Are Christians hypocrites?

Now, people so often form their view about Christianity from what they see of Christians and what they see of the church.

And there's so much good, I guess we could say, that the church has done in the past and for years the church provided.

a significant amount of what our welfare state, for example, now provides.

But the church has also behaved badly.

So let me ask you one of the questions which was put to us on Maidenhead's questions.

Why has so much bad been done in the name of Christianity?

I guess even before we jump in, it's worth just saying thank you to the people who took the time to ask these kinds of questions because it takes real guts, I think.

And the reason I say that is because so often when people ask these kinds of questions, they're not just academic, not just intellectual questions.

They're often born out of anger and personal stories of hurt.

And it's just worth acknowledging that, I think, as we begin to explore and to say, yes, Christianity is a faith that believes in truth, that truth matters.

But it also is a faith that believes that tears matter.

And I think of one of my favorite Psalms, Psalm 13, which says, begins by saying, how long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? And it's real about the struggle that we can face as we wrestle with life in a world where things don't always seem to be fair and to go right.

And so I just want to acknowledge that as we start.

And I think it is a painfully fair question.

And I think the short answer, you know, why has so much bad been done in the name of Christianity? I think the short answer is that that people can use the name of Jesus while ignoring the way of Jesus.

And Jesus has so much to say about this.

I mentioned just before we started that as an organization, we're going through a bit of the Bible together at the moment, Matthew chapter 7.

And in that bit of the Bible, Jesus himself says there are going to be people at the end of time who say, oh, Jesus, we did all kinds of stuff for you.

And I'm going to say I never knew them.

And the reason for that is because they may have taken the name of Jesus, but actually they ignored the way of Jesus.

And so often we can betray the Christ we claim to follow by our actions.

had a lot to say in fact he had his strongest rebukes for people who behaved like that and so whether it's like you know i don't know it could be it could be persecution it could be injustice it could be racism it could be all kinds of stuff but but when we see that as christians i think we want to be honest first of all and say yes the church has done uh real evil and we must say so and own that But I think that's why.

I think that goes to the heart of what's going on.

But from a Christian point of view as well, I guess we want to say that Jesus, in the end, isn't judged by the worst behavior of his followers.

we want to judge his followers by Jesus and his standards.