Hypocrisy

So on Sunday we were talking about hypocrisy and it struck me just what a widespread problem it is. Everyone loves to put on a public face and most of us have become quite expert at doing it. Most of us want to be someone other than who we are and so it is only natural that we project the person we want to be rather than the person that we are!

However, perhaps what struck me even more than the widespread nature of the problem was the destructiveness of it! How can we hope to build real, supportive, honest and lasting relationships for as long as we are pretending to be something that we are not. How can I hope for people to help me get through the various doubts I have if I am always presenting myself as not having any? How can I hope to enjoy loving relationships with other people when despite talking about wanting them I actually have no desire to pursue them. Honesty is a key part of community and so our community's suffer because no-one is actually willing to be honest about who they are. We talk about wanting to follow God, we talk about loving people, we talk about serving God but then our lives call us liars. We need to have lives which measure up to our words if we are ever to build the sort of relationships we not only want but need!

Many of us have taken years creating this public face and getting people to see us a certain way and so are not only loath to destroy it we also don't know how to do anything different. It's one thing to know that we need to be honest and real with people but it's another thing to know how to do it. Some people don't know how to do it and so never build deep relationships other people don't know how to do it and so make everything into a drama in an attempt to connect in some way! I shall endeavour to be as real with people as I can but I think it's going to be a long process and I might need some help along the way!