Hypocrisy and Integrity

[ previous | index | next ]

Hypocrisy and Integrity

By Charles Rush

April 9, 2000

pocrisy is the third leg of the stool you can count on as a constant in human misery, the other two being death and taxes. Hypocrisy is hard wired into the human condition. I asked my wife if she could think of any good examples of hypocrisy earlier this week. She thought for a minute and said 'you mean like when the Minister preaches one thing on Sunday morning and then..." I said, "Can you think of any other examples of hypocrisy?"

Growing up in the South, particularly as a Baptist, hypocrisy was something you accepted on the moral landscape as inevitable and extensive as the kudzu that covered the swamps of Mississippi. [I read that kudzu grows up to a foot and a half a day]. When I was pastor of the Stephensport Baptist Church, we had only one little grocery store/deli/liquor store in the area. When I first became pastor, I walked over and noticed that the store had two drive-through windows; one on the side of the building and one clear around the back. I asked what the two windows were for. The proprietor pointed to the one in the front and said, "that one is for groceries. The one in back is the whiskey delivery window for the Deacons at the Stephensport Baptist Church. [In the three years I was pastor of that church, I never asked, they never asked, they never confessed, I was probably the first preacher in 150 years never to mention alcohol once from the pulpit... it was a Gentleman's détente].

The reality of hypocrisy and the implication that it entails remain one of the salient contributions that Christianity has made to our understanding of the human condition. St. Augustine put it so eloquently in The Confessions when he said, "I have become a problem to myself".

This is the contradiction that runs through the heart of every human soul. On a personal level, I was aware of this before I had words to describe it. As a small child, I remember hearing an elegant, sophisticated woman speak about race. It was a speech I heard many times. She came from a landed family of long lineage in American history, probably educated up East, as we used to say. The conversation at the moment had turned to the indelicate subject of integrated education-, which she was opposed to for a variety of reasons now lost on memory.

What stood out vividly is what followed her short opposition speech. It was a long explanation of how her parents had sent the son of their Colored Maid to college, one of the first blacks to attend whatever college he went to, and how he went on to study law and make something of himself. You heard this speech a lot from folks in the upper classes in the South. On the one hand, we are opposed to integrated education. On the other hand, we are not prejudiced towards black people, and I have stories to back it up.

She was a good woman. Her family were good people. They took care of the servants. We were as long on charity towards individual black people, and we were short on justice towards all black people . To this day, public education in Alabama and Mississippi remain among the poorest in the country, only now for different reasons. After integration was federally mandated, lilly White Christian Academies sprang up all over the South to the point that quite a large percentage of the total white population now goes to private schools. To be sure, they let in a few black students, usually outstanding students and/or outstanding athletes, but never in numbers where the dominant ethos is under threat of any kind. Not surprisingly, these are some of the strongest advocates in our country of school choice- only the argument nowadays is that we need to give tax vouchers to parents of poor, minority kids so that they can opt for the private education of their choice because their schools are so bad, because t

In the early sixties in the South, the proposal was made that we should design new communities as a mix of housing prices that would encourage integration both across racial lines and socio-economic lines. The resistance came back from investors, from realtors, from parents, from government officials. If you do that then the large number of struggling students will dilute the quality of education and make it more difficult for our best students to get into Tulane, Vanderbilt, Rice, and Emory. We are not prejudiced, we are just concerned about the quality of our education. Secondly, they said, if you build mixed housing, the housing prices on the high end will fall, leading to a decline in real estate all around, a decline in the tax base leading to a decline in government service, leading to flight of the middle and upper middle class... It just won't work. We're not prejudiced, we're just concerned about a stable real estate market... That is the way hypocrisy sounded in the South in the s

Fortunately, I moved to the Northeast- first to Westport, Connecticut then to Princeton and now to Summit- where I was able to escape all that hypocrisy...

