Why do people act like they do?
I wish I had ten dollars every time I thought that, said it or heard someone else say it. If I did, I could probably retire somewhere warm, wet and beachy.
It amazes me when I see people who know better acting stupid. They make choices and do things to hurt themselves and the ones they love. And they’re the only ones who don’t see it!
How pathetic. And yet I just described every one of us.
You know and I know it’s true. Vainly we hope that no one else suspects. Yet deep down in our hearts we know. We are all hypocrites.
There. I said it. Hypocrites. Judging others with rules we don’t intend to keep.
Our predicament reminds me of the old Gerry Rafferty song, “Stuck in the Middle With You.” Do you remember it? “Stealers Wheel” recorded it back in the 1970s. The lyrics went, “Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, Here I am, Stuck in the middle with you.”
That’s us! We’re surrounded by people just like us. And we don’t like it.
Author C. S. Lewis is reported to have said, "People are good at expecting others to live in a manner that they are not willing to live themselves." Ouch. That hurts.
Well, hold it right there for just a minute. If everyone does it, what’s the problem?
The problem is we’re blind to our own hypocrisy and complain about everyone else’s!
We need someone to slap us up side our head and say, “Doctor, heal yourself! If you’re so good at diagnosing other people’s problems, why can’t you see your own?” Indeed.
What’s the answer?
Listen to Jesus. He said, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye. How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.’”
He nailed us, didn’t he? We’re super speck inspectors. Nit picking other’s failures and ignoring our own.
The problem is our unforgiving hearts. We’re all good at giving ourselves excuses but not allowing them for anyone else. We expect God to forgive us but we don’t offer others the forgiveness we think we deserve—even though they are just as deserving.
Face it. We’re all a mess of mistakes. Without God’s mercy we’re sunk. You can’t be good enough for even your own standards and you know it. It’s just a show. Inside you know.
So what should we do? Jesus said that we should first pay attention to our own shortcomings. That means humble ourselves and admit we make mistakes.
Turning away from the sin you love and asking God to forgive you is the way to remove the plank. Then when you experience his wonderful forgiveness through Jesus Christ, you can offer that same forgiveness to others who so desperately need it.
This simple prescription from Jesus will go a long way toward healing what’s wrong in our relationships. But as long as we think we know better, we’ll still be stuck in the middle of the clowns, the jokers and the hypocrites.
Listen to the Bible; it’s great for your soul!
Showing posts with label hypocrite. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hypocrite. Show all posts
Monday, February 18, 2008
Monday, October 29, 2007
Lone Ranger Christians
One of my favorite Halloween costumes was the Lone Ranger. He was a childhood hero.
Popular on television in the 1950s, the Lone Ranger was a fictitious Texas Ranger. The lone survivor of an outlaw ambush, he was nursed back to health by Tonto, an orphaned Indian he once rescued. The Lone Ranger made a career of righting wrongs and capturing outlaws.
But the Lone Ranger worked alone--without the aid of organized law enforcement.
One man can make a difference, but he can’t live a fully productive life by himself. The truth is, we all need other people. “No man is an island,” said the English poet John Donne.
The Lone Ranger’s adventures made good TV but he’s a poor example for Christians.
Now hold it just a minute. What’s wrong with a “Lone Ranger Christian?”
Lone Ranger Christians don’t think they need the church or anyone else. They believe they can get along just fine by themselves. One once told me, “I can worship God on the tree stump in my back yard just as well as on a church pew.”
Often they became loners because, like the Lone Ranger, they were “ambushed”—usually by well-meaning church folks. With their feelings hurt, they retreat to a hermit-like faith.
“Why should I go to church?” they ask. “Everyone there is a hypocrite!”
Let’s be honest. Church folk sometimes say and do hurtful things. Unfortunately every Christian is not a perfect example of their faith. But that’s no reason to give up on the church.
Jesus took the religious leaders of his day to task for their poor application of Scripture and failure to obey God. But he still attended worship regularly. With the hypocrites.
