I almost didn’t go to the gym today. 

It wasn’t because I didn’t need to; I did. 

It wasn’t because the equipment isn’t great; it is.

The reason I almost didn’t go to the gym today was because of the hypocrites that go there.

Let me explain.

While I was driving in town the other day I saw a guy that goes to the same gym as I do walking into a donut shop. I thought maybe he had mistakenly gone into the wrong place and was ready to give him the benefit of the doubt until I saw him walk out with a box of donuts. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Here is a guy that puts on his work out clothes and is pumping iron with his “gym friends” in the early morning hours and dunking donuts with his wife just a few moments later. “What a pretender”, I thought to myself as I drove on my way. “He acts all healthy at the gym and acts totally different outside the gym.  If that’s the kind of people who go to the gym, I reasoned, there was really no point in going to such a place”.   

Hypocrite.

Then I remembered something important that I had almost forgotten. I remembered the reason I got up nearly every morning and went to the gym myself was not because I was in perfect health but rather because I wanted to be. 

Although I have been going to the gym for six months myself I am still not in perfect shape.  In fact, I think it would be more fitting (pun intended) to say that I’m a work in progress and always will be. The same can be said of the guy that was working on his 12 pack abs earlier in the morning and who is now working on his dozen of donuts. It’s not so much that he is pretending to be something he’s not but rather that he is striving to be something that he wants to be but has yet to become.  In my mind that makes him less of a hypocrite and more of a hero. 

Let me transition for just a moment. 

I often hear many people say the reason they don’t want to go to church is because of all the hypocrites there. I won’t argue the fact that hypocrites can be found at church. There are those that go to church only to play the part but once they leave the church building the mask comes off and the real person is made visible. These are people who have no desire to change only a desire to have a “form of godliness while denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5 NIV).

Hypocrites can be found at church. 

I would suggest, however, that maybe they are not as many in number as we think. I would contend that some that are labeled as hypocrites are really imperfect people that are still in the process of being perfected in their faith. 

Week after week they come to church not because they think they are in perfect spiritual health but rather because they want to be. They come to build their spiritual muscles and they leave with the expectation that they will exercise their faith at work, at school, and in their neighborhood. They desire to live for God and most of the time they do but sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they leave the church building and minutes later walk into an argument.

An argument over heard by someone else; an argument that draws this conclusion: hypocrite. 

Here’s a person that put on their church clothes and was talking Jesus in the morning and is talking down to his neighbor in the afternoon. “If that is the kind of people who go to church”, they reason, “there is really no point in going to such a place”.

On the contrary.

The kind of people that go to church is the whole point of going to such a place.

The kind of people that go to church are, by and large, those who recognize their imperfections. 

Imperfect people go to church to worship the One who is perfect, Jesus Christ, and to call upon Him to do a work of grace in their heart that purifies their imperfections.

They go not because they are pretending to be something they’re not but rather because they are striving to be something that they want to be but have yet to become.  In my mind that makes the person that goes to church less of a hypocrite and more of a hero. 

So tomorrow I will go to the gym and Sunday I will go to church. I will go not expecting to find people in perfect physical health or spiritual health at either place but rather people on a journey toward that end.

©2015 Travis L. Edwards. All Rights Reserved.