Quoted from the book, Twelve Steps for the Recovering Pharisee (like me): We admit that our single most unmitigated pleasure is to judge other people. Have come to believe that our means of obtaining greatness is to make everyone lower than ourselves in our own mind. Realize that we detest mercy being given to those […]
The Irony of Outrage and Sufjan Stevens’ “America”
This one comes to us from Jeb Ralston. Sufjan Stevens, that enigmatic and soft-spoken tortured soul of a musician, released a new single last week, “America,” with the not-so-subtle timing of being one day before the Fourth of July. Sufjan, who is no stranger to political commentary through the lens of his own Christian perception, […]
A Bachelorette Treatise on Sin
What could possibly go wrong when you throw together a beautiful woman, a couple dozen handsome men, a dash of love, and a sprinkle of Christianity?! Well, on Monday night, Bachelor Nation found out as we witnessed the long-anticipated showdown between Bachelorette Hannah and contestant Luke P.—one that certainly will go down in franchise history. […]
The Church Built on the Rock of Hypocrisy
The New York Times posted a video last month of an interview they conducted with Ray Dalio, the founder of the largest hedge fund in the world (Bridgewater Associates), and the captain of one of the more terrifying work cultures ever. Bridgewater, which manages $150 billion worldwide, preaches a work culture euphemized as “radical transparency,” a culture so […]
A Treatise Against Christian Hypocrisy
Because I am an immediate devotee to anything Mark Burnett produces, I suffered through an entire season of Fox’s Coupled this summer. If you aren’t familiar with this romantic tale, then pat yourself on the back for being a better person than me. The premise is simple: twelve single women get to filter through a […]
Why Scandals Are So Entertaining (and Hypocrisy So Infectious)
A particularly incisive passage from the fourth chapter of Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis, in which he expounds on the universality of hypocrisy and the intoxication of self-righteousness: There is a special pleasure in the irony of a moralist brought down for the very moral failings he has condemned. It’s the pleasure of a well-told […]
Sympathy For Hypocrites According to Dr. Johnson
A doozie of a quote from essay 14 of Samuel Johnson’s The Rambler (1750): It is not difficult to conceive, however, that for many reasons a man writes much better than he lives. For, without entering into refined speculations, it may be shown much easier to design than to perform. A man proposes his schemes of life in […]
Mel Gibson: Hypocrite?
I read an article today on MSNBC.com entitled: “Hypocrisy, thy name is Mel Gibson,” and, while it’s a witty title, I thought it brought up an interesting anthropological point: we are all hypocrites. Personally, I am a huge fan of Mel Gibson. Braveheart is one of my top 5 five movies of all time. I […]
