Hypocrites

Jesus didn't do a lot of name-calling when He walked the earth, but one insult that He used pretty regularly was, "Hypocrite." Alternate translations for the Greek word used would be dissembler, or pretender. To some extent, we've all been guilty of that, at one time or another. Much as I would like to pretend that I've never pretended to be something I'm not, that would hypocritical. Hypocrisy is not unforgivable, though, as much as Jesus railed against it. If you look at the times that He used that term, He used it to describe people that claimed to serve God, claimed to have knowledge of the Old Testament prophecies, and yet, did not recognize Jesus for who He was.

Most of us are more likely to get caught up in a different type of hypocrisy: one where God uses us to accomplish something, and then we walk around like we did something. Pride plays into this form of hypocrisy. Herod the King died because of his own pride. One instance where I almost fell for that, myself, I was hanging with some friends from church, and a couple of them were playing pool, and one guy walked away from the table, and the other guy invited me to play next. I walked over, picked out a reasonably straight cue, and ended up running the table. I tried not to look surprised--I had never run the table in my life (and I never have since). Later on, I found out that the guy that I played had beaten the other guy, badly, and then took pleasure in rubbing it in; so the guy that walked away from the table was praying that God would take the other guy down a notch. Had me puzzled for a while, because I knew I didn't do it, but I didn't understand what had happened.

There is, of course, forgiveness, at least, for those of us that are legitimately trying to let God use us. We have to be humble enough to understand that anything we do of any worth is God in us, and not ever just us. In writing this, I was reminded of a song by Rush of Fools called "Undo." The lyrics of the song make reference to the narrator(?) being a hypocrite and a prodigal, and he calls upon God to help to change, to "undo what I've become." This is something that we all need to do on a regular basis. Apostle Paul said, "I die daily." We have to keep slaying the old man, and renewing our dedication to God. It would be nice if we could just do it the one time and be done with it, but it keeps coming back. David (a man after God's own heart) once said, "I am a worm, and no man." That encourages me, because, so often I feel worse than useless, and I have to think that he felt the way I feel, and yet, in retrospect, he did so much for God (or, at least, allowed God to do so much through him).

BTW, the link for the lyrics for "Undo" above actually goes to another blog called "React less, Pray More" maintained by a young woman who identifies herself only as Ashley in Honduras (or AshInHonduras). There's some other good stuff on that blog entry besides just the lyrics...