All Posts Tagged With: "downtrodden"

“Hypocrisy” is kind of a strange word. It’s made up of two Greek words, “hypo,” meaning “under,” and “krisis,” which has to do with judging or condemning. The word came to mean “answerer.” The puzzle is how those two basic words got together to mean that and then eventually “one who plays a part, pretends” (Webster’s Unabridged). In the ancient Greek theater, it was probably Aeschylus who added a second actor. He was known as the “hypocrites” because he answered the protagonist. In doing so, he wore a mask, and that is undoubtedly where our idea of the hypocrite as one who is one thing and pretends to be another comes from. The words spoken by that second actor are not his, nor are they words he might be expected to speak in the marketplace. They are the words of Aeschylus, Sophocles or some other dramatist. Our modern hypocrite is a person who pronounces words from behind a mask, words that do not at all reflect what that person truly is or believes.

A minister who claims to represent the God of the Bible, who is described as a God of love, and then spews out venomous hatred, is a prime example. Also, I remember a championship basketball player at a university where I taught who spoke at a junior high school and urged the children there not to take drugs. Two weeks later he was arrested for dealing drugs. That is also a perfect example. The politician who sits down with his or her handlers to ask what stance will influence the most people favorably, regardless of his or her personal views, is also a hypocrite, as is one who pretends to agonize over the poor and downtrodden but lives the life of an elitist.

Our word “person” also comes from Classical Greek theater and, somewhat ironically, means “mask.” In fact, in dealing with prominent figures in politics, sports or entertainment, we sometimes ask, “Who is the person behind the mask?” The opposite of hypocrisy is something called integrity. The person who possesses and practices it is one who is an integral whole, whose appearance and internal reality are of a piece.