Hypocrisy is not just a statement about the individual, it’s a statement about culture.   Though you may not think something is wrong, you know that most people do, so you hide it.  Today that is going away.  Or it’s probably just changing, porn and abortion are fine in the public square, but liking Columbus is not.   I think a culture which hides it’s Biblical sins is far healthier than one that broadcasts them on social media.  And by inference the people in those cultures are worse than the supposed hypocrites in our history.  Norm MacDonald has a great line as part of his life-as-comedian—thing:  “People say the worst part about Cosby was the hypocrisy.”  “I think it was the raping.”  And I think this reveals that our attacks on hypocrisy are just a way of lowering the standard.

St. Peter’s Social Justice Campaign. Martyrdom is doing exactly what you know society dislikes, because it is right. Crucifixion of St. Peter. Guido Reni (1575-1642). Oil on Canvas.

We started this nutty trend in the church because culture said that those people in the 50’s were squares and we needed to get with the times.  So we wrecked the whole country.  But we are really just a different type of hypocrite.  Instead of disliking people because they are from Africa, we dislike them because they are from the past, a Christian past.  We make ridiculous categories just like they did, rather than judging people by the content of their character.  But that’s the point, what is content and character now?  It’s talking about things, emoting, wokeing, being in the social justice group.  I don’t even know what any of these words mean.  But I am certain they mean that people are attacking sense and reason and therefore Christianity.  And who wouldn’t think it was wrong the way they wrongly tell the story?

The reality is that all the people screeching ‘hypocrite’ are the real hypocrites.  Where is the proof of their success?  What ever happened to all Obama’s promises of hope and change and uniting the world and solving racial strife?  The reality is that the founding fathers of this nation brought together people from all the major Christian denominations and united them to defeat the most powerful military on the planet.  That unity brought about peace and prosperity the world has seldom known, to this day.  That’s the problem with social justice warriors.  They worship a false god, which turns the worshipper into a deaf and dumb fool, a hypocrite.  They don’t meet their standards, often they don’t even try, and when things fall apart, they are never heal accountable.  Christians for the last 2000 years brough us to this place, not by caring or being concerned about social justice.  They did it by mortifying their flesh.  Repenting, putting to death their own sin.  This is the Gospel.

Jesus didn’t say go and join a group that cares about social justice.  He said go and repent.  If you want a better world, you have to start with yourself.  If you want your group to be better you have to be better.  It’s easy to care and be woke and go on a social crusade.  It’s difficult to put yourself aside and treat other people better in every circumstance.  But that’s what Christianity does, that’s why it changed the world.  The current young person, supposedly cares about the problems of society while they create more of them every day.  You can’t sleep around, get divorced, quit hard things, let a screen raise your kids, let a screen be your interaction, lie on your resume, cheat your boss by being lazy, change your sex, pretend homosexuality is normal, kill your own baby, and a myriad of other sins and expect society to be healthy.  Being in the right group or not being in the wrong group is no weapon against real evil.  You can’t remake the world in your image and your rules and expect anything good to come of it.  But you can get enough people together who believe the same way and you can all pretend everything is fine,  for a while.

So, the problem is no that people in the past had sin which they tried to prevent, the problem is that you have sin you don’t care about.   The problem is not having a standard personally or as a collective that you can not meet, the hypocrite.  The problem is that “the Biblical standard has not been tried and found wanting it has been found difficult and left untried”.  And as a supplemental flourish the anti-Christian, yells ‘hypocrite’ as they flee down the road to their own destruction.  Peer pressure is good if it’s in the right direction.  Social shame is good if it’s in the right direction.  Treating yourself as a member of a group to absolve your sins, or treating other people as a member of a group to attack them is never good.  No one is guilty because they are a Hatfield, or a Capulet, or a Trump supporter, or because they lived before 1980.   It’s Marxism, it’s tribalism.  It always leads to tribal war, and all those eyes missing.  We need to judge people based on their character, starting with ourselves.  And that’s what Christians have done for 2000 years arbitrary ditinctions like race, class, tongue, tribe and nation, have been falling away.  The whole reason we first worlders can care about social justice is because of all the Christians who went before us.  They sacrificed their lives to spread the gospel, bring peace to all men.  They cared about the poor and the weak.  Satan came along and corrupted this fruit and made it a false god.  Please don’t worship this idol.