In Praise of Hypocrisy (sort of)

Red Green has a nice piece (in The Green Red Green, p.185): “I was driving in the middle of a pack of cares on the highway this week. We were all speeding. No problem. Suddenly, a police car pulled out onto the highway and we all hit the brakes, trying to ease our way down to the speed limit. Luckily, the cop didn’t notice. He just thought his car must have tremendous power to be able to catch up on all of us that quickly. So we all moved at the same speed in a huge mass joined together by guilt. Thankfully, the cop got off a couple of exits later and we could all get back to breaking the law. But we’re not criminals. We just think there are a couple of laws that you obey only when a policeman is present. So when officers are around we pretend we always drive at a safe speed. And they pretend to believe us. It’s kind of an unspoken agreement between the two sides—like not swearing in front of your kids and vice versa.”

I like this! Sometimes we think of hypocrisy as the worst vice one can have. But surely this kind of hypocrisy has a good side.

When parents and children agree tacitly not to swear in front of each other, they restate and embrace the ideal, even if they fail to live up to it. When drivers (and police) play the game RG describes, they restate and embrace the ideal of following rules designed to help us live with each other safely. We break the rules too, but we admit that others are important.

Sometimes people respond by saying: I’m going to be transparent and live the way I really feel. Transparency and authenticity are good traits; but the unspoken assumption behind this attitude may be destructive. There is the idea that we can cure hypocrisy by throwing out rules for living. How about if we embrace RG’s version of hypocrisy above, and then cure the more serious forms of hypocrisy by embracing the ideals they reflect?

One fact behind hypocrisy is precisely that we do know what is right and wrong, and whatever we say, we want to be good. So the good in hypocrisy is that it reminds us that right is right, and wrong is wrong. Debates about the precise shape of right and wrong should continue, but please don’t throw out the quest to become good in order to get rid of the vice of hypocrisy!

Being Sixty (2): The Minnemingo Effect

Getting older teaches something, something I should always have known. I am not in control. Of anything. Forty-two years ago on the day before my 18th birthday I floated down the Minnemingo (or Yellow Breeches Creek) in flood. Dale and I began our canoe trip celebrating the end of the semester. A half hour later he almost finished it grieving the end of life. He ran from bridge to bridge under which the Minnemingo flowed, wondering if I had drowned, while I held with desperate strength on to the overturned canoe. Then Dale found me, and some nearby fishermen pulled me out, a bigger catch than usual!

At 18 I felt little outward fear -- the stereotypical invincible teenager. I feel the danger in retrospect, but then, not so much. Today, safe in my chair and pen in hand, I feel the river sweep me on, out of control towards a destination I cannot properly guess. "I am a stranger here within a foreign land ... ." I know that the destination is heaven: Siyekhaya ezulwini! True enough; but I cannot guess clearly what that means.

Meanwhile the Minnemingo effect is at work. Time flows in flood, each moment washing over me remorselessly. Some moments are wonderful; some are quiet; some painful. they all sweep me down the Minnemingo towards the great river (the Susquehanna, in earthly geography; the Jordan in some greater dimension). And I'm still clinging to my little canoe with desperate strength.

Life is good. And I am not in control.

Turning Sixty (1)

I used to think that age was unimportant. I enjoyed having people think that I was younger than my actual age, a state of affairs that lasted until about age 50. I remember quite clearly the evening a group of faculty went out to a restaurant. The hostess asked if I qualified for the Seniors’ Discount: I had gone from about 40 to 60 overnight! (I think it was something to do with my hair – sandy or reddish one day; white the next.)

I remember turning 40. We were in Zimbabwe at the time. Mike Burgess and I are about the same age, so we comforted each other as we went over the hill together. I remember that I could joke about it because the truth was, I didn’t feel old. I felt like 30, not 40. Fifty was a different story: it was the beginning of feeling older too.

Lois gave me a wonderful present: 50 birthday celebrations for my 50th birthday. We finally finished the last one as part of my 60th! And of course I was in good health, able to enjoy life in so many different ways; but I felt the reality of years, whatever the case.

Now 60. I feel older indeed. I enjoy playing recreational soccer in a six a side soccer league in Winnipeg. I am able to climb many many steps up to my office in the seminary five days a week. I met my old friend, Mike, last year. We were both 59 this time, but the years have weighed more heavily on him than on me. So why should I feel anything other than an appreciation for the years I have had?

The process of aging is difficult for us to comprehend. North Americans like to control their destiny. We have built a society (both in Canada and in the United States) on controlling our fate. But you can’t control time. Day by day, year by year, time moves on. We say that age is only a state of mind; but the years continue to move, whatever one feels. Your state of mind may help you feel better about it, but it does not stop the process – or even slow it down.

I suspect that the particular piece of “60” that I need to come to terms with is precisely this remorseless march of days. Since you cannot stop or slow (or speed up or otherwise change) the movement of time, one choice remains: to embrace it.

I haven’t gotten there yet. I played my first 6-on-6 soccer game the week after my birthday – and scored my first goal as a 60-year old. (I made sure that the goalie, someone I’ve played against often enough, heard about that afterwards!) I am still climbing the stairs to the seminary. I am grateful, truly grateful, for health and strength, for the ability to keep reading and processing and working in my professional field. I want to embrace my age.

But the struggle remains. I wish sometimes that I could go back to 40 and stay there – at least physically. I have no desire to re-visit earlier stages of life generally. Once was enough. But our senses live within our physical body, and the body is what ages. My inner self still sometimes feels like the 15-year old who first moved from southern Africa to Pennsylvania, or the 20-year old at Messiah College, or any of the other stages between then and now. But the body ages, and the struggle remains.

If anyone can solve the life-cycle for me, let me know; but for now I continue to thank God for the health I have, the years he has given me, and the days ahead.