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In late of the latest sex scandal to strike in the Christian online space, Joe examines whether all Christians are hypocrites and if Catholic teaching on sexuality is too high.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer and I want to talk about hypocrisy, particularly sexual hypocrisy. As you might have already heard, there’s a scandal that Milo OUIs broke this week involving the right-wing podcaster. Elijah Schaeffer, who it turns out has been seemingly a serial adulterer, and one of the women that he cheated on his wife with is Sarah Stock, who is a Catholic convert and an online influencer who presented a sort of image of sexual purity online and not unreasonably. This has led to charges of hypocrisy, and I think that’s something we as Christians should take very seriously because after all, the issue with hypocrisy isn’t just that we solely our own name or that we humiliate our spouses and our children. It’s also that we can do a real disservice to God. St. Paul warns in Romans chapter two, you who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law for as it is written, the name of God as blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.
And I want you to notice that Paul calls out hypocrisy because I know one of the reactions we can have when we see people who we view on our side of things being hypocritical is to just try to ignore it because they’re saying the right things, even if they’re not living according to them. But Paul’s point is, no, you actually are not doing God a service when you try to impose a high standard on everyone else while living with a very different standard yourself. So how do we avoid doing that? Because let’s be very clear, Christian sexual morality is a high bar, and also the higher the bar is on anything, the easier it is to be a hypocrite. If you’re a health nut and somebody finds out that you regularly smoke, that’s hypocritical in a way that somebody who doesn’t care about health smoking isn’t.
Or if you’re an environmentalist and it turns out you’re throwing your batteries into the ocean, that’s a bigger scandal than somebody else doing the same thing. Don’t throw your batteries into the ocean. And so as Christians, when we have a high bar for sexual morality and morality in general, it’s easier to be hypocrites. So how do we avoid that? One answer would just be, well, maybe the bar is too high. So let’s talk about this. Is Christian sexual morality unrealistically high? And I think the first thing that should be said is it is high and it’s high enough that it can be kind of distressing and high enough that there’s a good chance you’re going to fall short of it. Now, sometimes people will point out how high it is for certain groups. So I was recently asked about this actually this week in terms of people with same sex attraction and somebody else in the comments also accused Christians of tying heavy burdens on people by telling them, you absolutely must surrender any hope you have of living a normal life or finding love and submit to lifelong shame and loneliness, or go to hell if they’re gay.
Now, I don’t think that’s a good understanding of the Christian call to chastity. I don’t think it is actually a call to lifelong shame and loneliness, but I can understand why people think it is. And the kernel of truth expressed there is that, yeah, this is a radical call. All I would say is it’s not that we’re saying there’s a high bar for people with same sex attraction. We’re saying there’s a high bar for everyone and also that it’s understandable if you sometimes fall short of that bar. So let’s talk about both those things First, the fact that the bar is high is actually very clear in the Bible itself. From Jesus’s own words, Jesus talks about divorce and remarriage. So he’s not even talking about people with same sex attraction. He’s not just talking about people acting outside of marriage or something like that.
No, even within marriage, there’s a radical call, and part of that radical call is that marriage is for life. And so if you get divorced and remarried, he says, except for cause of porneia, that doesn’t mean adultery, but we’re going to leave that aside for today. If you get divorced and remarried, he says, you’re guilty of the sin of adultery. Now, that’s big. And he also says, if you marry a divorced woman, you’re involved in this sin of adultery. So this is a hard teaching, and the disciples call him out for how hard this teaching is. They say, if such is the case of a man with his wife, it’s not expedient to marry. And Jesus doesn’t actually disagree with him. He recognizes this bar might sound so high that you just think it’s not even worth trying. He doesn’t say that. But he also doesn’t dispute that this is so high that they feel like giving up.
And so he introduces them to another way they can live out their sexuality, which is celibacy. Now, he uses here the image of a eunuch, which might be an image lost to some people today in old timey kingdoms, you would sometimes have situations where the ruler had castrated men who surrounded him, and the reason they were castrated is they wouldn’t form their own dynasty. And it’s a kind of a ghastly image. But Jesus uses this as the image for celibacy. He says they’re a eunuchs who are so from birth, eunuch have been made so by men, and there are eunuch who’ve made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who’s able to receive this, let him receive it. But notice even in that wording, he’s suggesting this is a high standard, and the fact that he’s talking about celibacy in such extreme terms that he’s comparing it to castration, this is a recognition by our Lord.
