Hypocrisy
Whenever someone in the public eye is caught in some indecency or tresspass, and that person happens to have expressed any traditional moral views on some prior date, then we hear the cries of “hypocrisy”. But is this hypocrisy? Is it hypocrisy if a man decries the evil of some sin and is later caught therein?
If I do things that I think are morally wrong, does that make me a hypocrite? If so, then we should all be hypocrites, or else none of us have a conscience. We should all of us admit that we are hypocrites, since we all sin against God and conscience, or else we have no God or conscience. Is the addict a hypocrite when he curses his addiction and longs to be free? Is the criminal a hypocrite when he feels his guilt? Is every man a hypocrite who ever goes against what he knows to be right?
Let’s go one step further. If I do things that I say are morally wrong, does that make me a hypocrite? If so, then we had better make ourselves hypocrites, or else watch our morality roll downhill, as I discussed in “The Check Valve of Society”. If none can say that anything that they do or have done is wrong, then will we see the moral standards of the society decline, because man errs continually, and so must continually add to the list of things that cannot be identified as wrong. he must lengthen the list of the acceptable. In fact we have seen this and are now watching helplessly as it happens around us.
If, however, hypocrisy means making myself seem that which I am not, then it is OK to call wrong “wrong” even if I am a perpetrator, because I can admit that I am a perpetrator and yet own my guilt. I can acknowlege my guilt and yet acknowlege the standard, because the standard is outside of myself. I do not determine the standard, and my failure does not affect it. I can point to the standard as long as I “point the finger” at myself.
