Redefining Hypocrisy

“Hypocrisy is preaching a standard that you do not practice. It is telling others how they should live and then consciously choosing to live in the opposite way.”

The Problem with Hypocrisy is that is has not been clearly defined.

Matthew 7:1-5 – “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

Romans 2:3 – “Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God?”

Titus 1:6 – “They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work”

Hypocrisy is a term that is thrown around as if it means nothing. We have forgotten what this word means because it is so overused. We accuse everyone and everything of being hypocritical without first defining the terms of what hypocrisy is. Here we define terms.

hypocrisy

Definition: What Hypocrisy is NOT.

Hypocrisy is not having a high standard and failing to live up to it. That is called being a human being and making a mistake.
Hypocrisy is not committing sin.
Hypocrisy is not failing to do something we know we know we should, nor is it doing something we know we should not.
Hypocrisy is not a single failing or even a batch of failings.

Definition: What Hypocrisy IS.

Hypocrisy is preaching a standard that you do not practice. It is telling others how they should live and then consciously choosing to live in the opposite way.

Examples

1 – If a man promotes the standard of abstinence until marriage, yet he fails in this and has sex, he is NOT a hypocrite.

If the same man tells others to be abstinent and yet willing goes out and has sex repeatedly, he IS living a hypocritical life.

2 – If a man promotes sobriety, the avoidance of alcohol and other substances, yet he stumbles and has a drink because he has little self-control, he is NOT a hypocrite.

The man who preaches sobriety and maintains a lifestyle of constant drinking and drunkenness IS a hypocrite.

3 – If a man believes that is is wrong to curse, yet one day he accidentally loses control of his mouth and says a word he considers to be a sin, he is NOT a hypocrite.

The hypocrite tells others not to curse and then goes out and uses whatever language he wants without even trying to restrain his tongue.

The difference is that the man who is not a hypocrite stumbles and makes mistakes, while the man who IS a hypocrite lives a constant, conscious lifestyle of evil that is in direct opposition to the lifestyle he wants others to live.

A person trying to live a “green lifestyle” (heaven help you) but every once in a while drives a gas burning car or needs to take a plane somewhere is not a hypocrite. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez IS a hypocrite because she wants everyone else to live a green, inconvenient life while having the rules not apply to her

The hypocrite dictates rules to others that do not apply to him. He is very aware of what he is doing. He usually attempts to disguise or bury it so that he can live the way he wants to while still attempting to appear as an angel of righteousness.

All men make mistakes and stumble, the hypocrite willingly lives the lifestyle he preaches against.

Some may even unknowingly live in hypocrisy. However, these individuals are hypocritical to a lesser degree because they do not actively choose to do what is wrong (We will examine these in detail later).

This is the difference.
This is true hypocrisy.
To require a person to never commit any of the wrongs he is opposed to is unreasonable and illogical.
We are still men in the flesh.
We will fail, but we will not willingly live in evil.

Hypocrisy is a choice that we will avoid.

Application

Correct your perceptions about what you think hypocrisy is before you begin another day. Do not allow the false notion of what the weak call hypocrisy delude you to reality.

Do not require perfection from people who hold high standards. No man can reach perfection. However, that does not mean that man cannot have very high standards for himself. Those standards will only press him on to more greatness and improvement.

If you are wallowing in hypocrisy, purge it from yourself immediately. There is no need to contribute to the bad name of hypocrisy that Christians have built for themselves already. Eliminate your vices and replace them with strength and honor.

Control your mind.

Treat Your Faith Seriously

“The older generations enjoy pointing fingers at the younger generations and complaining about them. They forget that they are the ones who are responsible for raising that younger generation.”

serious


There is a disease growing in the Church. It is complacency combined with irreverence which together form an overall lack of seriousness regarding religion.

The Church has become a social club where individuals focus primarily on their own enjoyment with little thought for anything else. Young men show up to Church dressed for a backyard barbecue while young women show up dressed like they are going out clubbing.

What happened? Parents thought that simply being Christians and bringing their kids to church a couple of times per week would be enough to keep them on the path of spiritual discipline.

This is not the case anymore. The young see the lack of seriousness from their parents and carry on the tradition of lackadaisical faith in their own lives. The older generations enjoy pointing fingers at the younger generations and complaining about them.

