November 2006

Well the Melodrama is over and I need to thank all of you who came to watch us do our thing.  I must say that you were all very kind in your assessment of our talent and performances.  As the new guy in Kiowa a couple of years ago, I was asked if I wanted to be in that year’s dramatic offering.  The first year, I played a kind hearted, but dim-witted cowpoke.  Last year I was cast as a waiter/sleuth and this year I may have finally found my calling as the villain.  To tell you more about myself than you probably want to know, I was an actor in high school and college, playing roles such as the hero in “Oklahoma”, a man with a progressive neurological disease in “Tell me that you love me Junie Moon”, and a dancer in “The Music Man”.  I have always enjoyed acting; thinking about a character, trying to get the voice and actions right before losing myself in the performance.

Now please understand, I am not providing my resume to impress you (well, not entirely).    Over the last few weeks the play in particular and the craft of acting in general has been much on my mind.  Did you know that the Greek word for actor is hupokrisis, which is also translated hypocrite?  Actually, it sort of makes sense, for a hypocrite is someone acting out a role rather than being him or herself.  Now, when I am on the stage the ability to appear as someone other than Pastor Jim is an advantage.  It would have been somewhat odd if I had taken a break from my villainy to lead the audience in a hymn or preach a sermon.   The problem is when I take my acting into the real world and present myself as someone other than I really am.  That is when I cross the line from “actor” to “hypocrite”.

When we think of a hypocrite, it is never with sympathy.  After all, how could someone stand on principle while violating that same principle?  It seems it must be premeditated, an attempt to take advantage of a gullible public, to have your cake and eat it too in the worst possible way.  And yet as I think about acting and hypocrisy it is hard not to feel badly for those who have been sucked into the trap of hypocrisy and its twin brother, deceit.

Of course, I understand that there are some hypocrites who make a conscious choice to live off of their ability to deceive others. But I think that most people who end up being labeled “hypocrites” start off with very good intentions but also with beliefs that can only be lived out by an actor.  I think that the first of these fatal beliefs is that life is simple.  You can walk into any Christian book store and see “How to” books that will teach you to do anything from save your marriage to raising your children to casting out demons in a few easy steps.  When you try to simplify life like that you remove the complexity of struggle and the only ones who do not struggle are the ones who fail.

The second belief is that temptation is a sign of spiritual weakness.  There is a pervasive belief within the Christian community that if we are only Godly enough, we will not fall into temptation.  Carnal Christians are tempted and usually fail, medium level Christians are tempted and but they are learning to resist temptation, and the truly spiritual are those impervious to the fiery darts of the evil one.  This is a lie of the devil himself and a particularly deadly one at that.  If we believe that temptation is a sign of spiritual weakness, we will not be all that anxious to enlist the help of other believers when Satan attacks.  A solitary Christian, like a solitary sheep has little hope when staring down a hungry wolf. 

 In fact, our Lord Himself was legitimately tempted, both at the beginning of his ministry in the desert, and also at its end in the garden of Gethsemane.  There are those who believe that these trials were of little consequence that Jesus was never in danger of giving in to the tempter.  Yet in the garden Jesus asked His Father to remove the cup from him, in essence, to get Him out of there.  He suffered so much in the garden that he sweated, as it were, drops of blood.  This is a picture of a man in agony, someone who suffered greatly even as he desired to insure our salvation.  What we learn from this picture is that not only are the spiritually mature tempted, but that those trials can be more difficult than the ones confronting a neophyte believer.

That brings us to the final fatal belief I would like to raise in this article.  Having fallen into sin, our hypocrite believes that God is angry with him and will not help.  They see their Heavenly Father as they would their earthly father, furious and ready to punish.  Our hypocrite sees no option other than to act as if everything is OK; in fact our hypocrite becomes the consummate actor, living a double life.

I wish that my insights into this process were plagiarized from some book.  Sadly, in this area I have been self taught.  Thinking life to be simple, I have set the stage for future difficulty.  Denying temptation, or thinking myself above it I have dutifully practices my lines (“No really, everything is just fine”) and finally believing that God Himself was angry at me and my friends would be also if they knew the truth, I have isolated myself and lost myself in my hypocritical role.

Perhaps that gives you some insight into why I want this church to be a place “Where real people meet a real God”.    If we can remember that God loves us when we sin as much as He does when we are faithful, that life is difficult and temptation is a normal part of our lives, when we teach those truths to those around us, we will strike a blow against hypocrisy and leave our acting where it belongs, the Fellowship Hall stage.