In Matthew, Chapter 6, Jesus warned about the “hypocrites” and told us not to imitate them, but 2,000 years later, hypocrites still abound in America and in the world
… a blunt analysis of the “Holier than Thou" hypocrisy in religion
A hypocrite is one who pretends to be something one is not. This person pretends to be righteous yet shows no evidence of righteousness … they receive no reward from God the searcher of the heart “only reproach for their deceit. They may have a human reward, but from God they hear, “Depart from me, you workers of deceit. You may speak my name, but you do not do my works” (St. Augustine, Sermon on the Mount 2.2.5).
St. Augustine
What Jesus Christ said as reported by Matthew in Chapter 6 is instructive. First, he says that we should never brag about helping the poor in society because that is not what God wants us to do,
1 'Be careful not to parade your uprightness in public to attract attention; otherwise you will lose all reward from your Father in heaven.
2 So when you give alms, do not have it trumpeted before you; this is what the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win human admiration. In truth I tell you, they have had their reward.
3 But when you give alms, your left hand must not know what your right is doing;
4 your almsgiving must be secret, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.
Matthew, Chapter 6:1-4
However, Jesus did not stop at almsgiving, which is giving things to the poor and destitute. He denigrates those who wear their moral goodness on their sleeves instead of doing this in a room in their home, “in secret,”
5 'And when you pray, do not imitate the hypocrites: they love to say their prayers standing up in the synagogues and at the street corners for people to see them. In truth I tell you, they have had their reward.
6 But when you pray, go to your private room, shut yourself in, and so pray to your Father who is in that secret place, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.
7 'In your prayers do not babble as the gentiles do, for they think that by using many words they will make themselves heard.
8 Do not be like them; your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Matthew 6: 4-8
The he leads us to the Lord’s Prayer which is really a recitation of the Beatitudes, particularly what we had discussed a few weeks ago about forgiveness,
12 And forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven those who are in debt to us.
Matthew 6:12
Interpretation
What bothers some Christians about this is that Jesus seems to be criticizing prayer in public. However, that is not the gist of the problem with the hypocrites and the Gentiles, whom he also admonishes.
The root of what he is saying is the foundation of the Beatitudes: Humility.
Prayer is supposed to be between a person and God, not a public display so that others will see you as a moral and religious person. It is the intent of the prayer that is essential understanding this.
If you pray to God with humility, then we are not being hypocrites. We know that the role of prayer is between the two of us, not a public display of asking God’s help or forgiveness.
Here is one interpretation of this,
In today's Gospel reading, Christ presents a difficult challenge and, at the same time, a great consolation. His teaching can be summed up with a simple phrase: In everything we do, act always before God alone.
At the end of our life, all that will remain is what we have done for God and our brothers and sisters. Everything else, all of our vanities, our desires to be esteemed, loved or taken into account will vanish on the last day, like fog disappears under the rays of the sun. The challenge is clear: to act before God with absolute purity of intention. But where is the consolation? Our heavenly Father "sees in secret."
What might never be perceived or recognized or appreciated by the world will one day be rewarded in heaven …
Christ declares three times those hypocrites who act before others have already received their reward. One day each of us will stand alone before Christ. Our eternal destiny will depend upon the outcome of that moment.
May we not discover to our chagrin that our hands are empty because we have secretly acted to win the applause of men. Rather, may we perform our good deeds in secret, not letting our left hand know what our right is doing. Then our heavenly Father, "who sees what is hidden" will repay us.
Father Walter Schu, “The Danger of Vanity,” Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, Catholic.net
Vanity in the antithesis of humility, which has been the them of Jesus in the Beatitudes. At the end. All of the money, goods, property, esteem, power, or people in our life will disappear.
This is something that bothers people, that God will not care about what we have done in our life. That is not true, but some whom we may call hypocrites today believe that.
