Hypocrisy is as sneaky as humility is elusive.  To absolve oneself of guilt is to teeter toward hypocrisy.  To claim humility is to watch it escape us.  So what do we do?

When we witness injustice, violence, or greed, how do we confront it without exuding self-righteousness?  When we are seeking redress for wrongdoing, how do we avoid vengeance?  This is tough.

MLK would remind us that,

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

With all that’s going on right now socially and politically, I’ve been wondering why this season is so painful and disappointing for so many of us.  It’s not like we haven’t faced difficult times before.  None of this is new!  

I think part of the struggle is that we realize how entangled and entrenched we all are in this system.  All of us. We are victims of

and complicit to a wicked system that demands ‘haves and have nots.’ Our economy is built on the exploitation of laborers, domestic and foreign. Our desire for convenience outweighs the need to conserve natural resources and to preserve our planet. We are good capitalists – we are materialistic and  individualistic – but not very good Christians.  Lord, have mercy!

 Even our protests flaunt our designer proclivities.  We are all mixed up in this mess together.  So what do we do?

First, we must admit some humility.  None of us is all right or all wrong.  Then we must take a long slow look in the mirror and confess our own flaws and weaknesses – our complicity to these wicked systems, and confront our hypocrisy and contradictions. Then we must discuss how we dig ourselves out of this mess, by the grace of God!

Listen:

How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye.

Luke 6:42

We got work to do!

Good Morning, I love you all!

ihs,

just adam