The Conceit of Fake Piety

In amenable conditions, it is easy for a building to fake structural integrity. When no cyclonic winds are oppressing the sticks and bark of a child’s carefully crafted teepee in the backyard, he may be lulled into the conceit of believing it really could stand strong, should the occasion demand it.

This principle applies to the spiritual integrity of the human heart. When subjected to nice words and smiling faces, it deceives both itself and others into the belief that it is “good”. In response to the nice words and smiling faces, it simply smiles and regurgitates its own niceties in response.

This is what is going on in Acts 13:42 – “The [Jewish] people kept pleading that these words might be spoken to them the next Sabbath.”

Under the right circumstances — and, as a previous installment of this Acts series has pointed out, Paul was being rather tactful in this speech — the Jewish unbelievers were good at faking a Christian response to the word of God.

But the true spiritual impact on their hearts went no deeper than a wet spot on a sidewalk. It only took a brief opportunity for envy (v45) to bring out all of their latent “works of the flesh” — those thorns which emerge from the dark chambers of a putrid heart and “defile a man” (Mark 7:21-23).

Even supposedly “God-fearing women of prominence” — those pious matriarchs whose bespectacled noses never seem to want length, and whose large houses positively repel untidiness — even those type of people, despite their polished exterior, could be prevailed upon to persecute legitimate men of God. They probably appealed to Paul’s often untamed rhetoric.

Don’t be a religious hypocrite. Don’t be the type of person who has all his ducks in a row, but can’t make them quack a single syllable of unpopular truth, or waddle down a single difficult road without immediately falling out of line.