The Sin of Hypocrisy

It has become increasingly clear to me that I am now receiving more than 6 hours of sleep at night, and almost 5 of them are consecutive.  I know this to be true because my brain has started to once again branch beyond the basics.  No longer am I confined to eating, drinking, nursing and other necessities in life.  Now I can expand my mind by learning about politics, religion, philosophy, teaching methods, phonics. Not only am I able to do more now physically and mentally, but I find myself reflecting on more while doing some mindless activity like vacuuming.  I am also in the depths of reading large, thought provoking books. Narrative books like Amanda's recent find about China, and History books like my current affair: The biography of John Adams by David McCullough.  I know that I have mentioned this book in a prior post, but today I wanted to share something that I am learning about from the life of John and surprisingly also from the life of Thomas Jefferson.  

Hypocrisy.  I don't know about you, but I hate this word. I don't know if it is because we as humans hate to address this topic, or if it is just the spelling and pronunciation of this highly phonetic word.  Why I would even attempt at a blog post on this topic is beyond me.  Right from the start I would like to say that I, like most people, admit to having some hypocrisy in my life and acknowledge my need for Christ in purging it out.  I try vehemently to make myself transparent to everyone who knows me. What you see is what you get. Alas, I am human and cannot succeed 100% on anything that I do.  So with that disclosure I would like to continue my post on hypocrisy and what I have been learning regarding Adams and Jefferson. 

In your high school History class you probably learned about the American Revolution. You no doubt heard and discussed the two heroes Jefferson and Adams; and may have even seen that humorous and awesome musical 1776.  You may have even been taught that they were not alike in many of their beliefs. This is obvious on the surface as Adams was from New England, sacrificed himself constantly for his country, was poor, had no slaves, and abhorred debt: Jefferson, however, was from Virginia, was constantly in a state of trying to escape to his large home, rich, had over 200 slaves, and had tremendous debt.  They were both lovers of books, education and law. Adams studied law as a profession and one that he loved, while Jefferson studied law purely for recreation as he did not need a profession. Adams would go down in history as a man who spoke his mind, verbally and literally.  He would be recognized as a politician who lived like a farmer, yet could hold the attention of Kings.  Jefferson on the other hand lived like the rich estate owner that he was, and would go down in history as a hypocrite. 

Now, everyone has a little hypocrite living inside of them, but Jefferson let his flourish.  He continually spoke and wrote against debt, yet had tremendous debt himself. He wrote letters and documents that included multiple misgivings over slavery going so far as to say that it was wrong, and yet owned more slaves than the average Virginian of the day.  Sadly, Jefferson did not practice what he needed to change his heritage and his reputation.  Adams, on the contrary, spoke adamantly against both slaves and debt and had neither. He continually spoke about truths, and passed his heritage along to his sons.  I am learning that although people may be upset with me over my complete honesty as they were with Adams. It is better to go down in history as an honest person standing for what is right than for a hypocritical person standing for what is popular. 

May we all examine ourselves and ask God to help us purge ourselves of this common practice. Our heritage that we leave our children is too important to not practice what we preach.