Why are Christians so hypocritical? 

It’s not difficult to find hypocrisy in the Christian Church. Some point to the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, or even the Holocaust as proof that Christians are no less evil than non-Christians, although they claim to be righteous. Others see their Christian friends go to church Sunday morning and then cheat, gossip, and lie throughout the week. It’s real hard to see the truth and benefit of Christianity when Christians themselves don’t practice what they preach; however, we must remember that what makes us “Christian” is not our behavior - it is our identity.

Some people believe that practicing the religion of Christianity makes them a Christian, kind of like practicing the Islam religion makes you a Muslim. In religion, your identity is based on what you do; true Christianity says that your identity is based on the work Christ has already done. For example, the process of adoption starts with an incredible amount of work by the adoptive parents and ends with a child receiving a new identity. With the stroke of a pen, a little girl becomes ‘daughter of Bill and Amy’. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus put his signature on our adoption papers; but this adoption requires your consent. You must choose to be adopted into the family of God. Going to church, reading your Bible, or being baptized does not make you a Christian – you must make a conscious decision to accept God’s gift and be adopted into the family of God. There are many who claim to be Christians but have never been adopted into the family of God, and some of the hypocrisy identified with the church can be traced back to these non-Christians.

Of course, it is also true that members of the family of God will throw out a little hypocrisy from time to time. Family has a strong influence over our behavior. All of us start out life in the world’s family, and consequently we behave the way the world behaves. We put ourselves before others; we worship career success and wealth; we make mistakes that hurt other people and ourselves. The world abandons us, and we feel alone, searching for meaning and purpose in life. But, God offers us adoption into his family and a new identity – child of God. Those that accept his offer obtain a new family influence and begin to experience gradual life change. We would not expect a teen that has been living on the streets for ten years to become the perfect child immediately after his adoption into a good home, nor should we expect a Christian to become perfect on the day of their adoption. Even the most committed Christians can and do mess up, perhaps even more than some non-Christians; but if you want to see the effect God has on a person’s life, compare their life before Christ with their new life after Christ. We don’t measure how much a student has learned by comparing their test scores with other children’s scores; we compare them to their own previous scores.