A Promising Friday

Dear Kate,

Hypocrisy, it can't be a good thing, surely?

Well, I am a hypocrite.  If not, you might call me a pest, a tormentor, a criminal, and feel the need to nail me up somewhere public for the common good.

As a Christian I am at my most hypocritical, obviously, proportional to what I claimed to be, tried to be, and failed to be.

To my defense, my failure is part of a big inside job, a divine conspiracy if you will, my share of hypocrisy a kind of elbow grease to keep the machine running.  The machine runs on human elbowing without shoving each other; or at least that's the aspiration.

That's why the necessity of grease, not a sanctioned justification for it, but a sanctified compromise.  The holy communion between the saints is meant to be touch-and-go, phoniness a sign of things running smoothly.

How hypocritical am I?

I know the religion I continue to observe is a discontinuation, has not much to do with historical Christianity.  There's no point to list the many ways how this might be true, like an atheist trying to prove how a non-existent god doesn't exist.  I will ask only this: Why do Christians go to church?  To seek the face of God, to listen to His voice?  Or more like to have their own voices heard and seek the approval of each other?

This might sound like a minor point, mundane really, given what we know about humanity as first-hand experience.  What it points out though is how we see the world, whether we have a vision of transcendence.

People talk about the pandemic, politics, plights and mights of Man: what you see is what what you get; what you speak is what you hear.  I've heard a lot from many Christians, those who claim to see and hear above and beyond, beneath, behind, and to the heart of things.  Jesus rarely makes an appearance in our act and speech.  We don't want to be handicapped, especially when we know we are on the right side of history.

I shall promise you my compromise: you wouldn't know the authentic me, wouldn't want to know either.  The last guy who tried being real didn't end well on a certainly misnomer Friday that wasn't that good.

Yours, Alex