When charity can look like hypocrisy

CHARITY can certainly, at least on some occasions, look and feel like hypocrisy. But we should not worry too much about that. That’s simply because charity often demands or even pressures us to appear or even to do something opposed to what we feel inside.

The simple explanation is that even in our original, sinless state of humanity, there is already some kind of tension among the different parts that we are made of. Our thoughts and desires may not go together well with our feelings and preferences.

This, without taking into consideration that we are meant to aim for a supernatural goal—our union with God. Thus, there will always be some kind of tension and awkwardness involved here.

But this, again, should not worry us too much. God will do everything to make what he wants from us to be achieved. All that is needed is our cooperation, which in turn requires of us humility, because pride is a big obstacle in our pursuit for growth in charity as in any other virtue.

So, in our dealings with others, we should expect some kind of opposition within ourselves that can give rise to this phenomenon of charity looking like hypocrisy. We force ourselves to smile even if we are mad, to speak well even if we are at the brink of lambasting someone.

This should come as no surprise. Those efforts to live charity despite contradicting sentiments are a best proof of charity itself. In time, we will learn to deal with that situation, like a baby learning the different functions of man.

And this condition of our human nature is made worse because of sin and its effects. Here we are not dealing only with normal tension and opposition, but with some radical contradictions that were once expressed graphically by St. Paul.

“For the good which I will, I do not. But the evil which I will not, that I do,” says St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans (7,19). This is a common experience that should not plunge us into sadness and despair, because there is always hope. There is always a way out of this predicament.

God’s grace is never lacking. And we have to remember always that God has given us everything already for us to be able to live charity at its fullest. We have to strengthen this truth of faith.

What we have to do is remain calm, not to get nervous, and to strengthen our faith and love of God. If we are bothered by this predicament, the best thing to do is to go and run to our Lord, to ask for help, like those gospel characters who, helpless in their predicaments, went to Christ for a cure or for compassion.

We should not run away from him, and suffer things by ourselves. This would be a dangerous situation, which befell those unfortunate characters in the Bible who instead of going to God, asking for pardon and help, preferred to flee from God and consummate their alienation from God and from others.

We need to push ourselves to go to Christ, never getting satisfied with some human stop-gap measures, like psychologizing ourselves into believing that it would just be alright, etc. We have to take Christ’s words seriously: “Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you,” since we tend to take this duty to run to God for granted.

We should also remember that when we experience some internal opposition in our effort to live charity, it is because God wants us to raise our charity to another level. We should not forget that charity, being the highest virtue, is always in search for improvement, for perfection.

With these contradicting sentiments, God is actually pointing out to us certain areas and aspects in our life—out attitudes, our understanding of people and things, etc.—that need to be purified. They are a good occasion for us to have healing and strengthening of our spiritual life.

It would also be good if we avail of the traditional practice of spiritual direction where we confide to a trusted and competent person our very personal situation as to how to correspond to the growing and endless demands of charity.

Everyone actually needs this kind of help, since no one is a good spiritual director of oneself. We tend to overlook many things when it comes to our own personal struggles in charity.

Let’s hope that we can outgrow the conflicting aspects of charity with God’s grace and our efforts.