St. Paul remarked in his letter to the Romans "that which I do, I ought not to do and that which I ought to do, I do not do." Hypocrisy is not something which is ever entirely overcome; it just assumes more and more sophisticated masks. I am always mildly amused at people who tell me, usually with a very earnest expression, that they would be more involved in the Church except for the rife hypocrisy that they experienced with religious people somewhere in the past. It is a charming, almost quaint belief in the perfectibility of humankind, that people ought to simply be able to come together and be better people. Likewise, it is a naïve, romantic view of the church that is not justified either be theology or history. Other than that, I suppose it makes sense. Dietrich Bonhoffer was right. He said the Church is not composed of righteous saints, but forgiven sinners. We never transcend our sinfulness and it is important to remember that.

There is no question that the Church has been egregious in its moral compromise but that does not justify the fatuous notion that moral purity and spiritual integrity are a simple possibility. They aren't. Reinhold Niebuhr once said that hypocrisy is the compliment that our lower selves pays to our higher selves. There are two dimensions to most all of our actions, the self-interested and our higher motivations. The self-interested part always threatens to warp our higher motivations and is something that must constantly be held in check.

I'll give you a simple, every day example. Last month, I was asked to review a small investment portfolio for a non-profit organization, where I serve on the board. I was disturbed to see that this mutual fund managed earn almost nothing in today's environment because they were only invested in bonds and dividend-yielding equities. I called the broker that was supposed to be managing the fund. Even recognizing that it was pretty small, he hadn't bothered to check in with us in the past couple years or to suggest improved investment strategies.

I faxed him the latest statement. He agreed that the return rate was dismal and the investment strategy was outdated. I told him we wanted more aggressive growth with moderate risk. I explained that this was a small non-profit, not worth much of his time, but they did important community work, and their little bit of income was very important to them. He said, "Yes, Reverend, I understand. You are exactly right that you need to increase growth and I have just the plan for you. We need to maximize the important work your group is doing in our community. You're a very clever man, Reverend." He faxes me over some different plans.

Now, I'm not a bright man. But one thing I learned in graduate school. If you don't know the answer, call someone who does. So I shot these Mutual Fund proposals to some of you. One of you graciously pointed out that the small print indicated both of the proposals came with heavy front loads, high service fees, and a distribution fee that increased the service fee even higher- with only moderate returns, whereas there were many no load funds, with moderate service fees, and comparable returns. In other words, our dear Broker was interested in increasing the return on investment for our little non-profit service organization but he the manner he proposed to do that also took a considerable profit for himself. Perhaps, he thought, the gullible in ministry, won't understand the fine print at the bottom of the page, and he was right. [As my mother used to say "you may be ignorant honey but you're not stupid."] This is what hypocrisy is like in action. It is a competition between honoring our c

To the degree that you have your hands on the levers of power, the reality of hypocrisy simply becomes writ larger on the horizon. When Bill Gates first took a tentative step into the realm of philanthropy, I suppose it came as little surprise that his first couple large grants were to enable the spread of computer literacy for the next generation. Surely he is right that computer literacy is critical to academic and economic success, but it won't hurt Microsoft to develop a generation of potential customers either.

Annheiuser-Busch is a major proponent of responsible drinking and spends quite a lot of money on ads that discourage underage drinking. Their ads also feature beautiful, young people laughing, having a great time, and clothing seems to spontaneously drop off these people with the mere presence of a long neck bottle of Bud in the background. You don't have to be Dr. Freud to figure out there is a difference between the conscious and the subliminal message that is being communicated here.

No, ego is only partially contained and made to serve the interests of our more noble ideals but it is never entirely eradicated and it is fatuous and dangerous to think you can. The best that we can hope for is that our noble ideals, our higher selves, can corral and structure our egoism and make it to serve the common good.

This has been an important social recognition from economists since Adam Smith and David Hume, from political theorists since Hobbes and Rousseau. Efficiently structured societies encourage social goals in order to find personal fulfillment. We know how important it is that personal incentives for corporate executives- and really for all employees- be structured to fulfill social corporate goals. We they do not, you have people espousing loyalty to the corporate enterprise, quietly developing policies for their short-term personal interest that undermine the corporate good. Properly understood, that is really what Adam Smith meant in The Wealth of Nations when he said that we should each look to our enlightened self-interest. He never meant our naked, short-term, rapacious self-interest. The key word was "enlightened" by which he meant that we pay attention to a far wider array of needs and interests, and see ourselves as part of a large inter-connected economic enterprise, so that the needs an

Reinhold Niebuhr said that for his generation Winston Churchill might well have provided the best example of how to moderate hypocrisy and develop a modicum of integrity in the context of power. Churchill was a man of large ego and not one to take no for an answer.

