Language Lab: What Is A “hypocrite”?

Language Lab: What Is a “Hypocrite”?

Bible Blast: Read Matthew 23:25-26

How can you think of saying, “Friend, let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,” when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye. Luke 6:42

Marion Jones was “the fastest woman on earth,” and she proved it by winning five medals at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. She ran so fast that a lot of people accused her of using drugs to help her body perform. She denied it. In her 2004 autobiography she wrote, “I am against performance-enhancing drugs. I have never taken them, and I never will take them.”

In 2007, Jones confessed. Yes, she had used performance-enhancing drugs. That’s illegal for an athlete, not to mention very unhealthy. She had to go to jail for six months and do some community service as punishment. She said she was sorry and ended up being truthful.

What makes her a hypocrite? When she told everyone publicly that drugs are bad but privately used them, she became a hypocrite. A hypocrite is someone who says she believes something but doesn’t live that belief out in her personal and private life.

In Greek, the word hypocrite is used to describe a stage actor who wears a mask to impersonate, or pretend to be, someone else.

One type of hypocrisy girls sometimes struggle with is gossip. On the bus you might hear Junie say, “I totally hate it when people gossip!” And then at lunch you hear her whispering about other girls. Junie is saying one thing but doing the opposite thing.

If you feel like someone’s being hypocritical, don’t tell anyone else about it. Instead, pray for that person in private and ask God to help her. Most importantly, examine your own life to be sure that how you are living in private matches up with what you say you believe in public.

Girl Gab: Mom, share with your daughter a time when you realized that you weren’t practicing what you preached. Daughter, pray for both you and your mom to be more careful about living what you believe.