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Today on the Speak Life Podcast, Hypocrisy. The Speak Life Podcast. Sharing Jesus in everyday life.

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Hey! Welcome everybody to our Facebook Live. Hello, look, we've got six viewers. I ha how do I figure out who you are? Eight viewers! This is more than we've ever had.

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There's a record.

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Down to seven, down to six. I think the more we speak about the numbers, the less. Fantastic. So here we are, Paul Feasy, Glenn Scrivener, and also in the corner, we've got Andy Brinkley working hard on a laptop that is from the steam age, I believe.

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Sweat pouring from his brow.

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And there is steam coming up, not from the laptop, but from Andy's ears. As uh uh I I hope that our audio is working. Uh if our audio is not working, then uh please do say in the comments. And um I wanted to welcome you to what this is, but I don't know what this is.

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No, we're kind of discovering as we go along a bit, aren't we? I think.

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What is the name? Uh we put out on social media a few ideas for names. Um the the winner so far is Speak Live.

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Yeah, you can see what we've done there.

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There's like we had two people. Yeah, you you came up with that idea, and then unless you don't like it, then that we drop it. Because we have such fear of men that we'll do whatever you say, whatever will give us the likes. And uh who was it? Simon Keith said Speak Live, uh, as well as uh Sam Bostock, he also said speak live. Um Tim Dalton came up with Speak Easy. Yeah. What do we think? Speak Easy? Tell it tell us in the comments. Um what was another one?

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Two for two.

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Two for two on Tuesday.

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Although we're starting at one o'clock, so yeah, that was trade descriptions.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, and I'm not I'm not sure the pun is worth changing our entire schedule around. I I don't know, Alan, but yeah. Maybe. Thanks though, Alan. Thanks, Alan. Thanks, Alan. Two for two for two on Tuesday. But hey, it's probably winning at the moment. So because I wanted to call these um hot pops. Yeah, yeah. Because because it's a cross between hot takes and pop culture, right? Hot pops.

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Warm takes.

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Because we don't want to be like straight on the news and neither hot nor cold. You can spit it out of your mouth if you like. Um so hot takes or heart takes. Yeah. Yeah, getting beneath the news to the the heart level. Slightly warmed over takes. I don't know.

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But we're kind of hoping that you guys might be able to come up with a better name.

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This is why we need help, people. So let us know.

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Yeah. Because we we need to know, we need something.

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We definitely need help. Um so uh Paul, tell everybody uh what do we want to do with Hot Pops?

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Leave that name behind. Okay, number one, no, number one. So basically, with uh this this kind of live kind of podcast show, whatever you want to call it, um we primarily we're gonna be thinking about the video we released um the previous day. So um the plan is that we'll have a video out most Mondays and then on Tuesdays we'll go live and talk about it a bit more. Because there's stuff obviously that in a kind of five-minute video that gets left on the cutting room floor, stuff we maybe wanted to talk about, but there wasn't time for, so we'd love to chat a bit more in depth about that. And um going live on Facebook means that hopefully if you've got questions or comments, we can kind of respond to those a little bit as well.

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Like Lucy Atterby has just asked, what would you be advising Theresa May to pray about today? Good question. Good question. And Paul, Paul will be answering that question very shortly. It'll be sensational. But yeah. Great question. Yeah, so interacting with us.

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See, we're already rolling now, aren't we? Um you know, also we talk a little bit about kind of we we've got these sections we're calling it what's new and what's news. So we might talk a little bit about kind of things coming up in the in the life of speak life, kind of projects, or how things have gone um with stuff we've been doing. But we'll also be talking a little bit about what is going on in the news if if we feel there's something we can maybe speak into a bit. Yeah.

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Like Theresa May. Like Theresa May. We will. We won't we were planning on doing some of that. We've even got a Bible reading for Theresa May. So there we go. How about that?

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Yeah, yeah.

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Yep. So that's our kind of basic thing, isn't it? And it might develop, you never know. Yeah. Um and we'll see how it goes.

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And hopefully people have seen our video that we released yesterday. Uh we're doing these thorny questions, and uh Paul came up with a list of about forty-five or so. So I think twenty eighteen is sorted for us. Um, dinosaurs? Dinosaurs?

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Dinosaurs?

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Yeah.

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Look out for that.

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Yes, it'll be a very short video. Dinosaurs? Dinosaurs. And that's the video.

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So decided not to endorse your park.

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So we will be talking about um the hypocrisy video that we released yesterday at 5 pm, and we'll show you a brief clip from that a little later on. But in terms of what's new, what's new at Speak Life, Paul? What's going on?

SPEAKER_04

Well, um we're gonna look back a little bit, thinking about Meet and Nativity. So I guess well, hopefully some of you guys saw Meet and Nativity over the Christmas period, kind of launched end of November, one a week in those four episodes, and just to kind of give a little bit of feedback on it, really, and how that's gone. You know, we've been really pleased with how many people have seen it. I think it was well over 200,000 views, wasn't it?

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Oh, just that's just on one version of episode one. So overall, four videos have almost reached five hundred thousand. So so um so that's great.

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Um yeah, positively received.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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And I know you know various churches or people were saying can use this, can we, you know, show the church, or they had used it. Yeah. Um I know we used it.

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You used it in your church, yeah.

