There is no future in pretending

 
The Pharisees were a proud bunch. In a day and a culture that honored religion and its role in life, they were the power brokers. Over time they had created a huge body of regulations for life that would prevent society from breaking the sacred laws of scripture and tradition. The Pharisees were the elite of the day and undoubtedly enjoyed the prominence that people granted them. When perfectionists rule, nothing is too small not to have regulations.
      So when a group of these legal experts came down from Jerusalem to hear Jesus teach, they couldn’t help but notice that some of his disciples hadn’t cleansed their hands in the acceptable ceremonial fashion. (Let’s say that the requirement they had broken according to Pharisaic legislation was Rule #374c in Volume VII  of Eating With Defiled Hands, 4th edition.) Reprehensible to say the least. So these Pharisees, the religious fundamentalists of the day, put the question to Jesus, “Aren’t you concerned about this serious disregard for sacred tradition?”
      And how did Jesus, the gentle carpenter from Nazareth recently turned preacher, respond? He looked them straight in the eye and said, “You hypocrites!” And that is the last thing in the world that they would want said of them.   Even the word itself tells the story: The Greek hupokrites was an actor, someone who pretended to be someone he wasn’t. Jesus’ use of the word pointed out that while the Pharisees pretended that what they taught was the “truth of God,” in reality it was the “teaching of men” (Mark 7:7). To call a person a hypocrite would be a direct assault on their character.
       “But . .  but .  but” ….they stammered in unbelief that this nobody had actually said what they heard. It was blasphemy! But before they could catch their breath, Jesus reminded them that their very own prophet, Isaiah, had denounced the hypocrites of his day as having gathered a mountain of insignificant details and taught them as if they were actually true. And that is exactly what they were doing. Then Jesus, on his own authority, added, “You have substituted the teachings of men for the truth of God” (Mark 7:8). Now we have arrived at the root of the problem; they had abandoned the truth of God for the trivia of man. Why do you think that happened? Let me suggest several reasons:
       *What they thought about something was more interesting than what God had said about it.
       *It excites the ego to have taken a role in the shame game.
       *The opportunity to regulate the conduct of others has its own special charm.

       There are several lessons that could be taken from this encounter, but the one that stands out for me is man’s inborn tendency to deviate from truth so as to serve his own purpose rather than God’s. The one sad fact of our three-score and ten is that we are born as rebels and spend much of our life trying to remain in that state. Little brats, too dumb to listen to Dad. Another thing is that God loves us anyway and does all he can to bring us back home. It’s the ultimate portrait of God and his unimaginable love for us, “just as we are.” No human artist, regardless of skill, will ever paint a picture of the love and persistence of God quite like this one.
       The obvious challenge is that we take this old nature of ours and, as the revivalist used to say, “Nail it to the cross of Christ.” It belongs to what we were, not to what we are becoming. By way of contrast, the hypocrite does his level best to successfully live the double life.  He would like to be seen as a man of the world in every sense, intelligent, alert, independent, and successful,  and at the same time, a man of God, ”Yes, yes, I’m a member of the First Whatever Church.” But it simply does not work. May God give each of us the moral strength to live like the person we are in Christ and to deny our Adversary his desire that we should pretend to be someone  other than one we really are. There is no future for hypocrisy in the cause of Christ.