THE RESCUE OF HYPOCRISY

I like words to be useful, so I've been long wary of the reduction of hypocrisy into meaninglessness by charging as a hypocrite everyone who fails to adhere to a moral standard he advocates.  That charge has the effect of making hypocrisy a wrong collateral to every instance of wrongdoing by a person who professes that the good life is a morally decent life.  Because no one is perfect, then by definition that charge makes every morally decent person a hypocrite.  If so, then hypocrisy becomes a muddy word blurring any useful distinctions, except perversely for the postmodern antinomians who despise all moral standards except their cardinal virtue of authenticity against which hypocrisy denotes the gravest vice.

Indeed, the widespread misuse of the word hypocrisy in general discourse these days is part and parcel of our unreflective, though probably not deeply held, acceptance of the antinomian's virtue of authenticity.  A common example of this is the disdain for etiquette as a masquerade that represses a person's true feelings.  After more than three decades recording the folly of the let-it-all-hang-out hippie culture, it still surprises me how many parents refuse to teach their children to say "thank you" unless the little monsters genuinely feel grateful for what they have received.  This, of course, misses the point of etiquette.  It is a set of manners precisely designed to give our actions the form of courtesy to others whether or not we feel courteous, because we are supposed to value benevolence to others more than giving rein to the impulses of our "authentic" selves.  Yet, too many of us dispense with the standards of etiquette as the hypocritical sin of repressing authenticity.

So, maybe I should make a stronger statement about our present common usage of hypocrisy.  It goes beyond misuse to abuse of the word, because so many of us have bought into the virtue of authenticity.  No doubt most of us haven't staked too much on this false virtue, because the realities of social intercourse do not let us forego the acknowledgment of moral standards entirely.  Nevertheless, the abuse of the word hypocrisy in praise of authenticity, however faint, remains a perversion that obfuscates moral knowledge and impedes acting in accord with it.  That is why we need to rescue hypocrisy.

To this end, Robert Miller has written a fine essay in "First Things" last Friday about the fall of evangelical pastor Ted Haggard from his pulpit.  He fights the good fight to rescue the word hypocrisy from its abuse as a sword against norms of decency to return it to its proper function as a shield in defense of those norms.  Miller does more than revitalize the word in terms of the old chestnut, "Hypocrisy is the praise that vice pays virtue."  He effectively demonstrates the gravity of the true hypocrite's sin by illustrating how it is not automatically entailed in every wrong a person does against the standards he voices but instead is a willful and scandalous lie mocking morality.  Read Miller's essay to understand how Haggard is not hypocrite.  Then consider how, ironically, those who gleefully charge him with hypocrisy are themselves guilty of it -- in the rescued sense of the word.