When I think of such situations that is the subject of this thread, mainly preacher hypocrisy, I recall an tidbit I once read concerning the Queen Mary – the vessel. The Queen Mary was the largest ship to cross the oceans when it was launched in 1936. Through four decades and a world War she served until she was retired, anchored as a floating hotel and museum in Long Beach, California.
The interesting, to me, account of her remodeling was that during the conversion, her three massive smoke-stacks were taken off to be scraped down and repainted. But on the dock they crumbled. Nothing was left of the 3/4-inch steel plate from which the stacks had been formed. All that remained were more than thirty coats of paint that had been applied over the years. The steel had rusted away.
Somehow, it seems to me, men keep losing vital spiritual resources as they venture into acts that they know full well is against God and against their own souls but when exposure is not swift in coming to them they tend to “paint over” the rusting decay of their spirit and keep applying coat after coat until they are nothing more than walking shells of their former innocent selves. And the fearful thing is that people around them are unable to detect the inner “rust” because of the facade of “paint.” They are readily accepted and befriended by their peers – all the time knowing deep within that they are tragic failures.
However, sooner or later… they will be exposed, one way or another, and they will crumble on the dock – whether it be in the present or in the future. When Jesus called the Pharisees “whitewashed tombs,” he meant they had no substance, only an exterior appearance.
– jlg –