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We used it at contemporary carol service, so we kind of had the four episodes and then I preached on it. Um lots of people came. My text for today would be meet the nativity, chapter two. This is the word of the Lord.

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Beginning at the first second.

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Well, you know, people, you know, people were saying afterwards that maybe they bought non-Christian friends and you know, they some of them had not seen it and they really liked it. You know, maybe that they were saying, Oh, you know, particularly this character still, you know, for some of them they went, Oh yeah, I like that one and that one. But you know, actually Roof's one really stood out or you know, Will or whoever.

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Yeah.

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And that was some of the positives about it, I think, that everyone could at least identify with one of the characters. Yeah. Um, although probably there's bits of all of them.

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There's bits of all of us, yeah. In all the characters. Yeah, and and we gave away 1700 books off the back of it, which is pretty phenomenal. We budgeted for 500, and all of a sudden 1700 are requesting um books to to go deeper, so people were reading four kinds of Christmas, uh, which is great. And uh already we're thinking about next Christmas. Um so uh myself and the other three executive producers, so James Carey, uh Nate Morganlock, and Barry Cooper, uh yeah, we've pretty much we've got Easter susted and we've got Christmas 2018, probably Christmas 2019 susted as well. So you gotta well, it's all up here. It's like when you're at school and you had to do an assignment and like I know the answer in my head, and now I've got to write the essay. And like so now all the hard work begins on on trying to make that stuff happen. But uh we at Speak Life we love doing that sort of thing. We're uh we're an evangelistic organization where we preach the gospel live, and we've got some of those things coming up very soon. Um so we've got some university missions in February that we're going to, and uh we're going to Glasgow University and uh St. Andrews University uh for a week of mission events there. Um so that's one of the big things that we try to do, live preaching of the gospel, but also we equip churches in how they can uh share their faith, um equip everyday Christians in how they can share their faith. So hopefully uh this show uh can help you uh as you share Jesus in everyday life. But I'm also uh, for instance, going to uh King's Community Church in Hegend uh for the next three weeks, um, training them in uh how they can share their faith uh in everyday life. So those are sort of the three areas we work in. We produce resources that proclaim Christ, such as Meet the Nativity, we preach the gospel to other people, and we train Christians in how they can share their faith uh in everyday life. And so that's what we'll try and do in 2018. So, Paul, uh, we've thought about what's new. Uh what is news? What's in the news, man?

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Yeah, well, it's seemingly, at least, I mean, don't know where you're watching from, but at least over here in the UK, the big thing that keeps popping up on the news is this cabinet reshuffle.

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Cabinet reshuffle.

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So, yeah, Theresa May and her crowd all being shuffled basically. Yes, musical chairs. From job to job.

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Such an odd thing, isn't it? Yeah. I was thinking this morning, what would it be like at Speak Life if we just decided to reshuffle? Yeah. You know, Howard who does the finances, he can do the podcast. Yeah, brilliant. Um I can do the finances. You do the finances. And then the whole charity falls in a heap, and you know, we go and do more meaningful things with our lives and who knows. I I can do I could do Andy's job, and then this entire this entire studio would probably go up in smoke. Like literally. If I touched that steam-powered laptop, it would all it would all end. So reshuffling is an odd thing, isn't it? Um and to reshuffle every year or two, I mean I mean to have to have like a five-year period where the government is in charge of things, I mean that's that's pretty um tough going. But but actually to reshuffle um all the time like this, it it just makes you wonder what these politicians do.

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If they're able to jump straight into that different way.

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Yeah, here's your portfolio, here's a new portfolio. Okay.

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Yeah. Well we talked a bit about it earlier, didn't we, and said that for a lot of them, it's the same people still running everything behind the scenes servants, and it's just someone at the top, you know, the name of the changes on the case.

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Yes. Yes. Which is not the impression you get from social media. The impression you get from social media is, you know, this particular person is killing us. Because like for some reason. We invest so much in our leaders. Because I I don't know, I don't know. Why why do you think why do you think we to begin with, we hope so very much in a particular leader. And then when they prove themselves to be, you know, uh made of flesh, we then absolutely pillar each other. Destroy them.

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Destroy them. Well I think I think people Yeah, you're like when someone new comes into a position, people are people have a genuine desire to see change, I think, don't they? Right. And they think here's the new person, and you know, whether it's uh an Obama, yes, you know, who you know, the kind of the Messiah of you know the United States.

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We are the ones we are waiting for was one of his big slogans. Very messianic, very kind of weird.

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Well you know, you think back to 97, you know, things can only get better. Yes. You know, it's like here's the Labour Party, yeah. Everything will be better from now on. Yes.

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Uh although and the Tories went with new Labour, New Danger.

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Oh nice.

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And if people remember that, there were these, you know, like like bill billboards with Tony Blair and his eyes were ripped off, and there were these very menacing like other eyes, cartoon eyes.

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It's just being negative about the other side, but you've got nothing to break apart from just go the other side. I think people want change, don't they? And so when something news comes in or something, there's this hope that this will be the thing, yeah. Silver bullet that will change it. Um and of course, you know, we know nine times out of ten years. Feet of clay stuff doesn't change, yeah. A lot of stuff rolls on.

