War of the Hypocrites - by Melody Farrell

Hypocrite. What a horrid word. I hate it. I hate what it means. I have never thought of myself as a hypocrite, at least in the spiritual context of the word. I have always tried to live as I believe.

But lately… I’m not so sure.

My dad recently did a teaching on integrity, and it has taken me through a rather confusing and altogether uncomfortable thought progression. In his message, Dad defined integrity as a lack of hypocrisy; integrity is being on the outside exactly as you are on the inside. There were several points of his talk that really struck a chord with me, and I marinated on it for several days.

And after thinking over it all for a while, an overwhelming sense of doubt began to smother me. Or not even doubt, really… it was more like guilt. Shame. Regret, blame, and condemnation. I began to tell myself that I am a huge hypocrite. That I have lost all integrity and that the person I present myself to be is nothing close to the person that I really am.

It was very yucky.

Okay… here’s the deal. Over the last year or so, I’ve been through some pretty massive heartbreaks and life changes. It’s been a time of stretching and growth and choosing to hope in God’s eventual victory in the many areas of my life that seem bruised or broken. But I’m not gonna lie… in between the times I’ve been strong enough to choose to hope for victory, I’ve wallowed plenty in the despondent depths of defeat.

The defeat comes upon me unwelcomed and unannounced, and crushes me to the point of near hopelessness. To the point where I question everything I believe, every experience I’ve had with God, every lesson I have learned, and every person who has influenced me. And most of all… I question myself. I scoff at my own positivity. I convince myself that I’m just pretending to hope because it would be too embarrassing to admit defeat to the many eyes that are looking at me to lead.

In this latest round of self-evaluation, I had pretty much decided that this hopeless, jaded, depressed, cynical, negative person was actually the real me. I surmised that the better versions of myself that I sometimes aspire to be are not really better versions at all… they are simply performances, facades, pretenses to disguise the ugliness that I am not allowed to reveal. I’m Skip Ross’ daughter after all (He’s kinda world-famous for teaching about positive attitude, in case you aren’t aware). I’m currently leading a camp where we bring in teenagers from around the globe to teach them principles of goal-setting, excellence, leadership, positivity, and dynamic living.

And yet I’m sitting in my room late at night, unable to muster the strength to even pretend to display these qualities myself?!? WOAH! Hypocrite alert! Someone please kick me out of this camp! Kick me out of this family! Kick me off the leadership team of a church where I am trumpeting my belief in hope and restoration! The the real me is not acceptable, and the pretend me is nothing but a hypocrite. If that’s the best I have to offer the world, then I pretty much don’t deserve to be here anymore.

WELL… that type of thinking got me nowhere fast. I mean seriously. That is some ugly crap right there.

So let me tell you what turned it around. 

I started trying to write out what was happening in my head and heart, and I wrote the sentences, “I don’t know if this is a spiritual attack, or if this is just the broken place I’ve come to. Maybe this is who I am after I admit my whole life is a giant failure.”

Even as I wrote the words “spiritual attack”, I felt some voice telling me, This is not an attack. Don’t try to make everything so spiritual. This is just you coming to grips with your true self. Your horrible, hypocritical self.

And then I started to agree with that voice.

Yeah… it’s not an attack. That is so dumb. Why would you even think that? This is God laying the smack-down on you for your hypocrisy! How dare you attempt to lead at Element or at Circle A or in business when you are just a breath away from complete disintegration!?

But then—thank God—another thought occurred to me. Hold on… if there is something trying so strongly to convince me that I’m NOT under spiritual attack… then that’s probably pretty clear evidence that that’s EXACTLY what’s going on. That’s the lie of the enemy, isn’t it? The easiest one for him to get us to swallow: there is no war.

Oh, to the contrary. There is a war. There is a war, and this is the thick of it.

The enemy had tipped his hand once again. He had pushed a little too hard, spoken a little too loudly – and I saw it for what it was. A direct attack against the person that God created me to be.

And so then… if I am not a total hypocrite… what am I? Because the truth remains that these dark and hopeless thoughts do come to me, despite my constant fight against them. They do lurk under the surface of my exterior presentation to those that I lead and those that I love.

Is the depressed, angry, jaded person the real me? And everything better just a façade that I put on because I WISH I was a better person?

OR… am I actually the better person too, and the two parts of me are at war?

And if I am at war with my own self… then how do I win?

Oh yeah. I don’t win. I can’t win. I never could. But I know the One who can. I know the One who made me, the One who sees both the ugliest and the most beautiful versions of me – and the One who loves me nomatter which version manages to surface in a given moment. 

And here's the thing - these imperfections that cause me to sometimes choose the darkness rather than the light are products of being human. A sinful nature is part of the package deal of living on this earth, and as much as I can wish and will perfection into being - it's never gonna happen. God didn't ask us to save ourselves. He gets to do the saving. That's what redemption is, after all - taking the yucky, broken, ravaged, and discouraged parts and making them beautiful once again. 

We all get the chance to join Him in this story of redemption - and when we do, we get to feel His Spirit empowering us to make the CHOICE to be the better version. So when I am strong enough to shake off the yuck and be the hopeful, passionate, inspired version of me - the credit for that goes directly to my Redeemer. And when I am not strong enough to make that choice... it's just another reminder of how much I need Him.

His love gives me the strength to fight the war, and it also gives me the peace to know that in the end, the imperfect will be made complete. Not by me—but by Him. So in the meantime, until that completeness, I’ll fight to do what He told me to do: “Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, and love extravagantly.”

(1 Corinthians 13:13)