The Importance of Being Earnest: Western Integrity and the Value of Our Disparity

Where were you the day Ted Haggard fell? I was in London, thinking that maybe putting an ocean between American Christianity and myself would somehow keep its influence out of my life. But no, the headlines rang, first gleefully, then exhaustedly, with the news of yet another man of faith’s fall from grace. Haggard’s was a particularly hard one: the founding pastor of a church of 14,000 faithful believers, he was caught red-handed doing the very thing he spoke so vehemently against: being gay.

What was your response? Did you laugh, cynically chalking up another wayward Bible-thumper to the pressures of rock star Christianity? Did you weep for the dirt smeared upon the name of Jesus Christ by one who claimed to live, follow, and speak for Him? Did you cry “hypocrite” along with the rest of the nation? If you answered ‘yes’ to number three, this article is for you.

One thing I did accomplish in London was the beginning of a life-long admiration for British understatement. And to say that hypocrisy is unpopular in America is a fabulous example of understatement.

There’s a special sort of hatred, a distinctive vitriolic spite, reserved for the American hypocrite. The word has become the be-all, end-all, the bottom-line ad hominem slur, the one we toss out when the mud-slinging hits a climax. It’s been the cherry atop many a fall from grace, the coup-de-grace in many a PR nightmare, the Hiroshima of the modern publicity war.

We can thank Martin Luther for that.

Luther, you say? Absolutely. His influence began the shift in Western thought that led to hypocrisy’s status quo as the cardinal sin in America’s moral climate. Before Luther, outward expressions of obedience were the barometer for one’s faith: performance of certain acts was the sure way to get beyond those Pearly Gates.

That is, until Luther came along and found that regardless of the frequency or correctness of the acts he performed, he was just as genuine a sinner as before. Performance was not enough.

His remedy was a concept called “integrity”, which focused on the inward attitudes and intentions driving those outward evidences of faith. This new emphasis upon the heart (inward evidence of faith) instead of the hands (outward evidence), trading performance for intention, was one of the lasting changes achieved by the Reformation. Now, it wasn’t good enough to simply go through the motions; it was the spirit in which those motions were enacted that mattered.

The twentieth century rolled around, and with it came another shift. Now integrity meant, “This above all: to thine own self be true.” The emphasis shifted again, this time from being inwardly true to an external moral code, to being inwardly true to a self-established internal code (and whether or not that code was moral, was up to you).

It’s this shift that brings us to the fall of Ted Haggard: “to thine own self be true” above all else, regardless of the self you’re being true to. Hell, no one ever accuses Mike Tyson of being a hypocrite, because the man walks his talk. So does Tom Cruise. So did Adolf Hitler.

We’ve eliminated hypocrisy, because hypocrisy becomes impossible when you’re making your own rules. If you don’t like the part of the external code that says, “thou shalt not steal/kill/lust”, the solution is simple: just write it out of your internal code. You could never be guilty of breaking a rule that isn’t there, and as long as you’re being true to your self, you’re being a person of integrity.

And yet hypocrisy is alive and well. How?

Because there are still people who are intentionally capable of hypocrisy, people who ascribe to a moral code that’s difficult to follow; for example, one that goes against a sinful human nature. And the higher this standard is held, the greater the possibility of failing it, and the greater the amount of hypocrisy needed to cover that failure up.

Take Mr. Haggard, for example: would his situation have been remotely as hypocritical, or highly publicized, if he were a supporter of gay rights? Absolutely not. What made his case so exhaustively newsworthy was the incredibly damaging contrast created by the disparity between his public and private lives.

Hypocrisy, alive and well, is as unpopular as ever.

That shouldn’t deter us from being capable of it.

Because despite it’s current redefinition, Christ still calls us to true integrity. He calls us to the type of renewal that works towards a full harmony between the inner and the outer person, a struggle Paul elucidates most famously in Romans. “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice2.” Basically, I don’t walk my talk.

Congratulations Paul, welcome to the human race. The battle for integrity isn’t an easy one.

Still, Christ’s answer to this struggle is simple and firm: “But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one3.”

Ted Haggard was a hypocrite because Ted Haggard claimed to live a certain way and didn’t. Like me. As a Christ-follower, I admittedly adhere to a moral code that sets me apart from many of my fellows. And yet my praxis falls short of my code most days of the week. Like Paul, I do the thing I hate, claiming to live a certain way (namely, free from sin) and then acting inconsistently with that claim (sinning). I am inescapably capable of hypocrisy.

And I think that’s a good thing. The fact that I am so capable of hypocrisy shouldn’t deter me from intentionally living towards the harmony between the inner and outer person my Lord calls me to. It should serve to continually remind me of just what kind of being I am: a human being.

The solution to hypocrisy isn’t setting the bar so low that transgression, and therefore inconsistency, becomes impossible. And it’s not in pretending that we as Christ-followers are any different from the rest of our fellow human beings and saying that we don’t suffer from disparities between code and praxis.

The solution is in owning the fact that we do in fact ascribe to a moral code, one which isn’t always easy to follow, and that the type of renewal Christ came to bring us is a process, not an event. We are a people in the midst of that process, incomplete in our professed harmony until the day Christ returns and makes our world whole again. So until then, let’s at least be honest about the struggle. We owe our fellow human beings that much.

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Authors note: Several initial thoughts in this article stem from a chapter by the name “The Importance of Being Earnest” in Meic Pearse’s book “Why the Rest Hates the West”, to which I’m deeply indebted. Meic, if you’re reading this, thanks.