WHO ARE YOU CALLING A HYPOCRITE?
I always chuckle a little when I must sit through someone's "sermon" on why he/she doesn't ever darken the door of a church. Invariably at the top of the list of reasons given for not attending is something about the church being so full of hypocrites. You know, those people who affect virtues and qualities they don't have ... religious fakes. The humor in this line of argument rests not so much in the fact that I never hear anything original, but rather in the facts surrounding the genesis of the word hypocrite. It was a term applied to the ancient Greek actors who wore masks in order to convey to the audience certain qualities and emotions. The actor hid behind the mask and the mask projected the necessary image. In reality, a hypocrite is anyone who wears a mask hiding the true self while projecting an image for the benefit of the "audience". As I see it, that makes us all hypocrites! We all hide behind masks pretty consistently. How often, for instance, do we observe our hurting friends struggling to keep the "coat hanger" smile in place? Yes, when two people stand eyeball-to-eyeball, it's one hypocrite starin' at another! The guy who won't go to church because it's full of hypocrites is not being completely honest. What he really means is that he prefers secular hypocrisy to religious hypocrisy. It's sort of like the smoker's preference for a particular brand of cigarettes. CDR Thomas E. Braithwaite, CHC, USN |
