A List of Christian
Hypocrisies
Psychology has found that a person in Church may feel holy and make good
resolutions and as soon as they are out the door they are back to their bad
behaviour.
They may be pretending to be somebody they are not even in front of God. They seem to think God is so taken with them that they can fool him.
Role play can be happening too. This is when you just do what everybody else does and it's not really about trying to pretend. The role play parts of the brain have been found to turn on when a person is engaged in public worship.
You can be a hypocrite and a role player both at the same time.
A hypocrite is a person who tells a lie by their outward
deeds. They pretend to be good and just and pure when they are in fact not and
don't intend to be. They hide their sins while banning and condemning the sins
of others. Hypocrites are arrogant - they have a saint mentality. If you would
suggest to a hypocrite that they might steal or have sex outside marriage they
will be incredibly outraged. They think they would never do such things. And
more importantly, they want others to think they wouldn't.
Christianity is notorious for its hypocrisy. Christians reply that the critics
of this hypocrisy often use it as an excuse for discrediting the Church and
their motive is their own self-justification. They feel they are morally
superior when they reject the Church and claim that it is because it is such a
hypocritical Church.
CHRISTIANS:
When people reject the gospel, it is a caricature of the gospel they reject. Or
when people reject God it is a caricature of God they reject.
SANITY SAYS:
Any religion can say the same of its gospel - gospel means good news. And indeed
does. The Buddhist can say that if anybody doesn't accept Buddhism it is because
they can't understand the goodness and rationality of the faith. It's a boast
along the lines of, "We are right and everybody else is wrong. Whoever rejects
our version of the faith doesn't understand it or see that it is correct."The
claim is arrogant and patronising. We should express our offence when it is
directed at us.
The claim is all the more arrogant coming from your average believer because he
or she does not have the theological expertise to make such a judgement. If
there are humble believers, then they exist among the theologians.
It is vulgar for anybody to say they believe in intelligent design when they
haven't even read the complicated pro and cons put forward by experts.
CHRISTIANS:
Living in houses, having cars, eating out, having bank
accounts etc. It is possible to live and be healthy and happy without modern
accessories.
SANITY SAYS:
Yet you say Jesus because he was God could have lived
like that too but became an itinerant preacher who said that foxes have lairs
but he has no place to lay down his head. This hypocrisy is more serious in the
case of the clergy who claim to be the representatives of Jesus and taking his
place on earth and showing forth his example.
Jesus told a man he can't please God unless he sells his riches and gives them
to the poor. When you enjoy yourself with a bit of extravagance then somebody
suffers. The gospel acknowledges that here.
CHRISTIANS:
Human life is so valuable that it is not right to put a
dying and suffering person on their way
SANITY SAYS:
Your Bible is full of commands from God to kill people
for offences like adultery and homosexuality and heresy. These are found in the
Jewish law which Jesus said was scripture or the word of God. Jesus was
commanded to walk into his death and he didn't even try to avoid arrest when he
knew it was coming.
CHRISTIANS:
Abortion is wrong at all stages for life begins at
conception
SANITY SAYS:
If it is a mother's right to refuse to donate a kidney,
even though she doesn't need it, to save her grown child's life, then it is her
right to have an abortion.
CHRISTIANS:
Abortion is wrong even when it saves the mother's life,
but pregnancy does not kill women today
SANITY SAYS:
It does kill - it kills in the poorer parts of the world.
And if it killed most women you would still ban abortion for your heart is
simply not in the right place.
CHRISTIANS:
The right to life of the child from conception is equal to the right of the mother
SANITY SAYS:
To place a ball of cells on the same level as the woman is pure insanity.
To say both have the equal right to life does not solve the problem. There could
be other reasons why the mother has to come first. The Church cheats people by
over-simplifying the problem.
CHRISTIANS:
Prostitution is demeaning and wrong
SANITY SAYS:
You have no problem with somebody working in a job where they are used and
insulted regularly. You praise the long suffering nurse working among ingrates
who steal from her and endanger her. Presumably harmless sex where the client
actually cares for the prostitute and she him is worse than being degraded and
thought of as dirt in your job or a wife succumbing to her husband who only uses
her for sex?
CHRISTIANS:
The Catholic employer may hire a Protestant to work for him. As long as the Protestant can do the job religion doesn't matter.
SANITY SAYS:
That teaching is actually just society's talk and stolen
from society by religion. The Church sometimes pretends that society's attitudes
are its own. The Church says we must be willing to suffer and die for the Church
if need be. So the Church comes first because God comes first and the Church is
his instrument and has been founded by him. To support a Protestant by giving
him a job is in fact to support another faith for the Protestant is part of
another faith.
If a Catholic and a Protestant were both equally suitable to do a job, it
follows that the real Catholic will hire the Catholic. Society will go berserk
if this happens. So much for its respect for religious freedom! It contradicts
the alleged right of the Catholic to serve the interests of his own Church.
The implications of religion are often worse than the religion itself.
And Catholics often do think, "Maybe I should hire one of my own - a Catholic?"
The very fact that religion inspires this thought is itself enough to make the
warning bell ring. In a just world, the thought wouldn't even be thought.
CHRISTIANS:
God does not dwell in friendship inside babies that are not baptised. This is
called original sin and is corrected when the baby is baptised.
