Andy -- The Pharisee-Hypocrite

There was one guy in the CR meetings, Andy, who really made me mad. This guy presumed to tell me how to live my life, but he would admit to the group that he was communicating with other women on Facebook, that he had lost his job, that he was still smoking pot, and feared that he would not be able to get a job.

This  man admitted in the meetings that he was cheating on his wife, and that he was doing drugs, yet he would crow in the general meetings that " he had a big ego". Indeed he did. This man was not skilled in righteousness, as no one else was, or none of us would have ended up in that meeting in the first place!

This guy would go on and on about how he was abused as a kid, yet he felt more than justified to tell me how to live my life. He talked about the hard times he had as a kid, the difficulties that he had with his wife, and yet he presumed upon himself to be a marriage counselor at his church! Talk about rank hypocrisy!

Is that not part of the curse of the law? We find ourselves justifying ourselves yet looking for the faults in everyone else! It just never ends for those who are under the law:

"Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal?" (Romans 2: 21)

Jesus rebuked this inherent, inevitable hypocrisy in the Sermon on the Mount:

"Judge not, that ye be not judged." (Matthew 7: 1)

We are called to judge righteous judgment (John 7: 24) and restore a brother to his standing in liberty and grace when he is caught in a trespass (Galatians 6: 1).

Back to Andy, I was so caught up in the dissimulation of this CR program, it was ridiculous. I wanted some direction, some help in my life. This guy had actually counseled me to write off my mother "just because she did not go to church." Of course, the real issue was that she had imbibed me with this AA nonsense from a young age, and the "program" was working me to death.

I was so lost at that point, convinced that I needed direction of some kind from someone else, yet this guy, this lout, turned out to have no clout whatsoever.

This guy was so full of himself, and how else could he be? The law brings upon people the sense that they mus measure up, and they must measure up in their own efforts, and so in brazen insecurity they parade around and tell other people how to live their lives!

The more that this guy shared his stories in the meetings, the more often I would walk away from them. It was a bunch of nonsense. I could not stand to listen to that man go on and on about all the things that he had been up to for the past week, and the man had no intention of living differently. When he started sharing, I just had to walk out of the meeting so that I did not have to listen to that nonsense. If anyone needed a does of 1 Corinthians 6 -- Know ye not, know ye not, know ye not, it was Andy.

This is the shame that CR meetings turn into, where "sick" people keep each other sick by telling each other that they are "OK" because they came to the meeting that week.

Instead hanging out with the sick, let us seek the Kingdom and His Righteousness, which He has more than readily provided for us through the Holy Spirit (Matthew 6: 33).

This guy had a lot going for him, but not based on the empty notion that he could get his act together on his own. The idea that he could counsel other people on marriage when he actively cheated on his wife in his mind -- this escapes all understanding.

Yet this is the nasty reality of men and women who insist on living by the law instead of resting in the grace of God.