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Thoughts on Hypocrisy

The number one charge leveled against churches and Christians for the past several generations is that Christians are hypocrites.  That is an easy charge to level because we teach and preach perfection, righteousness and holiness but Christians are anything but perfect, righteous and holy.  For the Christians our holiness is an alien holiness imputed to us and we add nothing to it and do not participate in any way. We teach and preach that we need to live up to that foreign righteousness, but we will not until Jesus Christ returns again.  Anything "good" that we do on earth is through the power of the Holy Spirit and not human strength or moral will.

For the unsaved, like the sexually immoral perverts in Hollywood, their hypocrisy is truly despicable.  Harvey Weinstein was exposed in the New York Times and after decades of covering up and laughing about him behind their backs, the Hollywood hypocrites need to sacrifice him to save their sexually immoral culture. It is a public secret that everyone in Hollywood gets to the top based on who they slept with. I knew that in High School.  So to act shocked and abhorrent at one man’s very public and well known sexual antics is the height of hypocrisy.

Hollywood people seem to think of themselves as our mentors and teachers. They call their films “important” and “valuable” and “a message for our time” while most people are just looking a few hours of escapist entertainment.  We need apps like IMDB just to remember where we saw that actor before. Yet award shows are full of ribbons and statements and teaching and lectures tell us that we are idiots for electing president Trump and we should know better. All the while they are raping people and abusing children and sleeping around and taking drugs and becoming the personal train wrecks their industry already is.

And yet in the 2016 election, entertainer after entertainer appeared on TV, YouTube and Facebook and told us what to think and told us how to vote.  My question was simply this:  what are their credentials to know the issues and subjects and instruct me?  As far as I can tell, their level of education is  no better than mine and their moral compass is surely more messed up than mine.  They have no authority to speak into my life, yet they keep trying and trying and trying and many people lap it up like dogs.  Fortunately people are learning.  As the price of theater movies goes up and up and up and the availability of Digital delivery of movies on Netflix and Apple and Hulu increase, the playing field is changing and people are spending less and less on Hollywood.  There needs to be a very special draw for me to drop $30 to see a movie in the theater with my wife, and that special “something” does not exist.

I preach “works”.  Not my works, but Christ’s works.  Christins are called hypocrites by people who do not understand the theology of Christ.  I preach Christ and him crucified because that is the power of salvation and the only hope for people.

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