New Testament churches were full of problems. There were church bosses, false doctrine and people living in sin. But did the apostles give up on the church? No—they worked hard to help it become all God intended it to be: the Hope of the world.
Most of the New Testament is written proof that the Apostles of Jesus Christ were not willing to write off the church. Time and again they wrote to correct problems in the churches and to encourage Christians to live out their faith.
The church is not a museum for perfect Christians. It’s a repair station to fix problems.
Sylvester Stallone, who played Rocky and Rambo in the movies, told a group of pastors, “Living without the church is like working out without a trainer. You need to have the expertise and guidance of someone else. You can’t train yourself. I feel the same way about Christianity.”
“The church is the gym of the soul,” Stallone continued. “Pastors are like trainers that guide you through difficult times and take you to places you don’t believe you can go. A lot of people say, ‘I can do it on my own, I have a one-on-one relationship with God.’ Well, it’s not quite the same…The more I turn myself over to the process of believing in Jesus, listening to His Word and having Him guide my hand, the more I feel as though the pressure is off me now.”
The Lone Ranger was the classic Western at its best. But it was just fiction.
The reality of Christianity is not about “Lone Ranger Christians.” It’s not just about us. The early church “devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Community is necessary for the church to be the church.
God’s advice through the Apostles was pointed and direct: “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day [of Christ’s return] approaching.”
Listen to the Bible; it’s great for your soul!
Popular on television in the 1950s, the Lone Ranger was a fictitious Texas Ranger. The lone survivor of an outlaw ambush, he was nursed back to health by Tonto, an orphaned Indian he once rescued. The Lone Ranger made a career of righting wrongs and capturing outlaws.
But the Lone Ranger worked alone--without the aid of organized law enforcement.
One man can make a difference, but he can’t live a fully productive life by himself. The truth is, we all need other people. “No man is an island,” said the English poet John Donne.
The Lone Ranger’s adventures made good TV but he’s a poor example for Christians.
Now hold it just a minute. What’s wrong with a “Lone Ranger Christian?”
Lone Ranger Christians don’t think they need the church or anyone else. They believe they can get along just fine by themselves. One once told me, “I can worship God on the tree stump in my back yard just as well as on a church pew.”
Often they became loners because, like the Lone Ranger, they were “ambushed”—usually by well-meaning church folks. With their feelings hurt, they retreat to a hermit-like faith.
“Why should I go to church?” they ask. “Everyone there is a hypocrite!”
Let’s be honest. Church folk sometimes say and do hurtful things. Unfortunately every Christian is not a perfect example of their faith. But that’s no reason to give up on the church.
Jesus took the religious leaders of his day to task for their poor application of Scripture and failure to obey God. But he still attended worship regularly. With the hypocrites.
New Testament churches were full of problems. There were church bosses, false doctrine and people living in sin. But did the apostles give up on the church? No—they worked hard to help it become all God intended it to be: the Hope of the world.
Most of the New Testament is written proof that the Apostles of Jesus Christ were not willing to write off the church. Time and again they wrote to correct problems in the churches and to encourage Christians to live out their faith.
The church is not a museum for perfect Christians. It’s a repair station to fix problems.
Sylvester Stallone, who played Rocky and Rambo in the movies, told a group of pastors, “Living without the church is like working out without a trainer. You need to have the expertise and guidance of someone else. You can’t train yourself. I feel the same way about Christianity.”
“The church is the gym of the soul,” Stallone continued. “Pastors are like trainers that guide you through difficult times and take you to places you don’t believe you can go. A lot of people say, ‘I can do it on my own, I have a one-on-one relationship with God.’ Well, it’s not quite the same…The more I turn myself over to the process of believing in Jesus, listening to His Word and having Him guide my hand, the more I feel as though the pressure is off me now.”
The Lone Ranger was the classic Western at its best. But it was just fiction.
The reality of Christianity is not about “Lone Ranger Christians.” It’s not just about us. The early church “devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Community is necessary for the church to be the church.
God’s advice through the Apostles was pointed and direct: “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day [of Christ’s return] approaching.”
Listen to the Bible; it’s great for your soul!
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