The Dreaded H… Word*

The story is told that a pastor was building a fence while the neighbor’s 12-year-old son watched. The pastor smiled and said, “Are you interested in carpentry?” “No,” the boy replied, “I just want to hear what a preacher says when he hits his thumb with the hammer!” Although the story might be apocryphal, it is rare Christian who has not been told at one time or another by a non-believer that the reason they do not attend church is that it consists of a bunch of hypocrites! Although we dread being placed in the dreaded “H” category, the truth is that sometimes we are not able to live up to the high standards our faiths proclaim and our actions do speak louder than our words.

Paul was concerned about this, both for himself and for the Christians in Rome. However, he recognized although our hearts may be pure, our feet are made of clay. Of course this does not excuse us from not trying to “walk the walk” but we need to be aware that our witness depends more on involving the Holy Spirit for support than it does on our own self-effort. In fact the reason some of us are included in the dreaded “H” category is that we try to walk the walk without His support! As Dwight Moody proclaimed, “We are the only Bible some people will ever read” and others are watching us to see how our walk squares up with what Christians profess. Some are looking for confirmation of the promised life-changing process of Christ while others, like the boy watching the pastor for a chance to say, “See, Christians say one thing but do another; they are just a bunch of hypocrites!” We as believers do want to set a good example, but sometimes we fall short of our good intentions. Although it is humbling to mess up, we need to remember God uses our failures to “… [Make] it clear that our power is from God, not from ourselves” (2 Corinthians 4:7 NLT).

In our quest for perfection we need to remind ourselves that even the great heroes of our faith had human frailties just like we do and Scripture does not try to hide their shortcomings. As Paul says: “ … be careful. If you are thinking, "Oh, I would never behave like that"—let this be a warning to you. For you too may fall into error” (Corinthians 10:12 TLB). Consequently, we should not become too discouraged when we fail to reach our lofty goals. When we fail we need to admit our shortcoming, apologize to the people involved, and attempt to learn from the experience and attempt to be successful in our next trial. Although we may never completely escape being branded with the dreaded “H” word, with His help we will be able to demonstrate to non-believers that His power enables us to improve and therefore witness that Christ lives within us.

* Hypocrite