Here’s another story from my old fundamentalist college days. We began each class period with a brief devotional thought offered by one of the students. One day in one of my classes it was this fellow Skip Loomis’ turn to present yet another devotional thought. We faced several of these every day, in addition to the regular Chapel service. I remember Skip as a regular fellow with a cheerful disposition. He was not a campus leader or an athlete or a member of the college’s well-known male quartet.
At any rate, Skip stood up and read from the 18th Chapter of the Gospel of Luke, verse 11 through 13, wherein two men, one a very religious Pharisee and the other a lowly tax-collector, called a “Publican” both engage in prayer. The former prays thusly: “O God, I thank thee that I am not like the rest of men, greedy, dishonest, adulterous: or, for that matter, like this tax-gatherer. I fast twice a week, I pay tithes on all that I get.” But the other fellow simply beats his breast and says: “Oh God, have mercy on me, sinner that I am.” At the end of this story Jesus said: “It was this man, I tell you, and not the other, who went home acquitted of his sins.”
As we listened to Skip read this familiar passage we were all agreeing in our hearts with what Jesus was saying. Then Skip caught us all off-guard by closing his Bible and pointing out to us the awful truth that as he read this familiar story we all had switched things around in our minds, immediately identifying with the publican and disregarding the Pharisee. In our minds and hearts we all had said: ”I thank you God that I am not like this Pharisee but am like this Publican.” Skip had caught us napping in our smug religious hypocrisy
Obviously, after all these years this incident has remained in my mind and heart. The subtleties of hypocrisy run deep. It reminds me of Nathan’s parable to David about the rich man who stole the poor man’s sheep to feed his guests. Nathan used the parable to catch David up in his own sin of having had Uriah killed in battle so he, David, could have Uriah’s wife Bathsheba as his own. When David called out in response to Nathan’s story “That man shall surely be punished” Nathan replied “Thou art the man.”
I can still see and hear my friend Skip calling us out for the subtleties of our minds and hearts by means of which we deceive ourselves into always seeing ourselves as the “good guy” and the other person as the “bad guy.” Skip was not being personal toward any of his classmates, but when the shoe fits……