Hypocrisy

Children love to use their imagination to role-play; acting out all kinds of scenarios. When my children were young, they would spend a significant amount of time acting in their imaginative, made-up worlds. When I would walk into their play space, often one of my girls would say, “Pause the game!” This meant they could return to the real world and engage with me, before saying, “Play!” and re-entering their make believe world again, where they would once more act in their casted roles. The difference between real life and acted, make-believe life was very obvious. As adults, we may ‘act’ in certain roles, but it becomes less obvious what is real and what is make-believe. The line between real and fake can become very blurred, to the point we may not even realise we are playing a role anymore. Jesus often spoke out against those who played a role to impress, calling them hypocrites. In older Greek a hypocrite was simply an actor, but by the first century the term had come to mean those who play a role and see the world as their stage. Perhaps you’ve heard the line often quoted from Shakespeare’s ‘As you like it’, “All the world’s a stage, all the men and women merely players.” Hypocrites made a religious performance that was intended to puff themselves up. The motives behind their good deeds were corrupt. They weren’t done to bring glory to God, but glory to themselves. This is what Jesus hated; when from the outside people would show one thing, but from the inside there was something very, very, very different going on.

Scripture References: Matthew 6:1-18

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