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We were reading um uh here at Speak Life, we were reading Psalm 72, when when was it, yesterday, together. And it's just such a messianic psalm of you know, the whole world will be set to rights when this king reigns. And the true royal son, the son of David, when he's on the throne, you know, even you know, even the cosmos will be set to rights when this and and I just wonder whether there's that residual kind of belief almost in all people that maybe if we just get the right leader, like somehow the world will be set to rights. And in one sense that's right. Like if Christ if Christ is reigning, then the world is set to rights.

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But it's it's there, isn't it? I mean, you think about some people you know, in the States that when Trump came in, for some people it was this is what's gonna make America great again. Yes. For some people it was a disaster. Right. For other people when Obama came in, they thought it was a good thing, for others it was a disaster. I think I said to you yesterday about an American friend of mine, you know, filling up with petrol gas gas in the States. Um and uh, you know, chatting to a guy at the pump and this guy just being really kind of down that Obama had become president, and you know, my friend saying, Well, you know, I'm just lucky I don't put my trust in the president, you know. We have a chat with him about you know, where does he put his trust? Yeah. Um in Jesus. And actually I think we have this temptation to put our trust in these earthly things, earthly leaders. Yes.

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Which also explains why we then like absolutely destroy them when they don't meet our messianic expectations. And I th I think, you know, and maybe your friend was was thinking about Psalm 146. So this is this is my psalm for Theresa May, and uh and it's a psalm, so you can pray it. So actually, uh Lucy, here's what I would advise uh Theresa May and all of us as we think about Theresa May. Um praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul. Psalm 176, and then verse 2 I will praise the Lord all my life, I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground. On that very day their plans come to nothing. Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, the maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them, the Lord who remains faithful forever, don't we, you know, long for that with our leaders. He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry, the Lord sets prisoners free, the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the righteous, the Lord watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the way of the wicked. And I think that there's a word to us to not put our trust in princes and not put our trust in political leaders. But then if I was Theresa May, I'd also look at, well, what does God do from his position of leadership? Well, he upholds the cause of the oppressed, he gives food to the hungry, he sets the prisoners free. Um if you want a mandate to rule, then you must rule in a Christ-like way. And and what's the kind of reign that the Lord brings? Well, he looks after the oppressed, the hungry, the prisoner, the blind, the bowed down, he watches over the the alien, which is an American translation, I guess we'd say, what? Refugee or sourner, so yeah, yeah, yeah and all that. So yeah, so how should we think about our leaders? Well, let's let's not put our ultimate trust in them. Um how should our leaders think? Well, maybe let's model our leadership after the Lord's leadership, which is the the leadership that looks after the weak.

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Absolutely.

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Um that's that's our that's our heart to take. Um so Simon Natius also asks, so if speak life were the new cabinets, oh man, run for the hills. Run for the hills. Plenty of tinned goods and bottled water. And uh yeah, what would you do? What would you do? I guess Psalm 146. That would that's what we would do, flawlessly and perfectly. Of course. So put your trust in us. That's what we do. Um Ian McCarthy, is it that the civil servants carry the load while ministers carry the can? Good line. Oh man. Yeah. Civil servants carry the load, ministers carry the can. Yes. And uh for more on that, watch every episode of Yes Minister. Good. So that's what's new and what's news. Uh let's start thinking about uh hypocrisy. Oh, actually, actually, before we do that, yeah, there was one other thing uh we saw on the the BBC website. Uh I don't know if uh if any of you guys saw this, um, but um there was this scars video um in which uh it was it was all women, wasn't it? Um who had some serious burns to their body. Uh what do they do about those burns? And of course, naturally, what we all want to do is we want to cover up things that we feel to be blemishes, and we don't feel that people could handle us in those parts of us. And yet, this is all about a photographer who was taking pictures of uh of these women, and these women um kind of released and and liberated and happy and at peace with their own bodies being seen by other people. And I actually thought that was quite a quite a powerful thing. So, Andy, should we have a look at the scars video?

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I was in a house fire.

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I survived a gas explosion.

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I have open heart symmetry.

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Sometimes you see cells and images, but they use more of the short factor as opposed to actually stories, and story.

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It makes you more of an interesting person. When I find other people that have scars as well, I can completely relate to them.

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The things that make you different and the scar and wrinkle is actually what makes you you. At the end of the day, we're all human.

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So there you are. Um these scars that you would ordinarily want to hide up and yet finding great liberation in sort of being seen.

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Yeah. And you know, the thing that really stood out for me, there's one line one of the ladies said, uh, which said something along the lines of seeing yourself the way others see you to change the way you think. Right. And I thought that was really an interesting thing, you know, because we we live in a society, don't we, that in some sense is that there's a lot of emphasis on the other side of it, isn't it? That actually people say, Don't worry about what others think about you.

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Yeah.

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You know, um, and it shouldn't matter about whatnot. Um but interesting, you know, she's saying how what others think of you can change you. And for me, I as soon as I heard that, I thought that's a it it sounds like a profoundly Christian thing, doesn't it? I mean the the idea that you know, because of course for us as Christians we say yes, but knowing how Jesus views us, yeah, how someone else sees us does change the way we think about ourselves. Yes.

