Dear Isabel,
Years ago I was a member of a pretty progressive church in the Bible Belt. I really admired the minister, who pushed the congregation to live by what I considered true Christian values like love of our neighbors and refraining from judgment. When he finally took a stand for the right of same-sex couples to marry, about a third of the church members left. I was so disgusted by the behavior of these so-called followers of Jesus that I didn’t want to be associated with the Christian church anymore. As it was, the church was a good 15-20 years behind the times, and here the minister was trying to get the church to do the right thing at last and it caused a huge schism.
Fast forward to now, and I am living in a new city, looking for friends, and I know a church might be the place to find a community. But I just can’t deal with the hypocrisy. It seems like not just my old church, but so many other religious communities I’ve heard of, don’t practice what they preach. They drive homeless people away from their doorways instead of living by Matthew 25 (“Truly, what you do for the least of these my brethren, you do for me”) and they seem obsessed with people’s sex lives while there are plenty of affairs and sexual secrets in the church. I’d like to be convinced that I could connect with a church again, but ignoring the hypocrisy makes me feel like a hypocrite!
Expecting Too Much?
Dear Expecting,
I don’t think you are expecting too much by asking churches to practice what they preach. But you might be expecting too much if you think it’s possible for them to unfailingly live up to that challenge.
There’s out and out hypocrisy, like a minister’s preaching humility and generosity to the poor while buying the latest fancy car every three years. On the other hand, in the face of homelessness, almost any spending on oneself seems selfish. Is it okay with you if the pastor has a reliable car? A new but not luxury car? The line isn’t so easy to draw. But a church that is trying will acknowledge the tension and make deliberate choices that shift some of those resources to the poor instead of to their own luxuries, while a downright hypocritical church will take the attitude that a minister has to have the best and latest.
Maybe acknowledgment and effort are the key. I hesitate to say that simply failing to live up to one’s ideals makes one a hypocrite, especially when it comes to religious organizations like churches, because churches’ ideals should be very high. And if they are very high, you’re going to fail to reach them a lot. Maybe more often than not. So maybe you could ask: how does the church act when it fails to reach them? Does it acknowledge, “We set up a soup kitchen, but we could be doing much more to help the poor”? Or does it just preach charity and then spend its money on the pastor’s car or jewelry or hairdo—like it isn’t even trying? Hypocrites barely even try, and they sure as shootin’ don’t like to admit their failures. That’s the difference between them and earnest, ordinary, frequently-failing mortals.
That matter of affairs, for example. Most of us think that people should faithfully keep their promises, such as fidelity to one partner (if that is what one promised). And . . . some of us stray anyway, because temptation is common and we do things we know are wrong. Now: does the unfaithful spouse double down on the “sexual immorality” of the rest of the world and deny his own, or does he acknowledge his own failings and focus on those, trying to make amends and refraining from pointing fingers at others? I guess I’m saying: the crime doesn’t necessarily make one a hypocrite; the cover-up probably does.
So in your own search for community, maybe you can look for a place where people strive for high ideals and acknowledge that they don’t always reach them. If that, rather than moral perfection, is your goal, you’ll have better luck finding a community that has enough compassion to treat you as a flawed, striving human too.
One other thing: I’m noticing the sad irony that after your former pastor took a brave stand and the church as an institution supported him despite a bunch of members’ storming out, you left. Weren’t the people who stormed out the hypocrites, while the minister and the church were the principled ones? I’m wondering why this was the moment that you decided the church was full of hypocrites. It’s too late for you to be one of the ones who stood by that particular minister with your presence, but if you’re given another opportunity like that, I hope you will consider it.
Wishing you well,
Isabel
Next week: Creating an altar at home