The older generation forgets that they are responsible for raising the younger generation.

They have three fingers pointing back at themselves.

When a young child behaves poorly, it is a reflection primarily on the parent, not on the child. We all know and understand that children are born uncivilized. It is the responsibility of the parents the teach them how to behave in a civilized society.

Thus when we see a lack of seriousness in the Church, we need to look at the parents who did not firmly instill values into their children to determine the root cause of the problem.

The lack of seriousness we see in the Church is the result of poor parenting. It is evident that our perception of God and the Church is a reflection of our perception of our parents, primarily our fathers when it comes to how we view God.

If the father is a strict disciplinarian, the child views God as the Punisher of evil who gives no grace or mercy to anyone, and who is viewing earth from heaven just waiting for someone to sin so that He can destroy them.

If the father is too merciful, turning a blind eye to a child’s poor behavior, the child views God as handing out never-ending grace and mercy no matter how evil an individual is. The child will then convince himself that everyone is saved because God is all love.

If the father is absent, either because of work or because he is literally gone, the child views God as absent and distant and will likely end up as an atheist.

Our idea of the Church reflects our mothers and their relationships with our fathers.

If marriage is to reflect Christ (the husband) and His Church (the wife) then we can see how seriousness has faded over the years. Children have less respect for their parents and in turn, they have less respect for the Church. They speak to their mothers however they please, and thus view the Church as something not to be respected.

Marriage itself has become less respected and revered and is seen as an empty contract that can be cast aside at a moment’s notice for any reason.

Therefore, the relationship between Christ and the Church has become less respectful as well. This respect must be restored to the Church.

We forget that we are coming to a memorial service for Christ.

No one would show up to the funeral of their father or mother in shorts and a t-shirt.

Then why do we feel free to show up to the memorial service for God the Son dressed like we are headed to a birthday party?

Unacceptable.

We need to reverse this lack of respect and seriousness in the church by instructing our children about the seriousness of the faith we hold. They need to understand that a lackadaisical approach to faith and Christianity is no better than having no faith at all.

The lukewarm church is spewed from the mouth of God. Education begins at home. “Raise your children in the way that they should go so that when they are grown, they may not depart from it” ~ Proverbs 22:6.

Treat your faith with seriousness and respect. Worship God with reverence and Godly fear, for He is “a consuming fire” – Hebrews 12:28-29

The War Against the Self

“We make the mistake of assuming that the enemy is primarily in the outside world while there is already an enemy living within us as a parasite.”

war


Ephesians 6:11-12 “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

Deuteronomy 28:7 – “The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways”

Psalm 37: 12-16 – “The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes his teeth at him, but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that his day is coming. The wicked draw the sword and bend their bows to bring down the poor and needy, to slay those whose way is upright; their sword shall enter their own heart, and their bows shall be broken. Better is the little that the righteous has than the abundance of many wicked.”

The self is one of our many enemies. We must fight daily against its weakness, insufficiency, and selfishness. The self must be brought under subjection.

The self is primarily manifested in the flesh, so when we war against ourselves, we fight mainly against our flesh.

Secondarily, we fight against the weakness of the mind. Because any glitch we have in the mind will manifest itself in the body. The body is merely a messenger for our thoughts and a vessel that represents the cumulative results of our mind’s work.

Therefore, even though we mainly wrestle against flesh and blood, the war must begin in the mind. Once the mind is under control, then the body can be brought under control.

We make the mistake of assuming that the enemy is primarily in the outside world while an enemy is already living within us as a parasite. Many temptations come from within our minds (James 1:14-15). The primary enemy is within.

We can never defeat an enemy outside the walls of our minds while simultaneously fighting treachery inside our minds. The internal war is won before the external war is won. We must focus on the enemy that is our own self, then we may conquer the world.

Application

The mind is odd in that it can be defeated by itself. Two opposing forces can collide in the recesses of our minds, originating from our thoughts. The victor is the one who is fed the most thoughts. The thought held the longest in the mind is the one that will win and take root in the mind.

