hypocrisy.com - The Eutychus Perch by Hurricane

Religious hypocrisy is nothing new, of course, nor is it a rare aberration, since religion represents power, and power attracts the unscrupulous.

That does not mean religion itself is at fault.  Asked about hypocrites in the church, Billy Graham confronted his questioner with the fact that, if he learned he had been given a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill, he probably wouldn’t reject twenty-dollar bills from then on; he would just be more careful not to take the phony ones.

The fact is, it’s pretty hypocritical to reject religion because the church has phonies in it.  That’s like rejecting democracy because a lot of politicians within the system are corrupt.  (As Sir Winston put it, democracy is the worst form of government in the world—except for all the rest.)

Perhaps the greatest example of hypocrisy in the Hebrew Scriptures is the case of King David in his sordid affair with Bathsheba.  When asked by the prophet Nathan what should be done about a rich man who has stolen a poor man’s beloved, and only, lamb, David explodes in fury, promising severe punishment.  Nathan coolly tells him, “You are the man.”  Perspective is a hard thing to have to face when you’re guilty of adultery and a cover-up involving murder.

The New Testament too has plenty of hypocrisy to tell us about.  How about Jesus’ enemies, who, hearing that Jesus has raised Lazarus from the dead, decide to kill him?  No challe

nging the veracity of the story, no questions about how God might want them to respond to such a miracle, just a decision to kill, as Peter expresses it soon afterward, the author of life.  That makes about as much sense as some of the blather coming out of this presidential campaign.  Did you know, for example, that Sarah Palin studied in Moscow?  (Never mind that it was Moscow, Idaho.)

And isn’t it touching to hear the proponents of abortion on demand feigning concern about whether Palin would have enough time to care for her baby if she were vice president?

Still, it seems much of today’s most ground-shaking hypocrisy is coming out of what Christians tend to call the visible church (as opposed to the true church within it).  A pastor I know was forced to deal with a conspiracy to convert his Presbyterian church into—get this—an Arminian dispensationalist charismatic Baptist church.  (If you don’t know what those terms mean, suffice it to say they are quite foreign to Presbyterian tradition and would make John Knox turn purple.)  The pastor asked one of the leaders of said conspiracy, “When you became a member of this church you swore to uphold its constitution, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“You lied, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes.”

“When you became an elder you again swore to uphold that constitution, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“You lied again, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What does that make you?”

. . . . . . . . . . .

Here’s an a fortiori argument:  How shall we then classify the majority of delegates to the recent General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) (hereinafter PCUSA), who, having sworn that same oath, bypassed the neat Aristotelian chain of authority that is supposed to structure the denomination’s decisions and procedures?  The Book of Order clearly states that authority moves up the scale from the local church sessions to the presbyteries to the synods to General Assembly to the constitution (consisting of the Book of Confessions and the Book of Order) to the Bible, and finally to Christ himself.

This year General Assembly chose to jump over at least two levels of authority above it and pass legislation forbidden by both the constitution and the Bible.  That is, local churches are now free to perform marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples and ordain practicing homosexual pastors.  What one thinks of homosexuality is not the primary issue here.  The issue is that a body properly constituted as being under a higher authority has violated its constitutional position and behaved like some sort of autonomous council of bishops.  The fact that a committee is now excising from the Book of Confessions a passage in the venerable Heidelberg Catechism that forbids what they did does not excuse them.  One wonders whether they will next begin cutting passages from the Bible that offend their postmodern sensibilities.

Incidentally, the story running around is that this order will not go into effect unless and until the presbyteries vote to abolish the section of the Book of Order that demands faithfulness in marriage or chastity in singleness.  As I understand it on good authority, that vote is irrelevant, since the order in question is already in effect.

Presbyterians have always prided themselves on being the denomination of democratic order, but the body charged with maintaining that order has hypocritically shunted aside its responsibility in favor of being politically correct.

Before all this flap began, I was informed by a high official of the PCUSA that some presbyteries would not even speak to me about ordination for the simple reason that I graduated from a conservative seminary, more specifically a seminary known for espousing a theology in line with the PCUSA’s Book of Confessions.

Can you spot what’s wrong with this picture, children?

In short, the PCUSA’s General Assembly has in effect ceased to be truly Presbyterian.  Furthermore, the very Greek word for “church,” ecclesia, means “called out,” specifically called out of the ruling world order.  When a church body instead allows the value system of that world order to force it away from its own highest principles, can that body even call itself a church?

Or are they going to define “called out” as meaning called out of their own founding doctrines?

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