Advertise Your Hypocrisy
This weeks’ blog comes from David Zahl. You can find this post (edited for length below, full article at the link) and others at mbird.com. This week’s post is the start of a series David wrote based on a class he was teaching, Things You Won’t Hear Anywhere Else (But Church), for fuller context read the intro in the linked post above.
Hypocrisy, I think it’s safe to say, is considered shameful. Something to be diminished as much as possible, concealed, if not outright denied. A categorical no-no in pretty much every context you can think of. This is so obvious as to not warrant mentioning. You can be anything you want, as long as you do it with consistency. Just don’t tell me you want to be my friend and then stab me in the back.
Hypocrisy is the basis for a great deal of our negative judgments of others. It is the substance of most ‘gotcha’ attempts. “Can you believe he did/said such-and-such?? Especially after he claims to be (a Christian, a Socialist, a Libertarian, a Punk Rocker, an Ally, etc)??” “Listen, she’s free to spend her money however she wants, but maybe don’t lecture the rest of us about sacrifice from the front-seat of your new Range Rover. The hypocrisy is galling.”
Underlying our censure of others is the notion that we are somehow different. We believe that such a thing as a non-hypocrite exists, and we have the option of being one. This is a fiction. As Aldous Huxley once wrote, “the only completely consistent people are the dead.” (Another Huxley-ism: “I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a conscious hypocrite.”)
At church what we hear is that we are all, to some extent, hypocritical. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done. We have said one thing and done another — and we will do so again. No one anywhere is living with full consistency. In fact, this shifting sand forms the basis of our commonality. You might say we are divided by the specifics of our political or aesthetic ideals, but united in the fact that we fall short of those ideals.
When Jesus admonishes the Pharisees as “you hypocrites!” he is speaking to religious leaders who believe themselves not to be such. He is indicting those who’ve bought into the myth of their own righteousness and are lording it over others. What he counsels them is the same thing he counsels us, namely, to take the plank out of our own eye before examining the speck in our brother’s (Matthew 7). This is JC 101.
To advertise your hypocrisy is not the same thing as celebrating it. Odds are, your hypocrisy causes pain, both to others and to yourself. It creates damage. But just because hypocrisy is universal does not somehow make it excusable. It is not a happy thing that we betray our convictions. A better world would be one in which integrity came easily to human beings. Alas, that is not this world.
Nor is advertising one’s hypocrisy a way of falsifying our ideals. It is still good to serve the poor, and support those who do, even if you yourself reflexively cross the street every time you see a panhandler.
To advertise your hypocrisy is simply to lead with an admission of contradiction. It entails dropping the pretense of consistency from the outset and placing yourself — or being placed — in the category of those Jesus came to save. There’s freedom in this advertisement, if only the freedom to be a little less concerned with projecting a watertight persona to the world. That ship has sailed.
Naturally, we are afraid of advertising our hypocrisy because it risks rejection. If others knew the extent of our fickleness we would be judged, excluded, condemned. Yet the ethos behind this aphorism fosters the opposite. It dismantles the wall of superiority we erect between ourselves and others that shuts out love. Contrary to the mobs on social media, your hypocrisy does not disqualify you from love, anymore than theirs does them. Real love — certainly God’s love — does not balk at sin. That’s where it takes root.
To advertise your hypocrisy is to say to the world, come on in, there’s room for one more. You don’t have to pretend any longer to be something you’re not and never can be.
I’m pretty sure this is why I still go back to that clip of Robert Downey Jr. accepting an award from Mel Gibson in 2011. It wasn’t a church in which Downey gave his speech, but he turned it into one, not merely because he invoked the Bible numerous times.
The clip is less than two minutes, and it’ll be the best thing you watch all day [linked in the paragraph above, seriously, take 2 minutes to watch it]. Gibson, as you may remember, had become a real pariah and not without cause. He had said reprehensible things and behaved terribly in public. He no more deserved what Downey did than any of us deserve grace.
Downey Jr’s words cut through the self-satisfied baloney that fogs so much of our posturing and talk (within the church just as much as without). With self-righteousness deflated for a brief moment — the breathless ‘but’s’ of unforgiveness forming in throats but yet to be voiced — the scales fell. What emerged was the fellowship of advertised hypocrisy, which, I’m convinced, is more precious than any award. Even the ones they give out at Sunday morning travel soccer games.