Yet this is a high bar. So marriage is hard, celibacy is hard. Being single is hard. Being same-sex attracted is hard. All of those are hard. The bar is high. That’s not the question. But there is a question of, well, is it too high? And I think here it’s worth considering. Why do we make such a big deal about sex and about sexuality? Because it’s easy for people on the outside to just be like, you guys are obsessed. It’s just sex. Why do you guys hate sex so much? And why do you have such big families? And we haven’t thought about how those two things could fit together. But the reality is, even if you’re not religious, you should be able to understand why we make such a big deal about sexuality because this sexual drive is this powerful force and it has to be a powerful force.
The future of the species depends upon it. And so it’s often kind of dialed up to 11, maybe not for everybody, but for a lot of people it is. And if it’s not used carefully, it can lead to a lot of damage. This is just really scratching the surface, but let’s just consider the societal damage caused by reckless misuse of sexuality. You’ve got things like the huge rates nearly doubled since 1968 of children who are raised in homes without their mom and dad. Now, only about 70% of kids growing up in the US right now live with two parents. And even that number is actually kind of artificially high because that doesn’t mean those are their mom and dad. That could be their mom and their stepdad, their stepdad and stepmom, their dad and their stepmom, any number, it could be any number of situations.
This is just are there two parents in the house? And even by that relatively low standard, only about seven in 10 households fit the bill there. And you could imagine why, because there are a lot of people engaging in sex outside of marriage. The woman gets pregnant, the man moves on, maybe he’s already gone, and so she’s left raising the kid alone, and this is bad all over. It’s been particularly pernicious in the black community where only a little more than a third of children have two parents in the house or two married parents in the house is another 3% have two unmarried parents in the house. But even in that situation, remember, so that’s 40%, that’s still too high because a lot of those are not mom and dad. It’s remarriage situations which are complicated in their own right. It’s more likely that they’re living just with mom.
And I don’t say this to shame anybody, but there’s any number of reasons people can get involved in this situation and single moms doing their best. I support that. But let’s be really clear. As Melissa Kearney points out in a Time Magazine article, the evidence is clear even if the punchline’s uncomfortable, children are more likely to thrive behaviorally and academically, ultimately in the labor market and adult life if they grow up with the advantages of a two parent home. Numerous academic studies confirm that children raised in married parent homes are less likely to get in trouble in school or with the law. They’re more likely to graduate high school and college. They’re more likely to have higher income and be married themselves as adults. Research suggests that boys are especially disadvantaged by the absence of dads from their homes. The data is pretty overwhelming, pretty undeniable.
And so when you think about misusing sex in such a way that children are being brought into the world out of wedlock, you are doing real damage to those kids, whether we want to say that or not, and that’s just the children who make it to birth. Of course, about a million kids a year in the US are aborted, which almost the entirety of that number would go away if people were more sexually responsible. Now with the overturning of Roe v Wade, you might imagine that situation got better, but it actually didn’t. The FDA has approved more chemical abortion drugs, and so the number of abortions in the US has actually gone up since sad DA’s decision. It hasn’t gone down. So about a million kids a year are dying before birth. There were also at the height, about 2 million people dying from AIDS around the world.
Now, sexual deviancy, sodomy and sex outside of marriage are not the only way those things spread, but they were major drivers and continue to be major drivers. So the sheer number of people whose lives are destroyed, whether it’s relationships breaking down, marriages, breaking down, or literally just getting a disease and dying or killing their own children, those numbers are staggering. In terms of cheating, which is obviously relevant to today’s conversation, there are huge rates of people who admit to infidelity from their spouse. Men admit to it more often than women do, and it is closely linked to the breakdown of marriage. So fewer than 50% of women who admit to having cheated Argo still married. It’s about 64% for men. But again, that number seems to include remarriage as well. Those are all some of the downsides to the misuse of sexuality. But if sex was just a bad thing, it would not be a gift we were given by God.