Therefore, we must encourage the correct thoughts, because the thoughts that win will be the thoughts that become our life. It is even established in the scientific fields that we have extreme difficulty forcing throughs out of our minds and not allowing them to bubble up. But we also know that evil thoughts can be crowded out by consciously inserting good thoughts.

Practical tactic: Choose the thoughts you want to have in advance and when unwanted thoughts begin to bubble up, replace them with the thoughts you want. Force negativity out of your mind by filling it with positivity.

When the mind is won, war can be waged in the body. The body of man is primarily overrun with lusts of all kinds. Sex consumes the vast majority of man’s thoughts and personal cravings. He also lusts for power and money, but primarily because these tend to bring even more sex to the one who holds them.

Skills and status are also objects of lust.

The lust for sex is the primary driver of man.

All invention, creation, and construction are the results of sexual energy. This energy must be harnessed and controlled because there are very few ways to use it properly.

Men spill their seed using porn or prostitutes when they could instead use that energy to create. You should avoid confronting this lust head-on. Try instead to redirect it to other outlets.

If you war against the lust of the flesh to repress it, it will find a way to force an outlet because it is too powerful of an energy source to be contained.

Redirect the strength of the enemy into anything that will gain more power for yourself. This is how you defeat the flesh. Everything can be viewed in terms of sex, because as men, this is our greatest battle, and this battle pervades all other spiritual battles we face.

Few make it out alive because they try to war against their own biology. Men use dams to redirect the power of a river, you must use strategically placed dams to redirect your own sexual power into constructive and creative endeavors.

This requires leaving the house and building success using the power of the enemy against him. This can be done. If this war is won, all other wars can be won. Place armor on your mind. Gather your thoughts on the task at hand. Wage total war on yourself and unleash your raging fury upon your imperfections.

Mental Nutrition

“No man grew his character scrolling around in instagram”

nutrition

Philippians 4:8 – “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Romans 12:2 – “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Colossians 3:2 – “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”

What you allow in your mind will define you in life. Everything you allow into your mind will develop the way you think. Whatever consumes your regular thoughts determines what you are.

The man who watches the news in the morning and evening and reads it throughout the day becomes an outrage addict and depressed about the state of the world. That man will almost never develop a positive mindset as a result of consuming politics.

He built that mentality through what he fed his mind.

The man who fills his thoughts with social media becomes a man who never lives his own life and who wallows in an inferiority complex. The man who fills his mind with “junk food” will develop the corresponding level of mental fitness. He will be fat and lazy in mind even if his flesh is in decent shape. (Which usually will not happen because an out of shape mind almost never produces a fit physical body).

Whatever we are thinking about is what we are becoming. It follows that the man who takes in positive mental nutrition is a man who becomes a more respectable, successful and mentally fit individual. The man who fills his mind with positive stories and anecdotes of success or motivational speeches about perseverance and work ethic is a man who will eventually embody those characteristics.

The mental nutrition accumulates in its effect just as physical nutrition accumulates over time.

No one instance of positive or negative mental nutrition will change you for better or worse, results are always gained over the long term. These results usually are not seen until they compile into a mass. No single donut results in morbid obesity. No single meal of grilled chicken and broccoli will transform you if you already are grossly out of shape. For this reason you must commit to a long term mental diet of positive thoughts. You cannot put the negativity of the world into your mind constantly and expect to be any better than the world. You are what you think, therefore control your thoughts, and control what goes into your mind, because that determines what you think about. This is the foundation for success.

Mantra

You are what you think.

Application

Start a habit of consuming a positive visual diet every day. Cut back on the visual garbage foods that you enjoy eating. Staying up to date with the state of the country is fine, but becoming increasingly depressed and negative as a result of watching the news for hours a day is not good.

Replace the time you would normally spend consuming rubbish with a positive diet of strong thoughts. The internet has put dozens of mentors, positive thinkers and motivational speakers at our fingertips. Do not waste the extremely valuable resources that we have been given.

You have free access to all the positive material you could ever consume in a lifetime and much more. You are certainly more likely to hear something that would change your thinking and therefore change your life through a positive speaker or mentor than you are to hear it through the local news station. Just type “motivational speech” into your search bar and you will have millions of results.