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Um and if I try to get an identity from myself, from my own perception of myself, that can go like in two different directions that are really coming from the same place. I could either just think of myself as the ugliest person in the world and who could love me and that sort of thing, or I could think of myself as this, you know, uniquely wonderful person that everyone must enjoy. But actually I don't get a true sense of myself by myself. I must be seen by another who sees me to the bottom and loves me still, you know. And I think I I and I just uh I just got that sense with those those videos that that really we've got people who they did they didn't want those scars to be seen, but suddenly they are seen in a new context. And as I think it's profoundly liberating to be able to be seen for who we are and loved nonetheless. And I think that's that's when we thrive and flourish as human beings.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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Which brings us on to uh hypocrisy, because I I guess hypocrisy is the very opposite of that. Hypocrisy hypocrisy is where you don't trust that you can be seen for who you are, and so you wear a mask, you wear um you know some kind of barrier to the world to present a different view of yourself while inwardly you are something very different. Um and uh we started talking about hypocrisy uh in our video that we released yesterday, um, but perhaps we could see maybe the first minute or so uh of that video, and then we'll start talking about how do we respond to people when they say to us, and they've said to me many times, um, I could never be a Christian, I could never join the church because it's full of hypocrites. How do we respond to that? Well, this video has a go at answering that question. Maybe you can't stand hypocrisy.

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Well, you're in good company, neither could Jesus. In fact, he coined the term hypocrite to refer to someone whose inner life didn't match their outward performance. Before Jesus used the word, it simply referred to a masked actor. Let's just see who you really are, Mr.

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Why, it's old man Withers, the guy who runs the haunted amusement park! And I would have got away with a If it hadn't been for you snooping kids!

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But Jesus applied it to the holiest looking people on the planet. He said, see those religious policemen in their long flowing robes? Actors, a lot of them. Everything they do is done for people to see. And we hate that. And we all do it. We do and say things because we want the likes on Facebook, the approval of family and work colleagues. We want the status that comes from achievements, promotions, purchases, church attendance, prayer meetings. We do so many things, even good things, maybe religious things, to be seen by people.

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All of us know what it is to put on a good face. And what does that make us? Hypocrites. Mask wearers. Jesus pulls no punches when he describes the hypocrites. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside, you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside, you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. Ring any bells?

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You're a phony! Hey, this guy's a great big phony!

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All of us beginning of our hypocrisy video, and if you want to find out more, please do go to our Facebook page and uh Speak Life UK there, and you can watch the whole five minutes. Um so, but that's the issue for today, hypocrisy.

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Yep.

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How are we defining hypocrisy?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, well, we were we were saying, weren't we, in the video how Jesus coined the phrase um or coined the word hypocrite from the masked actors. And so it was this idea, wasn't it, of of wearing a mask. Um, but particularly, I suppose, think of it from the the the biblical point of view, it was putting on a mask to be seen by others. So hiding your true self with something that isn't a reality. Umly for the sake of an appearance.

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In order to be seen by people, is that the big phrase that Jesus uses in Matthew 6 and Matthew 23. Everything they do is to be seen by people. Um because I think it's important to say that because um there are there are false views of hypocrisy as well, aren't there? Like like so somebody somebody might say, I don't want to be a hypocrite, and so they just like completely overshare about their life. Yeah. You know, the test goes, you know.

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I don't want to hide, you know, I don't want to hide anything.

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Someone says, How are you doing today? And you say, Oh well, let me tell you about all my sins last night. Like, okay. The answer to hypocrisy is not always like yeah, there's an inappropriate uh oversharing that can happen. Um and there's also uh I once um had breakfast with a friend who said um I don't want to forgive my brother because I don't want to be a hypocrite about it. And and what he meant was he didn't feel like forgiving his brother, and so he felt that he should be authentically bitter for the rest of his life. Maybe you can't stand authentically. He wanted to hate authentically rather than be a hypocrite and do something he didn't want to do.

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Um yeah, hypocrisy is not you were chatting about it, where we said, you know, doing things you don't want to do, you know, it's not like when your wife says to do the hoovery, you say, you know, sorry, darling, I don't really feel like doing the hoovery. And I don't want to be I don't want to be a hypocrite do this, you know, unknownly.

SPEAKER_06

So Yeah. So you can always feel righteous in your laziness. Yes. So hypocrisy, yeah, it is to do with wanting to project an image that is better than yourself, um, while masking your unrighteousness deep deep below it. So Matthew 23, you know, whitewash tomb is is just the for the Facebook likes, you know.

SPEAKER_04

That's what we say on the video, isn't it? We want the Facebook likes, we want the approval. Yes. We want people to look at us and go, wow, yes, aren't they great?

SPEAKER_06

Yes. Um how is the sound going, people? I hope the sound is doing alright. We had we had some problems with the echo, sorry about that. Um, but I think we've got it all fixed now. Good. Um so yeah, so uh hypocrisy is wearing a mask to be seen by other people. Um and when someone raises the question um of hypocrisy in the context of evangelism, like what are the various ways in which that question can be raised?

SPEAKER_04

Well, we I think it it's not necessarily gonna come out simply as you know, um is the church full of in the church full of hypocrites, might not come out uh that kind of way. So it may come out um in a kind of uh you know, based on on like a h history kind of question. Yeah. So you know, if the church is all about talking about love and all that, but what about the crusades? Yeah. So they're saying, you know, you're saying you're one thing, but what about all these terrible things the church has done? Um and things like that. So it could be that kind of question, or I think we've we chatted before, haven't we, about you know, it could be a very personal thing, so maybe they've experienced it in their own lives.

