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Vicious hypocrisy
Jesus excoriates hypocrites at every turn. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.” Many of Jesus' harshest words are for hypocrites.
Picking up on this, Dante drops hypocrites into the 8th Circle of Hell. And even in our society, in which moral relativism rules the day, hypocrisy is still regarded with disdain. So what virtue could there be to hypocrisy?
There's no question that putting on airs on the outside while being a heel on the inside is despicable—especially, as Jesus and Dante were concerned to show, when it’s in the name of religion. If you are content in your corrupt character but just want people to admire you—if all you care about is image—then there’s no virtue in that; it’s flat-out vicious, and worthy of rebuke.
Virtuous hypocrisy
There is a sense, however, in which hypocrisy can have a virtuous expression. Lutheran philosopher and ethicist Gilbert Meilaender, in his book The Theory and Practice of Virtue, makes just this point. Meilaender asks us to imagine a scenario in which you’re the beneficiary of someone else’s generosity. For whatever reason, though, you don’t feel much gratitude. Should you just be content to be an ingrate, lest you act grateful when you know full well you aren’t—and so be a hypocrite?
Meilaender suggests the opposite. He writes,
“It may be a salutary moral discipline for me to ask myself, ‘What would I do if I acted as a grateful person would act here?’...[This] may gradually make a better person out of me. I may learn to be grateful, not just to act out of concern for my self-image as a grateful person. In this sense, hypocrisy is not always bad in the moral life” (Theory and Practice of Virtue, pp. 14-15).
Understand his point here. He’s not saying it’s good to be a hypocrite, per se. What he is saying is that, inasmuch as any of us want to become something that we aren’t—kinder or gentler or more self-controlled—we do well to act as though we were. "Fake it 'till you make it," as is sometimes said.
C.S. Lewis made a similar point in his biography, Surprised by Joy: “The distinction between pretending you are better than you are and beginning to be better in reality is finer than moral sleuthhounds conceive.”
So that, by repeated practice over time, imperceptibly, you become the kind of person who one day receives that gift and with all genuineness responds from a grateful heart, "Thank you." That’s the point.
Cooperating with the Spirit
We can and should give to God our every concern, including our concerns and desires in sanctification. Moreover, no spiritual growth or maturity is possible apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. But we are not spectators to our sanctification; we are active participants.
The Formula of Concord (part of the Book of Concord, the Lutheran confessions) says this of the person who has received the new birth: “That person not only accepts grace, but he also cooperates with the Holy Spirit in the works that follow” (FC II.19).
So go ahead: discover the virtue of hypocrisy. Act like something you’re not. And who knows? By God’s grace, after awhile it may not be an act all.
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