When we talk about the “moral high ground,” we are talking about a ground on which none of us is completely competent to walk since we are all prone to Fall. In fact, clinging to the illusion that we can walk a perfect moral tightrope gets us into a lot of trouble when onlookers see us tumble into the crowd. It is the politician who repeatedly denies the illicit affair, or the sports star who goes to great legal lengths to preserve their steroid-free illusion, who end up severely damaging their reputations. Instead of conducting a public funeral for their sin, they engage in creative embalming and go on a Weekend with Bernie. The problem is that you can only publicly display your whitewashed tomb for so long before the rancid smell of reality becomes overpowering.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. (Matthew 23:27-28)

All of us recognize that we are imperfect and periodically need forgiveness so when we see celebrities attempting to cover up their own failures, we get a bit indignant. What we really want is heart-felt contrition and not absurd denial. If you want to rehabilitate your image, then come clean and apologize because your fellow man comes prewired with original sin sensors that quickly alarm when they encounter a fellow hypocrite.

If this is so obvious, then why do we see this scenario repeated over and over again? The main reason is that the original sin of trying to be like God continues to raise its ugly head, and our false sense of divinity prevents us from admitting that we don’t behave god-like at all. Unfortunately, Christianity is in a terrible bind; it espouses a standard of moral behavior that it is incapable of perfectly attaining. This struggle has left many a fallen Christian leader hanging from a tree, held up as yet another example of Christian hypocrisy. The atheist who points their finger at these fallen leaders misses one very important point; where did they get the yardstick to measure Christian hypocrisy? Oops, they got it from God! How dare they rap our knuckles with a yardstick they insist doesn’t exist!

True hypocrisy is available only to the religious because a universal standard must exist before you can act contrary to it. The postmodernist, who declares everything is relative and all behavior should be tolerated, has conveniently forged a get-out-of-hypocrisy jail free card by denying any norm to which their behavior must conform. I think this serves as a warning to us all; if it is impossible to be a hypocrite in your worldview, then it stands for nothing. While hypocrisy has damaged the reputation of many a leader, we have to at least admit it shows that their worldview had a standard to violate.

Indeed the advanced modern world is so perfectly suited to hypocrisy that what is striking is not hypocrisy but our continuing outrage at it. (Os Guinness)

When a prominent Christian leader falls, it becomes big news, and the body is dragged through the streets as one more piece of evidence of Christian hypocrisy. When a New Age leader falls, nobody seems to care because there is no standard from which they fell, and they can always spin their behavior as just one more way to worship the God within. New Age spirituality doesn’t lose credibility through indiscretion because it doesn’t even recognize indiscretion. I think the very fact that a Christian leader can fall suggests that Christianity is bigger than any celebrity pastor or mega-church.

We need to remember that when an atheist calls a Christian a hypocrite, God gives out a hearty “Amen,” but He also reminds him that it was He who established the standard by which he could make that judgment. Jesus saved some of his harshest words for hypocrites, but it was not the rampant hypocrisy of politicians that irked him, rather the hypocrisy of the religious elite. He called them blind guides and whitewashed tombs and accused them of deceiving the people. However, for those who admitted their failings He had nothing but praise.

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)

In the end, you cannot be blessed if you are oblivious to your need for blessing. Christianity is good news because it opens the tomb and exposes our hypocrisy, but then does the unthinkable and declares that a public viewing brings the dead body to eternal life. While our fellow man continues to pump the embalming fluid of pride into their dead cadavers, we look forward to new bodies that will be washed clean by the Blood of the Lamb. Who should be more grateful for salvation? The one who admitted they had been dead in their sin, or the one who insisted they had the best looking corpse? 

We need to reclaim the true essence of the Gospel because many in the Christian community have made moral superiority the measure of faith and not the unmerited grace of forgiveness. Every other religion and philosophy holds out the possibility of better behavior so if that is our Christian shtick, then we are just one more salvation shop in the religious marketplace. People should be flooding our churches because we are honest enough to admit, what every other human being already knows, that we are flawed and incapable of fixing ourselves. The Good News is that our confession doesn’t bring a jailer but rather a gracious judge. Didn’t Jesus say that He came for the sick and not the well? Didn’t He spend most of his time with prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers, and the poor? Hypocrites are a dime a dozen, but repentant sinners are like rare jewels. God makes it clear that what He really wants is “a broken and contrite heart” and not ritual that hides our sinfully hardened coronary arteries. So we need to ask ourselves what we desire; one day in His courts, or a Weekend At Bernie’s?

For a day in your courts is better

      than a thousand elsewhere.

      I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God

      than dwell in the tents of wickedness. (Psalm 84:10)