SPEAKER_06

Right. Um Christians have treated them badly and they yeah.

SPEAKER_04

And that would dictate how you handle the question, I suppose. It's a bit like you're dealing with the suffering question. You want to try and work out is someone asking this because they are suffering? Someone they love is suffering, or is it academic? Yes. Are they here just to have a pop?

SPEAKER_06

Yes, you know. Are they just selecting it from a list of ready-made objections they don't dinosaurs? Dinosaurs? Dinosaurs? Um I I I always tell the story of Michael Lutz, who um sat down for lunch with uh a non-Christian friend of his, and he sort of asked him, Look, you know, your your wife's a Christian, I'm a Christian. Some of the guys that we play football with, they're all Christians. Why aren't you a Christian? He says, Well, because I could never be a hypocrite, like Christians, you know. And um, and so Mozzie said to him, Um, oh, uh, so those other guys in the football team, are they hypocrites? He said, Oh no, they're brilliant. So those those guys, I'd do anything for those guys, they're fantastic. And then he says, And your wife, she is she a hypocrite? No, no, I love my wife, she's brilliant. And then he says, you know, took a deep breath and said, What about me? Am I a hypocrite? He said, Oh no, I don't really get that impression. And then Mozzie said to him, Can you name a single Christian you know who you would call a hypocrite? He said, No, actually, no. Now I'm not saying that everybody who raises the hypocrisy question is like that. No. Not at all. And you don't want to treat everyone who raises the hypocrisy question like like that, but it can be a convenient kind of smokescreen for not wanting to believe. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

And and even if he turned around and said, Yes, I can name three or four Christians. Here's some Christians who I know who are hypocrites.

SPEAKER_07

Yes.

SPEAKER_04

You know, I think I'd want to say, Yeah, can you can you name any non-Christians who are hypocrites? Wow.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

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Because I'd be very surprised if you can't, you know. And is it is it possible that hypocrisy is not a Christian problem? Right. It's a human problem. Wow.

SPEAKER_06

It's not just Yeah, yeah. I remember you said that to me yesterday. I was I've thought, yeah, that's that's the thing I need to say from now on. Like when people like say, I know this Christian, they were a hypocrite.

SPEAKER_04

Is there hypocrisy outside the church? Yes. Of course. Maybe it's not limited. Yes.

SPEAKER_06

Which is always what I do when people say, you know, you know, religion's the cause of all wars. And I sort of say, you know, are there non-religious causes for wars? Actually, statistically, 93% of all wars have non-religious causes. You know? Um, maybe it's not a Christian problem, maybe it's a human problem. And again, hypocrisy, maybe it's just a human. Maybe it's just a human problem. Let's think about some famous examples of hypocrisy. I always think of uh the film Chocalat, um uh based on the novel. In the novel, interestingly, um, the real hypocrite is the priest, who um in I guess it's 1940s, 1950s, uh, France, he um stands against this chocolate shop and and its owner, who's setting up a chocolate shop in the middle of Lent, this season of fasting, and how dare she do that! Um, but in the book, it's the priest who eventually like cracks on Easter Saturday, um, just one day to go until Easter, and and he kind of finds his way you know into the shop and he just starts gorging himself on all the chocolate. And in the film, it's the mare by played by uh Alfred Alfred Molina. And uh it's just this brilliant scene of him just like completely he passes out having just you know stuffed his face with all the chocolate, and there he is, he's in the shop front window, so that as all the worshippers go to church on Easter Sunday morning, they see this hypocrite, and we all say, Ha! Yeah, that's I hate that, you know. I hate that self-righteous, you know. He presented to all the world one kind of mask, and inside there was this festering greed that was then revealed. Um what are some other examples of of hypocrisy?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, well we were thinking we I mean we we we looked around and we'd find a few bits, you know, and um we what do we find? I mean, uh when we're digging up the dirt on the internet loves this.

SPEAKER_06

Just type type in who is a who is a hypocrite. Who's a hypocrite? Well it'll tell you. Yeah, everyone. Except you're fine.

SPEAKER_04

Everyone's a hypocrite. Yeah. Except this guy. Um but yeah, so it was sting, being in the environment, but with his private jet flying people around and people going kind of what's that about? Yeah, Paris Hilton, you know, it was I think it was 2004, the vote or die. Get the vote out. That's a quite strong vote or die or die to try some vote, but it turned out uh not only did she not vote, she wasn't even registered to vote.

SPEAKER_06

But the real hypocrisy was that she then didn't die, you know. She wasn't authentic in that way. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_04

Oh man. Yeah. Um we were saying as well, um rather than just pointing the finger at uh I mean we we were saying basically we know we're just exactly the same in our own lives. I mean, we're talking about being in the car and driving, and you know, I said one thing that really winds me up is when you you stop to let someone go because maybe the road's narrowed, they go past and they don't give you the thank you waves. Right. And I'm just like, oh the rage comes out. You just I'm just like and I always say without fail, you're welcome.

