Are Christians Hypocrites?

“Cleared once, Catholic priest faces new sex abuse allegations.” “NE Pennsylvania Pastor charged with killing wife in 2008.” “South LA Pastor arrested in teen sex case.” All you have to do is look at the news to realize the church is far from perfect. And no doubt, many people have been disappointed, deceived, and sometimes severely harmed, by professing Christians they have known.

All this is enough to turn many people off of Christianity completely. “Why should I believe in Jesus when his followers do such awful things?” they ask. It's a perfectly legitimate question. But I think the answer to this question requires some careful thinking.

First of all, it is important to remember that some of these “hypocritical” Christians are not genuine Christians at all, but merely people who claim to believe a set of doctrines but who have no real love for Christ.

1 John 3:18-20a says, “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us.”

What John is getting at is that it is our actions that demonstrate whether our faith is genuine. Protestant Christians do not believe that people must perform good works in order to be saved, but good works are the sign that a person has been truly converted. True faith is always accompanied by good works.

Luke 6:43 says, “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.” Here, people are compared to trees. Just as a good tree does not bear deformed or sour fruit, so also a genuine Christian should not be habitually doing things that the Bible condemns as wrong. If a person is habitually lying, stealing, hurting others, shirking his or her responsibilities at home or at work, etc., and does not see these things as wrong nor repent of them, it is doubtful whether this person is a Christian. Real Christians sometimes do experience periods of backsliding, but they will always eventually be convicted in their hearts and repent.

That being said, the second point to consider is that Christianity sees people as essentially sinful - that is, all people are born with a tendency to do what is wrong and not to do what is right. Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Ever since Adam and Even ate the forbidden fruit in Eden, the inclination of people's hearts is continually towards what is evil and not what is good. Take children as an example. Everybody talks about how children are so innocent, but then why is that we have to train children to be good, and we never have to train them to misbehave? Children misbehave naturally, and they must be trained to behave well.

You may say, “Well, what about people who spend their lives doing lots of good things and giving to charity?” While giving to charity is certainly a much better thing than living a life of dissipation, if it is not done for the glory of God, it won't get you to heaven. Furthermore, Scripture says that anyone who transgresses one commandment in the law is guilty of breaking the whole law. So even if you were able to go through your life only breaking the law once (perhaps by telling one lie or stealing one item from a convenience store,) you would still be guilty of breaking the whole law, and liable to punishment.

This seems harsh to us, because we are always comparing ourselves to other people, and since all people are sinful, it's easy to find others who are “worse” than we are. We tend to think of life like a scale, with our good works on one side, and bad works on the other. As long as the good outweighs the bad, we should be fine right? But this is not the way that God's standards work. God's standards are not like ours. God is perfect in every way, and his standard is perfection. It is an impossible standard for us to meet, which is why it was necessary for Jesus to die for our sins, thus paying the penalty that we would have had to endure.

The point I'm getting at is that because from a Christian standpoint, all people are naturally sinful, it should not be surprising when you see people, even Christians, sinning. Once you become a Christian, it does not mean that you will stop sinning altogether, but rather that you are able to fight against sin and you ought to be sinning less and less. We will never be perfect in this life, but we should be becoming more and more like Christ.

Even the Apostle Paul talks about struggling with sin. In Romans 7:21-25, he says, “So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Paul's point is this: Even those who are Christians are tempted to sin, and often fall. Thankfully, we are able to repent of our sins and ask for God's forgiveness, which he willingly grants us because of our faith in his son Jesus.

So what do we make of professing Christians who fall into great sins? First, we should ask whether they appear to be repentant. Have they acknowledged that what they did is wrong and are they seeking to make amends and change for the better? If the answer is “no,” it seems doubtful that they are truly Christians, though as I mentioned earlier, sometimes true believers do go through periods of backsliding where they may even deny the faith that they once claimed. But if they are true believers, they will eventually repent. Second, it is wise to learn from others' mistakes. Often, Christians fall into big sins because they have been neglecting reading the Bible and praying regularly, they have avoided being held accountable by others, they are not regularly sitting under the preaching of the Word and taking it to heart. Christians need to be careful to be regularly making use of the “means of grace” (prayer, Bible reading, sacraments, and preaching) and living transparently and in accountability to others.

Going back to the question of whether Christians who fall into great sins should be a cause for people not to believe, I would say that whether Christianity stands or falls is not dependent on the lives of Christians and whether they seem to be living up to certain moral standards. This is not a completely irrelevant point, but it is also not the only crucial point to consider. The main question that must be resolved is, “Who is Jesus?” If Jesus is who he claimed to be – the eternal, perfect Son of God, who is just but also merciful and compassionate – then we ought to believe in him, regardless of whether his people experience periods of backsliding. Jesus recognized that his followers were not going to be perfect – his own disciples abandoned him as he hung on the cross – but he nevertheless promised to love them and be faithful to them to the end. And it is His words and his person in which we should place our confidence, and not in the good (or bad) behavior of his followers.

