Many think a hypocrite is someone who fails his own moral standard. This cannot be the right definition because it would make everyone a hypocrite. We all have a moral standard we think we should live up to and fail that moral standard in one way or another.
To be a hypocrite is to be an actor. It’s a pretender. A hypocrite is one who professes to believe in a moral standard that they don’t actually believe in, or someone who has no intention of trying to live up to the moral standard they really do believe in.
Someone who sincerely believes X is wrong, and sincerely attempts to live by X but, nevertheless, fails to always do so is not a hypocrite. For example, a person might profess that it is wrong to lie, and thus does his best to avoid lying; nevertheless, in a time of trouble, he tells a lie to get out of trouble. After doing so, he repents to God and goes on trying to live a life of honesty. This man is guilty of a moral failure, but not of moral hypocrisy. The moral hypocrite is the one who says he believes in truth-telling but really doesn’t, or believes in truth-telling but consistently lies nonetheless.
I’ve always assumed that David had sex with Bathsheba once. However, the text says that when David first saw her, she was bathing to purify herself of her uncleanness (2 Sam 11:1-5). This is referring to the bathing a woman would undergo after her menstrual cycle ended. Since one is least fertile immediately following menstruation, this suggests that David’s fling with Bathsheba was no one-night stand. Bathsheba probably remained with David for a number of days before returning to her house, during which they had sexual relations multiple times. If so, David’s sin was not a one-time mistake, but an ongoing sin.
Here’s how a parenthetical statement can provide interesting insights about the provenance of a Biblical book. Mk 15:21 says, “And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.”
I posed a moral dilemma to a few Christian thinkers, but none were able to provide a fully satisfactory answer. While I think most ended up at the right conclusion, no one could really articulate the moral principles used to come to that conclusion. So I thought I would pose the dilemma to AI and see what it had to say. Could it provide any additional insights into Christian moral reasoning? I chose to use ChatGPT and Gemini. I will reproduce the chats below for your reading pleasure, but I would like to make several observations first.
Yesterday was the actual day Jesus ascended into heaven 1,992 years ago. To coincide with this momentous day, I published my first episode exploring the theological and practical significance of the ascension. 
Trinitarians typically baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit based on Matthew 28:19. In contrast, Oneness Pentecostals (OPs) typically baptize in the name of Jesus Christ based on Acts and the epistles. Which is the proper baptismal formula?
My podcast series on the resurrection is still going strong. I’ve recently started my last sub-series within the larger series, focused this time on the Shroud of Turin. If you have never heard of it before, it’s the purported burial cloth of Jesus Christ, bearing the image of a crucified man. Many Protestants have dismissed it as a fake Catholic relic, and most non-Christians have dismissed it as a medieval forgery due to carbon dating tests in the 1980s. However, interest in the Shroud has not gone away, and for good reason. There is much more to the story. In this sub-series, I’m examining the mountains of evidence for its authenticity, and I’ll address questions related to dating, and more.
We are all searching for significance. We want to believe that our life matters. We want to feel like we are special. We want to know that our life has made a difference in this world. That’s why people seek to do extraordinary things. It’s why people seek fame. What we need to recognize is that we are already significant. We are made in the image of God. Our significance is rooted in God. We will never truly feel significant until we are in a close relationship with God.
I’ve begun a new podcast series on the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. The series will not only cover the historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection, but also explore alternative (naturalistic) explanations, the evidence for Jesus’ existence, the theological and practical significance of the resurrection, questions and objections, our own future resurrection, an examination of the Shroud of Turin, and a harmonization of the gospel accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Four years ago, I wrote a post titled “
A lot of modern evangelism focuses on the love God. We rarely hear it preached that God is angry at us because of our moral rebellion, and we rarely hear about the coming judgment. And yet, when you look at what the early church preached in Acts, it was a lot about judgment and not a word about the love of God or inviting people to have a relationship with God (see 
An increasing number of professing Christians will acknowledge that the Bible is opposed to some practice, but then claim that God has evolved regarding the issue and the Spirit is speaking something different to the church today. Apart from the epistemological problems that such a claim entails, isn’t it interesting that the Spirit is always being more permissive today (just like our culture)? That’s quite strange, because when God has given new revelation in the past, it was not in the direction of moral permissiveness, but in the direction of moral stringency.
The truth of a doctrine is not determined by its age or by a historical consensus, and yet we naturally assign great weight to doctrinal tradition. After all, there’s something to be said for a historical consensus, and it should not be dismissed lightly. We should not ignore the understanding and insights of the majority who have preceded us. And in general, we should not dismiss a doctrinal tradition unless we have compelling reasons to do so.
The pope has officially jumped the shark. While a number of mainline Protestant denominations and prominent Evangelical pastors have changed their position on homosexuality and same-sex marriage in recent years, I never expected that the Catholic Church would do so. On Monday, the pope issued a declaration (
Most people would define a hypocrite as someone who does something that they claim is wrong. That can’t be the right definition, however, because it would consign everyone to being a hypocrite. Everyone sins, which means everyone who believes in morality acts in ways that is contrary to morality. That would make everyone a hypocrite. If your definition of hypocrite turns every person into a hypocrite, then your definition is not a meaningful definition. Something is wrong with the definition. A hypocrite is not someone who fails to live up to their moral ideals, but someone who falsely professes to believe in such ideals in the first place. A hypocrite is an actor.
“Hate” is considered a bad word these days. The culture tells us that we should not hate. We have even criminalized hate in the form of “hate crimes.” Many people are under the impression that this attitude toward hate is rooted in Judeo-Christian theology – that the Bible is opposed to all hate. This is not true. While the Bible does condemn certain expressions of hate (e.g. Lev 19:17), it actually teaches us to hate. It’s a matter of who or what we should hate.
Thinking to Believe 