Never underestimate the hypocrisy of those in power. Never. For they will be pious, they will cloak whatever they do in righteousness, and they will be careful to keep the regulations of the culture.
But they will game them.
For many in power — regardless of where you are — the labels matter more than the reality. Consider the Communist party in China, which has more in common with Sony or Hyundai than Marx, or the Islam of the Malaysian rulers. Or, as Chris Muir notes the “Baptist” child welfare system which is not owned nor affiliated with any church.
[Choosing a congregationalist denomination like the Baptists with loose governance was a very smart move: the Presbyterian method of government would not allow this, not would the Episcopal]
Or consider the council in Jerusalem
When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death. And they bound him and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate the governor.
Judas Hangs Himself
Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” They said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is blood money.” So they took counsel and bought with them the potter’s field as a burial place for strangers. Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me.”
(Matthew 27:1-10 ESV)
Most of the time we think about Judas, and how the end of the revolutionary and the criminal is all too often a bullet, either from an executioner (legal or not) or by their own hand.
But the reaction of the Council damned them just as much. The arrest of Jesus was an affront to justice: his death was, by any standards, unjust, political and wrong. That did not worry them, but putting the very coins they had bribed Judas with back in the Temple fund did.
Fools. Money has no odour. And the very Potter’s field they bought to bury the unshriven became an abattoir in the sack of Jerusalem, some forty years after this time.
So do not trust the front we put up. Nor the public tears of the penitent, as they apologize for whatever is the politically correct offense of the day. Look instead at the results of the person’s life. And, in this age, when about twice as many people suicide in my nation as die in road crashes, pray that my life will not have the effect of the council, nor the self-destructive end of Judas.
And it is sometimes better to listen to that which is bleak and truthful than the pretty lies of worship, be it sacred or secular.