SPEAKER_06

That passive aggressive English way.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Yeah. And um but then I was saying, I know there's times when I I just don't do it for whatever reason myself, you know. Or people tailgating me, right? I'm doing the speed limit, get off my tail. Right, but then knowing as well that if I'm on a road and someone's going slower than the speed limit, yes, I I will get on their tail just to encourage them to when you do it, it's I can justify what I'm doing, because they are going too slow. Yes.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, yeah. It's like George George Carolyn, the uh American stand-up, he said, you know, on the motorway, everyone who drives faster than you is a maniac, everyone who drives sl drives slower than you is an idiot. Right. But you drive just right. It's just hypocrite.

SPEAKER_04

That's the thing, we we we but we do justify our own hypocrisy, don't we? Even if we can see it, we kind of go, Oh, but there's a reason.

SPEAKER_06

There's always a reason.

SPEAKER_04

It's okay when I do it.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, which is to justify yourself. It's just kind of helping others. And what what I found interesting about about when we when we looked up um uh these examples of hypocrisy, like Paris Hilton and things, how delicious it felt that someone like that, you know, and lots of people writing about Al Gore and oh yeah, he preaches a good game when he talks about the inconvenient truth, right? But his mansion and his carbon footprint is just immense. But there's like we love we love pointing the finger at the hypocrites and then not examining ourselves. What is that?

SPEAKER_05

It's hypocrisy itself.

SPEAKER_06

Even as we love like pointing the finger at hypocrites, we do it hypocritically. So um we have a a massive problem. Um what is the solution, or what is how where do we find healing for our hypocrisy?

SPEAKER_04

Well, we were saying that the only interesting thing, I mean, talking about like pointing the finger, we were talking about Matthew 23, where Jesus is just, you know, he is pointing the finger, and he gives this incredible incredibly blistering critique of you know those the religious people and uh their hypocrisy. But yet, you know, even though I'd heard it so many times and never really thought about it, his his response is to say, How I long to gather you. Right. You know, yeah. And and when I you know, let's be honest, when we got to the end of our conversation about Paris Hilton, we didn't say how we long to gather Paris to, you know, Austin, come stin, you know.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

It wasn't our response.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Um we're saying actually that's I think we were talking a moment about how sometimes the response to hypocrisy or or even generally sin in the church can be those two spectrums. There's blistering critique, so we either just spend a lot of time pointing the finger at other people and going, Yeah, very naughty.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Or we're all about the gathering and like the loving.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

But there's no critique of anything, so we just say, Oh, it's okay. Yeah. You know, and we don't call people on stuff. And actually, what we see Jesus doing is he does, he lays it down and says, This is hypocrisy, plain and simple. It woe to you, and for the Lord to gather you.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah. I've got Matthew 23 up in front of me. It's amazing. Like when you see like the paragraph above from verse 33, he says, You snakes, you brood of vipers, how will you escape being condemned to hell? And then the very next paragraph, Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you. How often I've longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers a chick.

SPEAKER_04

And it's just how many times, probably on the internet, have you seen someone saying, um, oh, and Jesus was very against the religious authorities. He said, you know, maybe they're using that to attack other Christians, you know, online. You know, you're just like the Pharisees. Jesus says, Woe to you, woe to you. Yeah. But I never see them saying, but it's okay, because at the end he also says, Gab. There's no one, no wants to gather.

SPEAKER_06

No one wants to do both. We don't want to do both. He's full of grace and truth. We we pick one or the other. I'm I I like truth Jesus. Grace and truth. Yeah. I prefer grace. I prefer Grace Jesus. I like my Jesus to wear a tuxedo t-shirt. Which says I'm formal, but I still know how to party. Um yeah, that's that's enough of Talladega Knight's uh quotes. But but I think it is that grace and truth thing that actually what we really need is somebody to see the ugliness, to see beneath the mask, and to see that there are scars, and more than scars, the you know, there's there's real ugliness there, and to love us nonetheless, which is why you like like my illustration from The Talented Mr. Ripley, uh, which now I realise goes back 20 years, which so dates me.

SPEAKER_04

It's like it is a clip from The Matrix in there. That's right. That's uh a movie all the kids are watching.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, we've got our finger on the pulse, people. It's like that part in Howard's End. You remember Howard's End now? Um But The Talented Mr. Ripley, but but it is a great you know film about this where Matt Damon wears the mask of being somebody else, um, and he kills to protect the lie, and then he has that great scene where he says, you know, don't just take the past and put it in a box in a room in the basement and you never go in there. But then you meet someone and you want to invite them in and you want to toss them the key and say, open up and step inside. And I and I think that's the that's the whole thing with hypocrisy. Though we want to wear masks in order to project this false image and hide our ugliness, what we want even deeper is to drop the mask and to be naked and unashamed in the presence of someone else who says, You're actually all right. Um, and that's that's what actually drives us. And so our hypocrisy, though it comes so naturally to us, works against our deepest heart's desire, which is for intimacy and connection and honesty and authenticity with someone. So, but who on earth can see me in all my ugliness and yet love me? And if it weren't for Jesus, the answer is no one, you know. But we see in Matthew 23, he is the sort of person who can see us and still love us. So maybe that then gives us the the the healing to be able to drop the mask and and be loved anyway. Um you said in this video, Paul, uh let me let me quote you on this. You say the church is the most hypocrisy-resistant institution in the history of the world. Really?