It wouldn’t be part. Sex is not just a thing that exists to tempt us. It’s not just a trap. The reality is these sexual powers you have are the key to the future that all of us exist on this planet because of the use of sexuality, hopefully a responsible use of sexuality, a use of sexuality that brings children into the world and a loving, caring home where they can thrive. Not always that, but that’s the ideal. And you can see the good and the beauty of sexuality in those contexts. It’s also a way in which the two become one that the partners show love for one another. So we don’t want to minimize or diminish any of those authentic goods. We can talk about the millions of people who’ve died from everything from aids to abortion because of the misuse of sexuality. We can talk about the horrors inflicted with sexual violence and abuse, but we should also recognize the billions of people who exist because of the use of sexuality.
So that takeaway here shouldn’t be sex is bad. The takeaway here should be sex is powerful. There’s a line that Ray Orland Jr. Says in his book Marriage and the Mystery of the gospel where he says, sex is like fire in the fireplace. It keeps us warm outside the fireplace, it burns the house down. And I love that description. I think that accurately captures that. The reason we have a high bar for sexuality is because it’s powerful. It’s the same reason we have a high bar for driving a car or owning a gun or any, because even though there are authentic ways, those things can be used that are productive, whether it’s hunting or driving to school. We also recognize if they get misused, real damage can be caused. So we want to treat sex with the responsibility that a powerful tool and a powerful gift deserves.
But of course, as I said, that creates a lot of room for hypocrisy because the higher the bar is, the easier it is to fall short of that bar in here. I think it’s important to call out what hypocrisy is and isn’t. So when the Bible uses the word hypocrisy, it’s actually the same Greek word that our modern hypocrisy comes from. The word hypocrisy comes from the Greek, and in both cases that word it has a really bizarre etymology and kind of the evolution over time, but it meant an actor, somebody who is playing a part that isn’t real. So notice if you’ve got a high standard of excellence and you sometimes fall short of that high standard of excellence, that’s not hypocrisy. That’s just having a high standard of excellence. If you say, I’m going to exercise five days a week, and some days you aren’t able to do it, or maybe some days you slack off, that’s not hypocrisy.
You’ve set a high bar for yourself and you haven’t met it. But if you are exercising one day a week and you find out somebody else is exercising three days a week and you start insulting them for not going all five days like you agreed, then it becomes hypocrisy because now you’re playing a part. You’re pretending to be somebody that you’re not. So we’re going to talk about how we should address that because there’s a few ways we could respond to this because one way people are going to just say, lower the bar, and that’s not the right answer because it’s true. You can avoid any room for hypocrisy if you have no standards for yourself, if you’ve got no moral standards, if you’ve got no standard of excellence, you’re not going to fall short of the mark. But that’s not to your credit. Another way is to just divulge everything and you just say, yep, I’m guilty of all of this stuff.
And you go to the radical extreme there. It is true. You’re not an actor, but you’re maybe over divulging. So think about this in the context of parenting. I think about things a lot in the context of parenting. When you’re a parent, you regularly are telling your kids not to do things that you did when you were their age, and that’s true at all ages. That’s true with little kids. It’s true in bigger ways when they’re teenagers. The mistakes you’ve made, and there’s a couple postures you can take. One is to say, well, I’ve got no leg to stand on because I used to do that, and so I’m not going to have any standards for my kids bad idea. Another is to whitewash your own past and pretend you didn’t make any mistakes. That’s also a bad idea, but you don’t want to jump to the opposite extreme of sharing inappropriate levels of detail about past failings with your kids.
And similarly, if you’re someone who is in an online role or a public role of any kind, you don’t have to take the confessional role of dissent. Here’s everything I’ve ever done. In fact, the catechism warns about that. Paragraph 24 89 says, charity and respect for the truth should dictate the response to every request for information or communication. The good and safety of others respect for privacy and the common good are sufficient reasons for being silent about what ought not to be known or for making use of a discreet language. In other words, you don’t have to share every sorted detail of your past if doing so is going to humiliate your loved ones or other people involved in the story, et cetera. You don’t have to do that. You also don’t get to lie about it. The duty to avoid scandal often commands strict discretion.
