What is religious hypocrisy?
Simply put, hypocrisy, including religious
hypocrisy, is pridefully lying about your beliefs and intentions in
order to manipulate others – usually for personal gain. In modern America,
religious hypocrites typically use false interpretations of Christianity to
deceive those who want to follow them.
The hypocrisy of the right-wing political church
While hypocrisy is rife in politics in general, I specifically
call out the American right-wing republican political machine because it blasphemously
pretends to uphold “christian values” while openly flouting the actual
commandments of JESUS. In truth, propagandists for Christian Nationalism are mostly
focused on achieving political dominion over those whom they hate instead of “loving
your neighbor and praying for your enemies” (as JESUS commanded). Their “religion”
is much closer to political fascism than it is to Biblical Christianity.
Anyone who wants to argue this point can read this article about
the widely quoted
interview with the past President of the Southern
Baptist Convention, where he laments the fact that right-wing
conservative “christians” are actually condemning pastors for preaching the WORDS of JESUS from the BIBLE. Right-wing
evangelicals specifically despise the commandments by JESUS to love everyone because
those passages oppose their desire to hate the enemies they have chosen to
fight in their culture war.
JESUS threatened religious hypocrites with hell
JESUS specifically denounced religious hypocrisy, saying:
“…you hypocrites, you honor me outwardly with words but your actions and true beliefs aren’t consistent with what you say; your worship is useless because you stress
your man-made rules instead of the commandments of GOD.” (Paraphrase of Mat
15:8-9)
JESUS went on to pronounce a terrible condemnation
against the scribes and Pharisees - the seven woes recorded in Mat 23. (A “woe” is a warning of impending doom that will
inevitably result from opposing GOD.)
JESUS makes it abundantly clear that unrepentant religious hypocrites
(liars) are condemning themselves – HE calls them “sons of hell, vipers and serpents,”
and asks them: “how can you escape the damnation of hell?” Mat
23:15, Mat
23:33
Nonetheless, many modern right-wing
political christians lie so brazenly that it is apparent that they are not
afraid of any consequences in the world to come, connected to their hypocrisy.
IMO, the popular “once
saved always saved” false doctrine is the
self-deception that emotionally empowers people, especially nominal christians,
to feel secure in their salvation even when willfully committing sins that the
BIBLE says are disqualifying. The BIBLE says that no (unrepentant)
liars will be permitted in Heaven. Rev
21:8, Rev
21:27 Hypocrisy
is lying.
A modern parallel…
The ancient Israelites killed many of the prophets sent to
them by GOD because the rulers hated the message the prophets were sent to deliver.
They were often rejected as false prophets because instead of prophesying the
blessings that the self-righteous hypocrites wanted to hear, they prophesied
destruction if Israel refused to repent. “Killing the messenger” did not stop
the prophecy of destruction from coming true.
One of the woes that JESUS pronounced against the religious
rulers of HIS day was for the same kind of hypocrisy. The Pharisees were telling
themselves that they were the “good guys” – that they would not have murdered
the prophets like their ancestors did. However, JESUS told them that was exactly
what they would do:
“… you testify against yourselves that you are descendants
of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up then the measure of your
ancestors!” Mat
23:29-33
“Fill up the measure” is a biblical ultimatum that if you keep
on sinning, GOD will have no choice but to allow you to be destroyed. This
prophecy was fulfilled when the Pharisees and Sadducees rejected John the
Baptist and crucified JESUS.
In a striking parallel, modern American dominionists hypocritically
tell themselves that they bear absolutely no guilt or responsibility for
America’s immeasurable racism; past
and present. They refuse to be accused of racism - even when their political
sympathies obviously support a future white supremacist vision of America. In
their almost universal acceptance of right-wing propaganda against so-called
“wokeness,” the modern dominionist church hysterically attacks any discussion
of America’s ongoing racism and other related corporate sins.
Self-Deception in the end times
Dominionism
and Christian Nationalism (D/CN) are the motivations behind this
hypocrisy. In their warped preterist view
of patriotic christianity, D/CNs have convinced themselves that as God’s chosen
nation, they must return America to the “values and lifestyles” it was founded
on. Then they want to institute a theocratic world
government – no matter how long it takes – after which, according to them,
JESUS can return. (Preterism and Dominionism are, in fact, titanic end-time
deceptions.)
It upsets their un-biblical, fantastical applecart to have
truth tellers expose the fact that America was founded on a mountain of
horrific soul-destroying sins and that there are, in reality, no decent founding
values to return to. This is why they continually repeat the trope that
“America was not founded on racism;” they need to believe it, even though
racism was written right into the original Constitution. The truth
delegitimizes all of their claims of moral authority. The greedy, genocidal,
money loving, slaveocracy that was/is America has no historical spiritual imprimatur
to lead the world towards a regime of Christian moralism – especially when its
own massive sins have long gone unrepented.
Their overwhelming hypocrisy and self-deception lie in the
fact that D/CNs are determined to believe what they want - in service of their prideful
quest for political and racial supremacy - regardless of what the BIBLE says. Like
the Pharisees, they are following in the footsteps of their sinful racist
ancestors by refusing to repent and admit that they have the same sinful
mindset.
They need to “kill the message” because they fear that the
succeeding generations – those they are counting on to continue their quest for
“christian” white supremacy - will be derailed hearing the unvarnished truth about
American history. Hence, their tooth and nail political fight against “wokeness”
and any allusion to America’s overwhelmingly sinful past in the public school curriculum.
“The Spirit clearly says that
in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and
things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose
consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.” 1Tim
4:1-2
