This Is Apologetics: An Argument from Christian Hypocrisy

The objection that Christians are hypocrites, and therefore Christianity must be false, borrows from the very Christian worldview. By presupposing objective morality, the objection presupposes the very God it aims to disprove.

***** 

Sometimes skeptics will argue that Christians are hypocrites, and therefore Christianity must be wrong. After all, hypocrisy is wrong, and therefore Christianity clearly doesn’t produce moral people!

However, this objection relies on a presupposition that hypocrisy is objectively wrong (it is wrong for all people, at all times, everywhere, including Christians, however we may try to rationalize it).

The objection is aimed at proving Christianity false, however it actually assumes that Christianity is true. How so? Because it assumes that Christian moral standards are true.

After all, Christianity condemns hypocrisy as objectively wrong, because it goes against the righteous nature of God and his commands. The Bible is chock-full of condemnation for hypocrites. Condemning hypocrisy is a uniquely Christian moral judgment.

But on what basis does the skeptic, who has rejected the God of the Bible and his moral commands, condemn hypocrisy as objectively wrong?

The unbelieving worldview has no way to support the idea of objective morality. There can be no universal moral obligations, because there is supposedly no universal lawgiver to give those obligations.

The only way to get to a standard in which hypocrisy is objectively wrong is to sneak God in the back door. You can’t get it without borrowing from the Bible. But remember, this argument was supposed to disprove the Bible and its God. By borrowing from God, the skeptic undercuts his own argument.

You can’t fight against God and win.

The fact is that hypocrisy really is morally wrong. It’s sinful. It’s sinful when Christians do it. And it’s evil when skeptics do it (for example, by making arguments against God while stealing the Bible’s moral standards). And the truth is that we are all hypocrites. We have all been sinful and fallen far short of the glorious (and never-hypocritical) nature of God.

For that sin, we deserve to be judged and condemned. Yet God has provided a way out. He punished his own Son, Jesus, as though he were a hypocrite. Jesus, who was always true, became the substitute for hypocrites like us. He died, he was buried, and he rose–conquering sin and hypocrisy forever. Now he reigns, and one day he’s going to judge the world.

If you’ll renounce your hypocrisy and sin and give your life to Jesus, God will forgive you–as if your sin never happened. But now that you know the truth, it won’t do you any good to live like you don’t know.

After all, that would be hypocritical.

^This is apologetics.