On the whole, human beings want to be good – but not too good, and not quite all the time. – George Orwell (1903-1950), English essayist and novelist; from the essay “The Art of Donald McGill,” published in “Horizon” (September, 1941).
Category Archives: Hypocrisy
The Sanctity of Truth
That untruth is the hallmark of impiety is borne out by numerous examples of Scripture. The envy of Joseph’s brethren, by which they sold him into Egypt, is matched by the deception perpetrated to conceal the vile deed from their father (Genesis 37:31-35). Joseph’s piety is proven by his chastity: “how can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” (Genesis 39:9). The lust of Potiphar’s wife is paralleled by the malicious lie by which she sought either to conceal her own wickedness or, more probably, to wreak vengeance on Joseph for his refusal to gratify her lewd designs (Genesis 39:13-18). The perfidy of Pharoah is but an index to the hardness of his heart (cf. Exodus 9:28). Judas played the part of the father of lies, who had entered into him (Luke 22:3; John 13:27), when he acted a lie and betrayed the Son of Man with a kiss (Matthew 26:49; Mark 14:45; Luke 22:48). Ananias and Sapphira lied by an act of pretension. Again, it is eloquent of affinity with the father of lies and with the deception by which sin entered the world that Peter said, “Ananias, why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the price of the land?” (Acts 5:3). Lying is of the devil; it is the work of darkness. And, when the consummated order of righteousness is portrayed for us, it is, as we should expect, an order, also, of truth: “And there shall, in no wise, enter into it anything that is unclean or he that worketh an abomination and a lie” (Revelation 21:27). “Without are the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, and the murderers, and the idolators, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie” (Revelation 22:15). Liars, like murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, and idolators, have their part “in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8). Such a result is inevitable. The New Jerusalem is the holy city and “the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it.” His servants “shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. And there shall be night there” (Revelation 22:3-5). The Lord God, who “is light and in whom is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5), will be their everlasting light, and the holy will be holy still.
From: Principles of Conduct: Aspects of Biblical Ethics by John Murray (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1957), pp. 128-129.
Hypocrites in the Church
“Those are the sort of men [said Archdeacon Grantly] who will ruin the Church of England…It is not the dissenters or the papists that we should fear, but the set of canting, low-bred hypocrites who are wriggling their way in among us: men who have no fixed principle, no standard ideas of religion or doctrine, but who take up some popular cry.”
From his novel, Barchester Towers, Chapter 6.
