I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 23-24.

    This passage contains Jesus’ longest and most in depth teaching about avoiding hypocrisy. He begins by instructing His followers to listen to the teachings of the Pharisees and other teachers of the Law, but to under no condition follow their example. Just as He does in other places where He preaches against hypocrisy, Jesus warns us against doing things for show. We should not act so as to cause others to praise us for our righteousness. Actually, there is a part of this that is often overlooked which truly drives the message home. Jesus tells us not to style ourselves as “Rabbi”. or “Teacher”, or “Father”. He explicitly tells us not to call anyone on earth “Father” (I am pretty sure He is not referring to using “father” to refer to our actual father). Jesus starts out His teaching about not adopting titles by pointing out that all of His followers are siblings, are on the same level. Yet despite this, Christian denomination after denomination adopts the distinction between clergy and laity using special terms of address for the clergy, “Father”, “Reverend”, “Excellency”, and even “Pastor”. These terms are all designed to put those to whom they refer on a pedestal as somehow superior to the ordinary person.

    Jesus goes on from there with condemnation of the Pharisees hypocritical behavior. It is easy to look at that and think, “Oh, look how terrible the Pharisees were!” but that is not Jesus’ purpose here. However, Jesus is not telling us, “Look how bad THOSE people are.” He is giving us guidelines to judge our own behavior.

• Do we come up with reasons why it is OK for us to do things we say are wrong for other people to do?
• Do we work to convince others to teach the same rules we do, then encourage them to consider themselves a special case to whom the rules do not apply?
• Do we put greater stock in the superficial expression of righteousness than the underlying structure which creates it?
• Do we focus on measurable acts of goodness, while overlooking actually treating others well?
• Do we expend great effort to appear righteous in public, while hiding immorality, hate, and other sins that we commit in private?
• Do we condemn the actions of people long dead and claim that we would have behaved differently, while following the socially acceptable rules of today the way that they followed the socially acceptable rules of their day?

We can see examples of these things in the headlines today. While there is some value in looking at how after all of these years human nature has not changed, the more important thing is to examine our own lives and root out any ways in which we may be doing these things.