only distract you. Take up your own cross and follow Jesus. Let Jesus worry about the fakes.

Stopping the Choir for One Wrong Note

Suggested Reading: Psalm 101

In college I had the chance to study under one of the most respected choir directors in the state. Quite often, he would drive those of us in the choir crazy because of his common practice of stopping the choir the moment he heard a mistake. Sometimes, we wouldn’t sing two notes before he would stop us and start us again. You see, as far as our director was concerned, we were striving for perfection. We never really achieved perfection as a choir and I don’t think our director was under any illusions that we could ever be perfect. But he believed that if he pushed us toward perfection and we strove for it ourselves, we might get very close.

I have always enjoyed reading the Psalms, especially those attributed to David. But the other day something occurred to me that had never occurred to me before. I was reading Psalm 101, a psalm of David, where the psalmist writes, No one who acts deceitfully will live in my palace; no one who tells lies will remain in my presence. Every morning I will destroy all the wicked of the land, eliminating all evildoers from the Lord’s city (Psalm 101:7-8, HCSB). Those verses sound great, but David didn’t seem to live up to them. His children raped and murdered each other but David never seemed to remove them from the palace.  He allowed Joab to stick around even though the military commander had killed his rivals in peace time and in cold blood. He himself plotted and schemed to kill Uriah to hide his own adultery with Bathsheba. David himself did not live up to the standard he set here. Shouldn’t that invalidate the whole thing?

No.

All of us fail and fall far short of perfection, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t continue to hold the standard of perfection in front of us as something to strive for. Sometimes, our weakness and failures serve as a reminder of how important it is to hold up a standard of perfection. The idea that we should stop striving for perfection because we have fallen short is like telling a baseball player to stop swinging the bat because he doesn’t hit every ball or a musician to stop playing because she plays a wrong note from time to time. We don’t strive for perfection because we can ever reach it on our own, but because striving for perfection points us in the right direction, even when we fail and act like hypocrites. We must maintain a realistic outlook that remembers we will sometimes fail but that keeps us pointed in the direction of perfection as we move forward.

Don’t give up the standard because you fall short of it. Allow it to point you in the right direction. 

Christmas Hams and Farcical Worship

Suggested Reading: Mark 7:1-13

The story goes of a mom who was cooking a Christmas ham with her daughter. The daughter watched patiently as the mom prepared the ham and as she chopped off the front of the ham before putting it in the baking pan and placing it in the oven. The little girl asked her mom why she chopped off the front of the ham and mom admitted she wasn't sure but that grandma had always done that when she was a little girl. So mom called grandma to ask why you were supposed to chop off the front of the ham. Upon hearing the question grandma cracked up laughing and explained, "I chopped off the front of the ham because my baking pan was too small for the whole ham!" Mom had mistaken the way her mother did things for the way things had to be done.

In Mark chapter 7, we find another group of people who had gotten things a little mixed up. A group of scribes and Pharisees came down to see Jesus to examine him and determine whether or not they should support him. Their initial criticism of Jesus, however, had nothing to do with his teachings being wrong or with accusations that he was mistreating the poor or neglecting the widow or fatherless child. Their initial criticism was a question of why Jesus' disciples didn't follow the traditions of the elders and wash their hands before eating!

Now, I think we can all agree that washing your hands is a good thing to do but Jesus replied, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote, ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God' (Mark 7:6-7, NLT). While washing one's hands is certainly a good thing to do, there is no command in scripture to wash your hands before you eat. That was a human idea - a good one to be sure, but still human - and these people were judging Jesus' disciples on it as if it were a command of God.

As followers of Jesus, we must make an effort to distinguish between our own ideas and those that come from scripture. Ideas like "drinking is a sin," or "God helps those who help themselves" are ideas that may have logical human reasons behind them but they can't be found anywhere in scripture and may in fact be contrary to scripture. We must have enough respect for God's Word to actually know God's Word -- to understand the difference between what it does say and what it doesn't say. When we start confusing the two and teaching or practicing our own ideas as God's word, our worship becomes a farce.