In his first run for the House of Commons in 1900, he was canvassing door to door, when he came to the house of a grouchy man who said, "Vote for you, Churchill? Why I'd rather vote for the Devil!" "I UNDERSTAND," said Churchill, "BUT IN CASE YOUR FRIEND IS NOT RUNNING, MAY I COUNT ON YOUR SUPPORT?"

After he was elected, Churchill was withering to his opponents. One time, during a droning speech by one of his opponents in the Labor Party, Churchill slumped in his seat and closed his eyes, so that all could see. The speaker said, "Must the right honorable Gentleman fall asleep when I am speaking?" "No" replied Churchill, quite loudly, "IT'S PURELY VOLUNTARY".

But there was another part of him that was also high minded and that part of him came to the fore, particularly after Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's failed compromise with Hitler in Munich, and Britain was alone, standing in the breech against fascism. With France weak, the United States slow to get involved, and the British without the army, nor the economy to sustain a war with Germany alone. Then Churchill's combination of principle and daunting courage rose to the occasion.

I'm thinking, in particular, of the days just following the evacuation of some 330,000 British forces from Dunkirk (in May, 1940), under heavy German fire, when there was talk about of a quick and decisive German victory, when many suggested that British might brook some détente with the German's. Churchill addressed a demoralized Britain shortly thereafter, to rally flagging spirits of his nation, and with the whole world listening to see which way Britain would go. That was the speech where he said "We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender." All the House of Commons stood to their feet and clapped. During the applause, Churchill turned to one of the people sitting next to him and said, "IF THEY DO LAND ON THE BEACHES, WE'LL FIGHT THEM WITH THE BUTT ENDS OF BROKEN BEER BOTTLES BECAUSE THAT'S BLOODY WELL ALL WE'VE GOT."

It was Churchill, after the War had been successfully concluded that was one of the moral leaders, who recognized the importance of rebuilding Germany in her defeat rather than try to exact some onerous revenge in reparations like the Allies did in the Versailles treaty following WWI. He led the push to rebuild Europe after the war, supporting the Marshall Plan that was the ground bed for European stability today.

It was Churchill, who helped craft the establishment of the United Nations at the meeting at Yalta, following the war. He was in a unique position to brook a détente between the United States and the Soviet Union, and it took all his power of ego to manage both of the budding Superpowers. As one historian recently put it off the record, thinking of the agreement at Yalta and the long shadow it cast for the destiny of the West and the Communist countries as well, "it was probably the best we could do under the circumstances."

Churchill was not a perfect man by any stretch of the imagination. His intemperance and arrogance had to be dealt until the end of his life. Towards the end of the War, a group of leaders were complaining about Charles De Gaulle, the prickly leader of the French Resistance. One of them remarked that "the problem is that De Gaulle thinks he is the reincarnation of Joan of Arc". "No", said Churchill, "the problem is my bishops won't let me burn him."

Churchill was no saint. And he had his vices, which are well known. But I think that Niebuhr is right that Churchill serves as a pretty good model for us today as someone who haltingly and inexactly lined up his ego for the service of the greater good and achieved considerable righteousness, quite in spite of his limitations and foibles. Far from finding ourselves extricated from the web of compromise and hypocrisy, the more we are involved in the power realities of our times, the more it is inevitable that our selfish ego's will be in a contest with our higher moral and spiritual selves.

Do not despair. Do not be filled with remorse. Do not give yourself over to abandonment to selfish ambition. Do not remain indifferent to the dialectical tension. Jesus pointed out the reality of hypocrisy in the hopes that we might repent, which is to say, to clarify our motives, to amend the social structures that we live in so that the higher reasons for which we live might be realized. That is far better than tears, far better than abandoning the moral quest. Not only will you be better in the process, your children and your children's children will become better too.

Amen .