Hypocrites
What is the definition of a hypocrite? More instructive, why, despite Jesus’ warning about hypocrites, do we see so many of them in society today?
First, the definition can be instructive,
Hypocrite noun
hyp·o·crite | \ ˈhi-pə-ˌkrit
Definition of hypocrite
1: a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
2: a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings
disapproving : a person who claims or pretends to have certain beliefs about what is right but who behaves in a way that disagrees with those beliefs
Merriam-Webster online dictionary
Holier than thou
The problem occurs when leaders of religions look upon others as beneath them morally. Then, what occurs when the holier than thou person is discovered to be a hypocrite?
I will point to two religions that have suffered in recent times, with many of organized religions losing members steadily in the U.S. as the numbers of Christians decline precipitously.
For the Catholics, is interesting because so many of them no longer practice their religion, which many declare to be hypocritical.
In a book that has become popular over the past few years, an academic claims this in “Mass Exodus,” a study of the decline in numbers in religions throughout the world,
Over fifty years on from Vatican II, however, the statistics speak for themselves. In America, only 15 percent of cradle Catholics say that they attend Mass on a weekly basis; meanwhile, 35 percent no longer even tick the 'Catholic box' on surveys. In Britain, the signs are direr still. Of those raised Catholic, just 13 percent still attend Mass weekly, and 37 percent say they have 'no religion'.
Review of “Mass Exodus,” Amazon.com
This means that the vast majority of those who were born Catholics no longer deem the church in which they were raised moral or worthy of following. Some go to other religions, but the larger number go nowhere. The largest number of people in the U.S. in America is now the “Nones,” meaning those who follow no religion.
Why is that? My contention is that this has occurred because of the hypocrisy of the church. For instance, they have elevated a pope to be a saint after he presided over a horrific moral debacle that has driven tens of millions from the Catholic Church.
That is the late Pope John Paul II, who allowed priests and bishops to avoid turning over criminals within the church, primarily priests, after they had sexually abused young people. John Paul and his successor, Benedict XVI, dominated the church from 1978 until 2013, when scandals drove the latter from the papacy.
I cannot imagine how those two men could enter heaven after the damage that they have done to children and to the church itself.
Yet, even now, Benedict retains a Holier than Thou persona.
In fact, he and many Catholics privately believe that only those of his religion can enter heaven. That is nonsense, and he knows it. Anyone who follows the word of God, whether he or she is religious or not, can ultimately enter heaven if God deems the person worthy.
This was exactly what Jesus was warning against Matthew Chapter 6 when he railed against hypocrisy in almsgiving, praying, and fasting.
The Fall of Falwell
The latest religious scandal involves the leader of the largest Christian college in the world, Liberty University, Jerry Falwell, Jr., the son of the founder who talked about being the moral majority.
After remaining stable for many years, the evangelicals have seen their numbers dropping too, and this scandal will not help that situation.
Falwell was involved with two scandals. The first involved him in a photo with a younger woman, with an alcoholic beverage in hand, the zippers of their pants partially open. Falwell inexplicably posted that on Twitter, then deleted it, but not before some crafty techies had copied it.
That led to his being suspended, which lasted until his second scandal, one in which his wife engaged in relations with a younger man while he allegedly watched, according to the young man’s account. That led to his being fired from the school, which had known of his moral proclivities for a long time.
That is hypocrisy at its worst. When you represent Christianity, you have to be held to a high standard, and Falwell and the two popes failed.
A Liberty student posted this after the Falwell photo was first published on Twitter,
Drinking? Smoking? Possession of cigarettes/alcohol? Aganst the rules regardless of age. Could result in a “$300 find, 30 hours community service, explosion.”
Real people who could not afford the fines have been fined for this. Real people were kicked out for this.
Also, what half of those women were wearing would disallow them from a class, going to the gym, or walking around on campus so as to not risk the purity of men. Guess Falwell’s not too concerned about his “purity”?
—Alexandra M. Green, August 3, 2020
What should we learn from all of this?