No one is bound to reveal the truth to someone who does not have the right to know it. So the point here is not Elijah and Sarah should have gone on podcasts and talked all about this affair that they’d had. No, that’s not the argument. So how should we approach these questions? How do we solve this kind of problem of hypocrisy? And St. Augustine gives really helpful advice where he breaks it down into different groups. So this is in his commentary in the Sermon on the Mount because Jesus talks about hypocrisy and he says, for to make complaint against vices is the duty of good and benevolent men. So notice that this is our starting point. You have a moral duty to call out evil. And so if you’re so afraid of being labeled a hypocrite that you just shut up about moral evil, then you’re falling short of your duty as a good and benevolent man.
And when bad men do it, they’re acting apart, which does not belong to them. So okay, good men have a duty to call out evil. Bad men will also call out evil, but when they’re doing it, they’re just playing a role. Remember, an actor is a hypocrite. A hypocrite is an actor just like hypocrites who conceal under a mask what they are and show themselves often a mask. What? They’re not under the designation hypocrites. Therefore, you were to understand pretenders. So again, remember, this isn’t saying I strive for this goal. I sometimes fall short. But I think it’s a good goal and you should strive for it too. It’s achieving this goal when really I’m not. And so St. Augustine says, we must ply and cautiously watch so that when necessity shall compel us to find fault or rebuke anybody, we can reflect first whether default is something we’ve never dealt with, something that we used to struggle with, but now we’re free of or something that we’re still struggling with secretly.
And so he’s going to give different advice to each of those three groups. So first he says, if we’ve never had it, if somebody is struggling with a sin that you’re just not drawn to or a sin you’ve never fallen into, let us reflect that we are men. We might’ve had it. In other words, take that kind of there, but for the grace of God go, I approach to it that’s spiritually healthy. Second, if we’ve dealt with this sin in the past, now we’re free from it. Let the common infirmity touch the memory that not hatred, but pity may go before that fault finding or administering of rebuke. So take an attitude of genuine sympathy and pity for the other person, not of just condemnation and hatred, so that whether it shall serve for the conversion of him on whose account we do it, or for his perversion, the issue’s uncertain, we at least from the singleness of our eye may be free from care.
In other words, you’re at least free from not being a hypocrite. Maybe they won’t receive it. Maybe you have to have a hard conversation with somebody. Maybe you can say, I used to drink too much and I’m worried about your drinking. Maybe you can say, I used to struggle with this sexual sin and it seems like you might be falling into it. Let me tell you some of the things. But you’re approaching from an attitude of pity, not of condemnation. Now, they might reject that they might just get worse, they might double down and it might backfire, but you’re not guilty of the charge of hypocrisy in that situation. So he says, if over on reflection, this is the third group, we find ourselves involved in the same fault as he’s whom we were preparing to censure, let us not censure nor rebuke, but yet let us mourn deeply over the case and let us invite him not to obey us, but to join us in a common effort.
In other words, there are some people who are struggling with sexual sin right now who are hypocritically jumping on these public figures for being hypocrites. And they can be right about the charge of hypocrisy and maybe blind to it in themselves, and that what should be happening, you need to get your act together, but we need to get our act together and then we can join in this common effort towards whatever sin it is. We’re struggling with sexual sin or addiction or whatever. It’s that’s the idea. So it’s good to have high moral standard, and it’s really important in the area of sexuality to have a high moral standard. The amount of damage you can do spiritually and socially from misusing your sexual faculty, the amount of relational damage, emotional damage, societal damage you can do is incalculable. So it’s important to have those high standards and also to recognize with the spirit of mercy that anytime you have high standards, some people are going to fall short of them, and that we should respond to that with a spirit of generosity, of pity and of mercy. Not pretending the sin isn’t a sin, not pretending it’s not a problem, but knowing how to address it in an appropriate way so we can thank God if we’ve never been drawn into that sin so that we can approach with pity if it’s a sin that we’ve dealt with in the past or so that we can take it as a kind of wake up call to deal with our own sin. The log in our own eyes before we deal with the speck in our neighbors. For Shameless. Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.