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I've been thinking about this after reading on a friend's blog about a person who doesn't "buy" Christianity because of all the hypocrisy she's seen.

Christianity does not hold the monopoly on hypocrisy. For humans being a hypocrite pretty much comes with the territory. If you examine yourself honestly you'll find some time or another where you display some hypocrisy. Maybe you're blind to it. Maybe you think that you are a pretty open-minded person but one day someone does something that shocks you and all of a sudden you think "well at least I don't do THAT". You're judging. You've just gone from the supposed open-minded person that you sell yourself as being to now being a hypocrite. There are a million other examples (and much better ones, too).

It sucks that there is so much hypocrisy in the church. What sucks even more is that the hypocrites are the loudest. You'll never hear about the church down the street that quietly and humbly serves through a food pantry, a benevolence fund, transportation needs, etc. But you will hear about the congregation boycotting funerals and preaching hate to a local news network. You will hear about the preacher who was found with kiddie porn videos all over his computer. That you will definitely hear about. And then someone will declare, "See, all Christians are hypocrites."

I have my own personal experiences with Christianity and hypocrisy. My father took our family to church every Sunday, made us listen to incredibly boring arrangements of hymns and made us watch televangelists who mostly just spouted horrible misrepresentations of the Bible (i.e. God wants you to be wealthy so send me you're money and God will bless you with wealth.). We were at church on Wednesday nights and participated in a million events. But my father was secretly beating the crap out of my mother most days. We had to take her to emergency clinics and make up stupid stories about how she fell. And when she wasn't feeling up to going to church because her ribs were so badly bruised we'd have to tell people at church that she was sick or something else. So, please don't tell me about Christian hypocrisy.

Years after I made a promise to follow Jesus, the pastor that helped me make that decision was caught in an ongoing affair with one of the secretaries. Our whole church basically imploded over the controversy. People questioned their faith because he was their pastor. I never questioned my faith over that. I only ever questioned his. I also never questioned my faith in the God that I learned about every Sunday because of my father. In fact, I'm pretty grateful (in a strange way) that he still took us to church. I learned a lot about human frailty and how desperately we need compassion. I learned that I can love the unlovable because that's what God wants me to do. I learned that there is a heavenly father who loves us no matter what. And I learned that the hardest thing to do is to show grace to someone when they only show you hate.

So again, I'm sorry that the majority of "Christians" you encounter are the loud, hateful, misguided ones. But they are not representative of true biblical Christianity.

And for the ones that decide that if someone makes a mistake they are automatically a hypocrite, please use your mirror.

Learn more about this author, Rebecca Wire.
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