Despite these lapses by those in high positions of morality, what should we learn from this instruction?
Return to our first discussion of the Beatitudes. The essence of them is humility. You cannot do all that Jesus is asking you to do without that quality.
We should not be arrogant in our practice of our religion, forcing our views on others or trying to show that we somehow are morally superior than they are.
That is the failing of both Catholics and Evangelicals. Both of them claimed that homosexuals and others were responsible for the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
However, homosexuals were born that way by God. Would he condemn someone whom he had created?
That is hypocrisy, and what we can learn is that we individually have to pray to him privately and not be ostentatious in our religious displays. That does not mean that we cannot pray in church, as long as our intent is based on humility.
This has been a hard one to write because I am criticizing religious leaders, but when they violate the words of Jesus as are written in the New Testament, then we have to stand up for our moral principles.
Which is what I am doing in writing this. What Matthew has written about Jesus’s ministry is intended to be instructive, and we must learn from it.
There is tremendous hypocrisy in the world today, but the message of Jesus is that we have to take care of ourselves, not the rest of the world.
If that means rejecting organized religion, as so many are doing today — 41 percent of millennials have done so — then so be it.
The Community of Matthew has become how I keep holy my sabbath day. It is not necessarily religious, but I deem it to be spirituality.
Read all of Chapter 6. It will be worth your time.
The Book of Matthew, Chapter 6
Matthew Chapter 6
1 'Be careful not to parade your uprightness in public to attract attention; otherwise you will lose all reward from your Father in heaven.
2 So when you give alms, do not have it trumpeted before you; this is what the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win human admiration. In truth I tell you, they have had their reward.
3 But when you give alms, your left hand must not know what your right is doing;
4 your almsgiving must be secret, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.
5 'And when you pray, do not imitate the hypocrites: they love to say their prayers standing up in the synagogues and at the street corners for people to see them. In truth I tell you, they have had their reward.
6 But when you pray, go to your private room, shut yourself in, and so pray to your Father who is in that secret place, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.
7 'In your prayers do not babble as the gentiles do, for they think that by using many words they will make themselves heard.
8 Do not be like them; your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
9 So you should pray like this: Our Father in heaven, may your name be held holy,
10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven those who are in debt to us.
13 And do not put us to the test, but save us from the Evil One.
14 'Yes, if you forgive others their failings, your heavenly Father will forgive you yours;
15 but if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive your failings either.
16 'When you are fasting, do not put on a gloomy look as the hypocrites do: they go about looking unsightly to let people know they are fasting. In truth I tell you, they have had their reward.
17 But when you fast, put scent on your head and wash your face,
18 so that no one will know you are fasting except your Father who sees all that is done in secret; and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.
19 'Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moth and woodworm destroy them and thieves can break in and steal.
20 But store up treasures for yourselves in heaven, where neither moth nor woodworm destroys them and thieves cannot break in and steal.
21 For wherever your treasure is, there will your heart be too.
22 'The lamp of the body is the eye. It follows that if your eye is clear, your whole body will be filled with light.
23 But if your eye is diseased, your whole body will be darkness. If then, the light inside you is darkened, what darkness that will be!
24 'No one can be the slave of two masters: he will either hate the first and love the second, or be attached to the first and despise the second. You cannot be the slave both of God and of money.
25 'That is why I am telling you not to worry about your life and what you are to eat, nor about your body and what you are to wear. Surely life is more than food, and the body more than clothing!
26 Look at the birds in the sky. They do not sow or reap or gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they are?
27 Can any of you, however much you worry, add one single cubit to your span of life?
28 And why worry about clothing? Think of the flowers growing in the fields; they never have to work or spin;
29 yet I assure you that not even Solomon in all his royal robes was clothed like one of these.
30 Now if that is how God clothes the wild flowers growing in the field which are there today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will he not much more look after you, you who have so little faith?
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