You need to listen to at least one of these a day. You also need to reduce your consumption of social media and other assorted mental feces. Men do not waste their lives away scrolling through the lives of other people. You must have the strength of mind to reject these common trappings of life.

Control what goes into your mind and you will have a much easier time controlling your thoughts.

Through the positive mental diet you control the soil of the mind from which the fruits of correct thinking will grow. No man improved himself through facebook. No man grew his character scrolling around on instagram. No great man was developed through the daily consumption of the local news.

Men improve from strong thinking and from learning from other men. You can improve your life or waste your life through what the internet has to offer. So learn and grow like a man. Improve yourself. Do not misapply the virtue of contentment to your character. Feed the mind with the thoughts of a champion. Conduct yourselves like men

Honesty

“Lying is the verbal manifestation of cowardice.”

“There is a difference between sugar coating the truth and delivering a hard truth in a soft manner”

Honesty

Proverbs 12:22 – “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are his delight”

Proverbs 19:1 – “Better is a poor person who walks in his integrity than one who is crooked in speech and is a fool.”

Colossians 3:9 – “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices”

Honesty is missing in the Church because the truth is painful for both the man who speaks it and the man who hears it. Man is always looking to avoid or reduce his pain, so he sacrifices virtue for the sake of comfort. He throws away righteousness for the sake of safety. We must not do this. There is no growth in the comfort zone. No one ever improved himself through pleasure.

Character is not developed in ease of life.

The devil is a liar. The sons of the devil are liars. Lying is the verbal manifestation of cowardice. The liar is a worm of a man, the living embodiment of all that is despised by masculinity. There is no excuse for lying. There are not excuses for “white lies”.

No evil can be justified in a way in which the evil is removed. Even if evil is done for a “good reason”, it is still evil. Even if we are lying to “protect others”, we are still lying. In truth, we are likely only protecting ourselves when we lie. Therefore we must be completely honest at all times.

This is not to say we should embrace brute honesty, for that profits very little unless used on specific personality types that respond well to the blunt truth. We should be merciful and gentle when we administer the truth to an individual, just as a doctor is gentle when he administers an injection to a patient. The doctor does not ram the needle into the patient’s arm as hard as he can, there would be no profit in that. We ourselves must be strategic in the way we verbally package the truth: never diluting or sugar coating it, but never soaking it in vinegar either.

Christ was always honest with others, always prioritizing the truth over the emotions of the person who is hearing the truth.

He knew that a person offended by truth simply has too much ego to accept what He had to say in the moment in which He said it. We should evaluate the person we are speaking to: How big is his ego? How well can he accept the truth of a statement? The answers to these questions then give us an idea of how to package the truth. And it varies from circumstance to circumstance.

Perhaps this person needs to have his ego brought down a few notches, and so you decide to give him the full, blunt truth as Christ did with the Pharisees on many occasions. Perhaps the individual is hypersensitive to words and will completely shut down if he is given the truth in a blunt way, so you surround the truth he needs to hear with words of encouragement or complimentary statements to soften the pain. Whatever you decide to do, you must be strategic. But above all, you must be honest.

“Be completely Honest in all that you do” ~ Marine Boot Camp: Introductory Speech

The honest man also does not avoid situations in which he must confess to what he has done. He does not hide the truth or attempt to justify what he did, he merely confesses, accepts punishments and improves himself as a result. This is painful. Know that pain almost always equals growth. Do not hide or cover up the truth. This is for the weak.

Be completely honest in all that you do.

Application

To use honesty strategically is the primary idea. Assess the person you are speaking to and gauge how you should deliver honesty to him. You must always be honest no matter what. How direct, confrontational or “offensive” you are will vary from person to person. Some people need to be punched in the face with truth before they will ever make a change. Some people will never change if they are hit with a painful truth. There is a difference between sugar coating the truth and delivering a hard truth in a soft manner. You must use your knowledge of people to determine how you will act. No matter what, you must be honest.

If you are caught in a fault, confess it. Never be dishonest, you will damage your reputation and character. Those are invaluable pieces of your individuality, so do not lessen their worth. Never hide what you have done wrong, you are simply trying to remove pain from yourself by transferring it to others. Never lie. Never deceive. Be the bearer of truth and a beacon of honesty in a weak and dishonest world.

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