SANITY SAYS:
Faith should incorporate concern for people and shouldn't insult or downgrade
anybody and especially children. This lie of original sin is at the root of
Christianity. It is the root from which all other doctrines proceed. For
example, Jesus supposedly lived and died to save us from original sin. It is the
contributor to all the sins we commit so he primarily died to fix it and
established baptism and the Church and the sacraments to fight it. To go to
Church at all is to support a religion that is rooted in a vicious and
pernicious doctrine of original sin and fanaticism. It is because of original
sin that prayer is considered necessary. It is because the elements of sin in us
ruin or diminish our relationship with God that we need to pray. If we are in
perfect harmony with God we don't need to make an effort to unite with him.
Christian prayer is malicious in the sense that it honours and derives from the
doctrine of original sin.
CHRISTIANS:
God taking away original sin away from babies is not a duty. He doesn't have to
do it and would be perfectly good if he doesn't.
SANITY SAYS:
This suggests that God is entitled to let us suffer forces that draw us to sin
and to keep us away from him. This makes no sense. The Catholic God is evil. He
is capable of sending people to Hell forever.
CHRISTIANS:
Doctrines such as baptism taking away sins, Jesus being virgin born, dying for
our sins and rising again and turning bread into his body to be our food are
important.
SANITY SAYS:
Are they? You say they are important but that is all you do. You give no
evidence. Suppose these teachings are for our moral good and our happiness. If
these teachings were about bettering people then it would be simply necessary to
be confident that God forgives and that somebody saved us if necessary and that
God blesses our hearts with spiritual food of some kind all the time and
invisibly and that we can be happy after death. What do we need to know its
Jesus for? What do we need the virgin birth for? Christians are not concerned
with bettering us so much as controlling us. If somebody got an official letter
from a solicitor the point is that you got the letter not who typed it up or who
posted it or what kind of ink was used or what kind of envelope. If somebody
saved you it doesn't matter if it was Jesus or somebody else or if that person
had a virgin mother or rose from the dead yet. If he needs to rise to save us he
could do that at the end of the world. It is disgraceful how priests and clergy
can make a big thing out of religious differences such as is Jesus the communion
bread or not when there are people dying friendless on the streets. Religion's
attitude is the seed of bigotry.
CHRISTIANS:
Promiscuity is bad
SANITY SAYS:
Yet you have no objections when a girl marries a man who has had thousands of
sexual partners. If you sleep with a person you are in a sense sleeping with
everybody they ever slept with. If a drug made a woman life to a thousand you
would approve of her having had twenty husbands by the time she died. Your
opposition to promiscuity is not about the quantity of sex but about your
dislike of sex and your grudging tolerance of any sex that you allow.
CHRISTIANS:
The language of sex is, I give myself to you to be yours forever for I give you
my body. Therefore sex must only happen in marriage.
SANITY SAYS:
The Church only imposes that meaning on sex. It doesn't take it seriously when
it allows separation if the couple can't endure one another. A marriage in which
there is no living together is only the semblance of a marriage. The Church
doesn't ask any couples whose marriages were invalid and who have children to
under a valid marriage to one another to regularise their situation. If sex
really says that then why not go a step further and say, "I give you my whole
self and will not remarry if you die for if I would remarry that is saying you
can only have me until you die." That is holding something back.
A far deeper bond than sex happens when a woman gives birth. You may as well say
she is bound to have no other children for she has given her body to her baby.
Or you can say she must look after her husband only as a means to looking after
her child but as far as he is in himself he is nothing to her.
We say we can love our spouses forever but we know that we cannot know what the
future will bring. Love can easily turn to hate. Only saints could have sex
without sin if the Christian teaching of sex is right.
The Church is making out that it thinks sex is holy. It flatters it to death and
makes it rarely sinless. Husbands and wives would be virtual celibates. In
reality the Church is using the flattery to stop sex because it hates it. It can
hardly admit to hating sexuality for that would cause the whole world to howl in
derision.
CHRISTIANS:
The language of sex is, I give myself to you to be yours forever for I give you
my body and my fertility. Therefore contraception which indicates a holding back
is wrong.
SANITY SAYS:
Yet you approve if a man has sex with his wife putting her at the risk of AIDS
or a pregnancy that may kill her. That is some giving of yourself!
CHRISTIANS:
Love your neighbour as yourself
SANITY SAYS:
Yet they regard those Christians who are rich and enjoy their lives as good
Christians though they will not live a basic life so that they can build
hospitals to save the lives of the poor with their money. They condone and
reward how those people do not really care about the poor enough.
You don't give a damn about the vast majority of people
that live. You hurt them in doing so for if everybody loved us we would always
be safe and feel safe and our self-esteem would be indestructible.
Our morality is based on, "Leave him alone. He is not bothering or hurting you."
It's hypocrisy. It implies that it is okay to hurt him if he is bothering or
hurting you. And yet Christians condemn that. They are using the commandment not
to educate or help people but to manipulate them.
CHRISTIANS:
We believe in justice at all costs.
SANITY SAYS:
The faithful believer has no problem approving and supporting a hypocritical
religious and political system that tells lawyers who know they are defending
evil monsters and trying to get them off the hook to condone the evil and tell
themselves that the monsters are good people. After all, a good lawyer has to
believe his or her own lies to be convincing and to convince others.
Christianity does not really believe in freedom of conscience and virtue except
when it suits its prejudices. A good lawyer aims to have witnesses under oath
trip up so that it looks like they lied under oath. He does not care if they
really did but just cares that it looks like they did. Also, he will take on the
case when he feels that the accused has a reasonable chance of talking her or
his way out of trouble.
CHRISTIANS: Tyranny is wrong, dictatorship is wrong
SANITY SAYS:
Yet you say that there is a revelation from God that all is bound to believe and
not doubt. Liberals say that too so they are really no better than the
fundamentalist for they have the same essential attitude.