SPEAKER_04

Well, we're saying it should be, shouldn't it? Because we were saying you know, if you were to if to if you were to look at what we do, you know, when we come together as Christians, kind of on a generally on a weekly basis, you know, and meet together. I mean, if we were to take a kind of standard Anglican thing, I know we're not all Anglicans and whatnot, but Some of us aren't Anglicans here.

SPEAKER_06

But uh just just looking at Andy in the corner of the room.

SPEAKER_04

But not we.

SPEAKER_06

He's uh He's Anglicurious, but uh he's uh Um What we're talking about.

SPEAKER_04

We're not all Anglicans, and so but in more traditional church services, you would have a service when you come together every week is you would there would be confession. Yeah. And that part of that is standing up and saying in front of God and in front of Or kneeling down, even if you're in a really traditional church, yeah. Um and basically just admitting, yes, we get it wrong. I have stuffed up this week in my thoughts, my words, my deeds. And part of that is standing up and saying, Yes, I am a hypocrite.

SPEAKER_07

Right. You know, I uh I'm a sinner.

SPEAKER_04

I'm a sinner. Yeah, it's not standing up and saying I'm a Christian, I've got it all together, I'm perfect. Yeah. I'm one of the good ones. It's quite the opposite. Yeah, it's standing up and going, Oh my goodness, yeah. I'm basically a walking disaster, yeah. You know, if it wasn't for grace.

SPEAKER_06

Which is like it always strikes me going through the Old Testament and seeing all the songs that Israel sang about itself. And what's fascinating, and and all the prayers that they pray about themselves, it's so not like make Israel great again. Like it's like, I'm gonna make Israel. It's all we have been rubbish from the very beginning, you know, and and like every song that they sing, you know, everyone's national anthem are all like we are the bear, we are the eagle, we are you know, strong. Kazakhstan's Greece, all the other countries are little girls. Sensational scene from Borat. Uh but like all national anthems anthems are like that, uh apart from the national anthem of God's people, which is just like we're rubbish, we've always been rubbish. You'd be quite in your within your rights to damn us forever, God. Yeah. Um but it's all about you know your grace and mercy.

SPEAKER_04

And you know and we were saying, weren't we, you know, the fact I mean we come to so the you know the question was, is it really the case that the church is the most hypocrisy resistant?

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Um we're saying, you know, we come together on a weekly basis and do that. And Christians, you know, we most a lot of us probably do that kind of on an almost daily basis as well, just to get on our knees, you know, um, and say we've stuffed up. Yeah. But we were saying, you know, can you imagine can you talk about the cabinet reshuffle? Right. Can you imagine the government standing up, you know, and basically confessing it made a mistake on a weekly basis? On a weekly basis. You know, it'd be amazing if we did that during their entire time in their lives. People interviewed, you know, you know, did you make a mistake? Did you get it wrong? Well, you know, they never say yes or no. Look.

SPEAKER_06

They always just say, look. Yeah. If you're on Radio 4, that's yeah, if you're answering any question by John Humphreys and look. But yeah, they never they never admit to that kind of error, and it would be a career-ending thing to do what Christians do on a weekly basis.

SPEAKER_04

I sometimes wondered though, like what would happen if if a politician just stead up and said, Yeah, we dropped the ball on that one. Yeah. Would people go Oh, well thanks for just saying that at last? Yeah. I mean, I don't know how people respond. Yeah. I mean, my g my view of human nature is generally not that good.

SPEAKER_06

So I think quite rightly it probably counts on them. I think we need to have a low anthropology. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I think 10% of the nation would would be would feel that this was refreshing and then the rest would pile on. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

It was refreshing, but you did still mess it up.

SPEAKER_06

You're out. On your bike. On your bike. Um and I I remember um Tim Keller was saying about church um once. He said church um should not feel like the waiting room for a job interview, where like if you're in the waiting room for a job interview, you're trying to project an image of all together and you've got this nailed and your C V is superior to everyone else's C V. Um actually the church should be more like the waiting room for a GP for an octopus surgery, in which you know, case you're not trying to project an image of being all together. Um you're coughing, and you know, and because Jesus says, I've not come to call the healthy but the sick. Um, I've not come to call the righteous but sinners, Mark 2 verse 17. Um there is where you're gonna find healing for hypocrisy, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04

Um And that's when you know that's you know coming together each week in that in in the church in confession, but it's basically setting up saying, Yeah, I'm sick.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, you know, that's what it is. And I need healing. Yeah. Yeah. So I I yeah, I think I think you can justify that uh statement, the most hypocrisy resistant institution. Not not that it's hypocrisy free, no, of course not, because we would be hypocrites to claim that we're hypocrisy free. But I think, yeah, what are we gonna do because it's a human problem? How are we gonna build up our antibodies against this human problem? And I think that regular confession that law and gospel, the law that condemns us and the gospel that saves us, um, is gonna keep us uh from going too far astray. Last thing I want to say on the hypocrisy thing, and I've never been bold enough, and there's never been the right opportunity to. Do this. So I'd love to hear what people think about this as an approach. But basically, it's kind of an approach that Nathan takes to David. Remember when David sins and sleeps with Bathsheba and kills to cover it up. Nathan the prophet comes and tells him a story. And it's the story about this, you know, man who's just got this little lamb, an ickle lamb. And imagine the ickle lamb, and he feeds him in his arms and he goes to sleep with this lamb, and then someone else comes and takes the lamb away.