N.B. I realize this post focuses more on an apologetic question rather than a question of Christian living, which is what the rest of this blog has focused on, but I do think this is an important issue to consider, and I thought people might be interested in an essay on the topic.

How People Change

If you could create and market a pill that people could swallow and then instantly have the willpower they needed to make changes in their lives – everything from dieting to being kinder to their spouse, to learning to love their not-ideal job – you would be an instant millionaire (or billionaire, more likely).

Nearly everyone has something they wish they could change about themselves (and the ones who don't probably don't know themselves very well!). But actually making the change is one of the hardest things to do in life. Just acquiring the desire and motivation to change is hard enough, let alone having the creativity to generate a plan to change and then mustering the courage and perseverance to stick with it.

The Change Process According to Rick Warren

So how does real change happen? In his book God's Answers to Life's Difficult Questions, Rick Warren says the change process involves four steps or phases: crisis, commitment, confession and cooperation. Most people need to go through a crisis – a really difficult situation – in order to realize that they need to change. Without a crisis, the vast majority of people are content to keep on doing what they've been doing. After all, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

The second phase, commitment, is about sticking with the change process. It's not enough to just have a crisis and realize you need to change. The next step is to dedicate yourself to changing and to walk into that process with a measure of dedication and enthusiasm.

The third phase, confession, involves acknowledging to God (and others, if necessary), that you've screwed up and need his forgiveness. It's about owning our sins and shortcomings and asking for grace and strength to overcome them. This is a vital part of the change process, because generally the things we need help changing have roots in wrong attitudes or beliefs or habits that we've developed, often as a result of things we've been exposed to from other people or from the media. Although we may have acquired these bad things because of other people's wrongdoing, it does not mean we are not responsible for our sins. If we were perfect and incorruptible, we wouldn't be tempted to think, say, or do wrong things, even if we saw other people doing them.

The fourth phase, cooperation, is all about cooperating with the Holy Spirit so that God can change us. We can say we want to change all we want, but if we're not cooperating with the Spirit, it's kind of like saying, “I want to lose weight,” and then going off and eating a big piece of chocolate cake.

If you're truly interested in changing some aspect of your life, let me suggest doing the following. Pick a habit or attitude or thought process that you want to change, and then spend some time answering the questions below (which I have adopted from a similar list created by a counseling professor of mine at Westminster Seminary, Dr. David Powlison). Have one or more people you trust hold you accountable and ask you each week how you're doing with regard to that issue. And pray, pray, and pray some more that God will forgive you for the times that you blow it and give you strength to overcome.

Questions:
1)Describe the habit/attitude/thought process you're trying to change. What actually are you doing or thinking? How long has it been going on? When and where does it happen? Why do you think it happens? Who are you around when it happens?

2)What are the roots of your behavior/thought process? What kinds of things have happened in the past that may have contributed to it? How did it develop? What underlying beliefs about yourself, others, or God do you have that may be causing you to think or act in these ways?

3)Describe what it would look like for you to change. What would your life look like in an ideal world with respect to this issue? For example, if you are struggling with sexual impurity, what would it look like to be pure? What would you be thinking about instead of your impure thoughts? Remember that the goal is to love God and love others more, so think about how you could focus your efforts on those things instead of the behavior or thought pattern you are struggling with.

4)Develop a plan for change. This will usually involve regular prayer, studying and/or memorizing Bible passages relevant to your struggle, reading other books that will shed light on your struggle, thinking of practical ways to curtail the harmful thought process or avoid (or replace) the problematic behavior, and finding someone (or multiple people) who can hold you accountable in this area.

5)At the end of each day, evaluate yourself. How did you do today? How did things go? Take time to repent of the times when you fell back into old patterns and habits, and to ask God for his help as you continue to seek to change.

Finally, remember that change is a lifelong process, not a one-time thing. It's like living a healthy lifestyle - it happens by adopting new ways of thinking and doing and then constantly putting them into practice. It's not like a crash-diet, where you lose a lot of weight all at once and then go back to eating potato chips and twinkies.

If you start to feel overwhelmed or discouraged, take a break. Spend some time alone, relax, and think about why you're trying to change. Ultimately, we should be motivated to change not because we want to impress others or become proud of ourselves, but because we want to become more like our friend and Savior, Jesus. Don't feel like you have to become a totally different person overnight - God only gives you what you can handle, and change is best accomplished by biting off only what you can chew and working slowly and steadily toward your goals.