Religious Hypocrisy

 Whether you are Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, African traditionalist, atheist, or anything else, there is a particular kind of religious person who is exhausting: the one who has somehow appointed themselves God's customer service representative. They know what God thinks about your clothes, your sexuality, your marriage, your ancestors, your politics, your unbelief, and apparently your lunch. They will tell you their religion is about love while aggressively trying to convince you that your worldview is wrong. And when their own people cause harm, suddenly nuance is required. Since I am Christian, I will address exactly that: Christianity, but in this I welcome other religions to do so too.

What happens to people when the people who claim to represent God become the source of the very wounds they tell people God should heal? That question doesn't get asked nearly enough. We are remarkably comfortable defending Christianity from criticism. Someone says the church hurt them, and our first instinct is often to explain why they shouldn't judge Christianity by Christians. Someone points out abuse by a pastor, and we start talking about how difficult it is to be a pastor. Someone questions a harmful teaching, and we reach for a Bible verse before we reach for the person. Sometimes, in our desperate attempt to defend God, we forget to listen to the person who was hurt in His name. And religious harm is not ordinary harm.

If a stranger humiliates me, they humiliated me. If a person with religious authority tells me that God requires my obedience, my silence, my suffering or my submission, and then uses that authority to control me, the wound can reach much deeper. Now I am not only wondering why you hurt me. I am wondering whether God approved of it. That is how people end up confusing God with the people who speak loudly about Him. And Christianity has a long history of human beings doing exactly that.

The history of Christian Europe is not simply a story of peaceful evangelism. Christianisation involved persuasion and genuine conversion, yes, but also political coercion, suppression of competing religions and, at various points, violence. Charlemagne's campaigns against the Saxons, for example, included forced conversion and brutal punishment for resistance. Later European witch-hunts and prosecutions for heresy involved both religious and secular authorities; reducing that history to “the Catholic Church burned women” is too simplistic, but pretending Christian institutions and ideas were never entangled with persecution is equally dishonest. The uncomfortable question is not whether every Christian participated in these things. It is: what happens when people become convinced that their understanding of God gives them permission to hurt people who disagree with them? Because certainty is powerful. And certainty with God behind it is terrifying. We did not leave that history in Europe.

Christianity became deeply entangled with European colonialism in Africa. Missionary activity sometimes challenged abuses and slavery, established schools and hospitals, and produced Africans who later used Christianity in anti-colonial movements. But missionary work was also entangled with imperial expansion and the remaking of African societies according to Western Christian ideas of "civilization." Scholars have documented how missions could simultaneously educate Africans and disparage African cultures while working within or alongside colonial systems. So yes, I can be grateful for Christianity's place in my life and still ask what was lost, erased or wounded in the process of its spread. Those things can coexist.

Christians love saying that everyone has free will until somebody exercises theirs and chooses something other than Christianity.Then their Muslim faith becomes something to rescue them from. Their traditional African spirituality becomes demonic. Their atheism becomes rebellion. Their Hinduism becomes deception. Their Judaism becomes something we need to correct. We call it evangelism, but sometimes what we really mean is, "I cannot tolerate that you believe something different from me." There is a difference between sharing what you believe and treating another person's autonomy like an inconvenience.

And Christianity is not the only religion capable of this. Human beings have been using religion, ideology, and certainty to justify domination for a very long time. That is precisely why Christians should be willing to examine ourselves. Because hypocrisy is not simply saying one thing and doing another. Religious hypocrisy becomes particularly dangerous when someone can attach their personal authority to the words “God says.” The pastor says, "God says." The parent says, "God says." The husband says, "God says." The church says, "God says." The colonizer once said, "God says."And suddenly challenging a human being feels like challenging God.

Maybe this is why acknowledging religious harm is so difficult. We are afraid that admitting what Christians have done will somehow weaken Christianity itself. I don't believe it does. If anything, I think faith that cannot survive an honest examination of its history is a very fragile faith. I am a Christian. That does not mean I have to pretend Christians have always been good. It does not mean I have to defend every church, every pastor, every doctrine, every missionary, every parent who weaponized Scripture, or every person who has ever shouted “God says” before doing something God would presumably have a problem with. And it certainly doesn't mean I get to point at everyone else's religion while refusing to look at my own.

Maybe loving God also means refusing to use Him as our alibi. Maybe sometimes the most Christian thing we can do is stop defending ourselves long enough to ask the uncomfortable question: Who did we hurt while insisting we were speaking for God? And maybe when we do, we can actually speak and spread the scripture with its actual intent: love. For every other religion, I invite you to do the same. If we seek to meet at a point of love and understanding, we can all coexist without harm or hurt to another.