SPEAKER_05

Um and you know, David says, That's outrageous, how dare he do that!

SPEAKER_06

And then Nathan says, You are the man. Where's the camera? There we go. You are the man. Back, back. You are the man. You are the man, right? That's and that's that's brilliant preaching, isn't it? You tell the story, you make people realize who the bad guy is, and then say, like, you're the bad guy. Um, so I wonder whether it's possible to do this or whether it's even desirable to do this when you're talking about hypocrisy, is to tell the story of the prodigal son. And to tell the story about the two brothers. The younger brother goes off and you know, squanders the wealth on wild living, and he comes back, and the father forgives him, and the older brother is outraged that the younger brother, in all his sin and hypocrisy, should be welcomed home, and it seems like the family home has now become a place for sinners. And how dare, you know, and so and so the older brother stays outside in all his righteousness, and he ends up being incredibly angry at his dad, and he ends up being an incredibly bad son, uh, because he will not pull up a chair next to the younger brother and identify with this other sinner because he's not a sinner, he's got too much integrity, and so he stands out, and so you tell this story and you say, you know, what a bad guy the older brother is, and then you say, You are the man. There we go. You are the man, you are the man. If you say, like, if you say, I could never join church, because there are all these people, you know, with these messed up lives in it, right? I've got too much integrity. I could never be one of those hypocrites like the like the Christians are. Like, ah, you're the older brother, and yet you're wearing the mask that says I don't wear masks, which is the worst kind of mask, because you're never gonna take that one off.

SPEAKER_07

The no hypocrisy mask.

SPEAKER_06

I'm wearing the no hypocrisy mask. You're really stuffed if you're wearing the no hypocrisy mask. So I don't know, I've never I've never done that to anybody.

SPEAKER_04

Dropped it on someone.

SPEAKER_06

What do people think? I don't know.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Maybe it's I mean, with a lot of things, isn't it? Is it it's it's context, isn't it? Yeah. Sometimes it depends on who's asking and how they're asking and what why they're asking that question. Yeah, you know, yeah. You you're more likely to come back with a firm re you know, rebuff to the person who's out for a pop rather than the person who's genuinely been hurt by hypocrisy.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, you're right.

SPEAKER_04

You know, it's just my church treated me terribly and because the neighbor is hypocritical. You are the man You so nice.

SPEAKER_06

Um okay, there's a time and a place. Yeah, yeah. Um gauge it. So what we're saying is first thing to do is to ask, like, what experiences of hypocrisy have you had? And let's talk about and if and if it is about the crusades, well maybe maybe we need to talk about that. Um quite often people have said to me, I, you know, I came from this church and they treated me terribly. And sometimes I like I look into that and actually they had sinned in terrible ways, and the church had actually um executed you know proper church discipline on that person, and they had to leave that other church. And um it wasn't the case that other church had acted unrighteously, it was, you know, it was that the the person themselves had acted unrighteously, so no wonder the church had treated them like they treated them. So you just need to press into these things and kinda and not give the blanket response when someone says about hypocrisy. Uh, but I love your response and just just say, um, so can you name any non-Christians who have been hypocrites? Uh maybe it's a human problem. And what's actually gonna heal it?

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah. Dropping the mask and being loved anyway. Brilliant. Well, that's all we've got to say about hypocrisy. Um, what do you guys think about hypocrisy? Uh, we're gonna leave the comments open on this video and feel free. Uh we will interact with you on the comments here. Uh, we'll also upload this to YouTube and uh we'll release this as a podcast as well on Friday. Uh so if you're not subscribed to our podcast, please do subscribe. Uh we are gonna be called the Speak Life Podcast. Uh so get that wherever you get your podcasts, and you'll have this discussion in your ears every Friday. Uh next week, what are we talking about?

SPEAKER_04

Uh I think next week we're gonna be aiming to be talking about post-truth. Right. So in this age of everything being relative and fake news. Um we're gonna be touching on that. Your fake news. Your fake news.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah. We're gonna be talking about that.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, so I think that's gonna be quite a good one. Actually, because when we went to the what was the what was the convention called? The Mind Body's spirit spirit or one of those. Um that was one of the things I found I came up against a lot. The whole kind of everything's just relative. Your truth is yours, yeah. My truth is mine, and let's all just get along.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah. Um what do you say to that?

SPEAKER_06

Well, tune in next week and find out. Join us Tuesday. So that's the schedule. So Fridays we'll drop this uh podcast. Uh on Mondays we'll have our Thorny Questions video, and then on Tuesdays we'll be doing this live. If we can sort out uh some of these uh sound issues, thank you for sticking with us. If you stuck with us through some of those sound issues, we appreciate it very, very much. Uh, do give us a like on uh Facebook, subscribe to us on YouTube. Uh but that's all we've got time for today. Uh Paul, thank you for joining us.

SPEAKER_04

It's good to be here. Thanks for being here too.

SPEAKER_06

Thanks for being here. Thanks for being here. Yeah. And uh keep on smiling and bye for now. Bye bye.

unknown

See ya.