Aren't Christians hypocrites?

Usually this is not really a question. It is a wound with a question mark on the end — a church that covered something up, a relative who was vicious on Sunday and worse on Monday, a leader who turned out to be someone else entirely.

If that is where it is coming from, the first response is not an argument.

What the word actually means

Hypocrite is a Greek theatre word. It meant an actor — someone in a mask, playing a part.

That matters, because it is not the same as failing. If a Christian says stealing is wrong and then steals, he has done wrong. If he steals and keeps saying it is wrong, he is inconsistent, which is the condition of every person alive. He becomes a hypocrite when he pretends he did not do it, or when he treats the standard as something other people are obliged to meet.

The opposite of hypocrisy is not perfection. It is honesty.

The one who said it hardest

The sharpest attacks on religious hypocrisy in any literature are in the Gospels, and they come from Jesus, aimed at the most respectable people in the room.

Whitewashed tombs — beautiful outside, full of bones. Straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. Cleaning the outside of the cup. He calls them blind guides and says the tax collectors are getting in ahead of them.

Notice who was comfortable around him and who was not. The people with reputations found him unbearable. The people with none found him approachable.

So when someone says the church is full of hypocrites, they are not making an argument against Christianity. They are quoting it.

Two things this does not do

It does not make Christianity false. Whether Jesus rose from the dead is a question about the first century, not about the man in the third pew. A true claim badly represented remains a true claim — bad musicians do not disprove the song.

And it does not excuse anything. That reply is correct and it is easily misused. Someone abused by a church does not need to be told the doctrine is still true. They need the thing acknowledged as the evil it was, and they usually need it from a Christian who is not trying to steer the conversation somewhere better.

What the church is supposed to be

There is a line of Jesus that reframes the whole objection: it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

If that is right, then a church full of people who have got their lives wrong is not a scandal. It is the population you would expect. The scandal is a church full of people pretending otherwise — which is the mask again.

The honest version of the invitation has never been come and join the good people. It is closer to: this is a hospital, and everyone here is a patient, including the staff.

Objections answered

Shouldn't Christians be better than everyone else, though?

They should be better than they were, and many are — that is the claim being made. Christianity does not predict that Christians will outperform their neighbours on a scoreboard; it says they were in trouble and are being repaired, which will look different depending on where each one started.

What about the abuse scandals?

Those are not hypocrisy. They are crimes, and they were compounded by institutions protecting themselves instead of children. No theological point applies here. What is owed is truth-telling, cooperation with the police, compensation, and the surrender of any authority that was used to conceal it.

Isn't 'we're all sinners' a convenient way to avoid responsibility?

It is if it is used to stop a conversation. Used properly it does the opposite: it removes the option of pretending, and it means a Christian has no ground from which to look down on anybody. If it is functioning as an excuse, it is being used backwards.

How to say it

Agree first, and mean it

“You’re right, and some of it has been appalling.” Do not follow it with but. Let the sentence stand on its own for a moment. Most people expect a defence and have never had one of us simply say yes.

Give them the definition

“Hypocrisy is the mask, not the failure. Jesus went after the mask harder than anyone.” It reframes the objection as something Christianity already contains.

Matthew 23:27KJVWoe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.

Separate the claim from the people

“Whether he rose from the dead isn’t settled by how I behaved last week.” Said without defensiveness, after the concession, not instead of it.

Shared ground, and where traditions differ

All Christians hold

All the traditions hold that the church is made up of sinners rather than the already-good, that hypocrisy is condemned in the strongest terms in Scripture, and that leaders are judged more strictly rather than less.