The Reverse Pharisee

There are some Christians with legitimate street cred. Picture the tatted-up guy who joined a gang when he was eight, sold drugs by twelve, got shot twice, for sure capped somebody else, spent half his adult life drunk or high, and eventually landed in prison. Then something happened. He found Jesus in a cell, and before he got out, he'd already led eighteen other inmates to Christ. He walked through the prison gates with five dollars, a garbage bag full of clothes, and nowhere to go. Twenty years later, the homeless ministry he started out of the trunk of his car operates in six states.

When that guy starts talking about addiction, prison, violence, homelessness, or finding Jesus at rock bottom, you sit up in your seat. That's street cred. He earned it, and more importantly, he doesn't need to tell you he has it. For the older adults in the crowd, it's like how the Fonz never had to say he was cool. It was obvious.

But then there's this other guy. He's forty-seven with a dad bod and a T-shirt one size smaller than it needs to be, rocking the logo of some famous band only the kids know about. His baseball cap is turned backwards, so you know he means business. He spins a chair around, straddles it and says, “Listen, man. I get it.” After a riveting ten-minute monologue, we eventually find out he smoked a joint once in college.

This is not street cred. This is cosplay.

Somewhere along the way, the modern church seems to have developed an appetite for the second guy. We call it authenticity, relatability, or “meeting people where they are.” In reality, it's just forced street cred. In church leadership, forced street cred isn't just hopelessly lame; it can also produce some remarkably poor judgment.

Consider a woman whose marriage is falling apart. She goes to church and, after the service, opens up to someone serving on the prayer team. They talk for a while, numbers are exchanged, and the prayer team member offers to continue the conversation later. They meet again, this time for margaritas.

I'm not hating on the margaritas. I'm concerned about the lack of judgment.

Two friends meeting for drinks is unremarkable. This relationship, however, didn't begin as two friends deciding to grab margaritas. It began when a hurting woman approached someone serving in a church ministry because her marriage was collapsing. That changes the context.

Maybe there was no particular thought behind choosing drinks. Nobody can crawl inside another person's head and assign motives. But it does raise a worthwhile question: has Christian culture become so preoccupied with being relatable that even those entrusted with ministry sometimes feel a need to demonstrate it? Does a drink across the table somehow communicate, “Relax, I'm not one of those church people. I'm on your level. You can talk to me”?

Whatever the motivation, demonstrating relatability should never outrank exercising wisdom.

In this particular situation, when church leadership became aware of what had happened, they agreed that someone representing the prayer team shouldn't be counseling or ministering to someone over alcohol and sought to address it. That matters too. A Reverse Pharisee inside a church doesn't necessarily make it a Reverse Pharisee church. People exercise poor judgment. Volunteers make mistakes. People put in positions of power make mistakes. The more revealing question is what leadership does when it happens. A church willing to recognize poor judgment and correct it deserves credit for doing exactly that.

Healthy church leadership should be willing to confront the old Pharisee. It should be just as willing to confront the Reverse Pharisee.

There is nothing wrong with having a past. Quite the opposite at times. Some of the most compelling Christian testimonies come from people who have extraordinary ones: the addict who got clean, the prisoner who found Christ, the gang member who walked away, the prostitute who rebuilt her life, the homeless man who eventually devoted his life to helping other homeless people. When those people say, “I know what this feels like,” sometimes they really do. Perhaps the most famous, shall we say, “bad” past turnaround story is Paul's one-eighty from persecutor to Apostle.

That's authenticity, and it doesn't require props. They don't need to sprinkle a little profanity into the sermon or Sunday School class so everybody knows they aren't uptight. They don't need to casually mention the drugs they once tried or make sure everyone notices what music they listen to. There is no reason for a church leader to try and conform themselves into being relatable versus being religious. Come to think of it, the Bible is crystal clear on this. In Romans 12:2 Paul writes: “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”

There is something strange about a perfectly ordinary suburban Christian feeling as though being a perfectly ordinary suburban Christian leaves him unqualified to talk to anybody outside his bubble. So he recalls his old drama class days from high school and starts rehearsing his role. Maybe he drinks a little more conspicuously. Maybe he makes sure you know what bands he listens to. Maybe he deploys a strategically placed swear word or tells you about the wildest thing he ever did, which really wasn't all that wild. Maybe he turns the hat backwards and the chair around. The gamer term “try hard” comes to mind, all in an attempt to broadcast that he isn't sheltered. He's not naïve. He's not one of those Christians. He's lived and he totally gets you.

But perhaps he doesn't get anybody. Maybe he was a three-nights-a-week churchgoer all his life, and what is so wrong with that that he needs to mask it with a fake persona? You don't need to have been addicted to heroin to love a heroin addict. You don't need an inmate number to minister to a prisoner. You don't need a divorce to help someone whose marriage is collapsing, and you certainly don't need to manufacture a little worldliness so the person across the table believes you're qualified to understand them.

Sometimes the most authentic thing a person can say is, “I haven't been where you've been, but I'll sit here with you.” There is something wonderfully authentic about not pretending to be more interesting than you are.

Jesus had some famously harsh words for Pharisees, but their problem wasn't simply that they behaved themselves, knew Scripture, or took religion seriously. Their righteousness had become a performance. They needed people to see it. They prayed where people could notice them praying, advertised their religious devotion, and allowed their separation from sinners to become part of their spiritual résumé.

The message was difficult to miss: Look how holy I am. Look how different I am from them. You should listen to me because I'm clearly more righteous than you.

Christians have spent two thousand years being warned about becoming that guy for good reason. But for whatever reason, along the way we may have created his mirror image: the Reverse Pharisee.

He doesn't need you to know how separated from the world he is. He needs you to know how comfortable in the world he is. The old Pharisee advertised holiness; the Reverse Pharisee advertises worldliness. Look how un-churchy I am. Look how comfortable I am around this stuff. Look what I drink. Look what I listen to. Look how I talk. See? I'm not like those Christians. I am super qualified to help you because I've been there, bro.

The old Pharisee sought credibility by demonstrating how little he resembled the sinner. The Reverse Pharisee seeks credibility by demonstrating how little he resembles the stereotypical Christian.

It's the same performance in a different costume. Welcome to Bizarro World.

When the New Testament describes Christian leadership, it is remarkably uninterested in street cred. Paul tells Timothy to look for people who are self-controlled, respectable, able to teach and above reproach. Titus gets pretty much the same list: sensible, just, devout and disciplined (1 Timothy 3:2–7; Titus 1:7–9).

None of those qualifications require a necktie. None require a backward hat or pretending to like today's awful music.

Jesus ate with sinners, dined with sinners, walked with sinners, but He never had to sin to force some connection with them. He didn't need to be one of them to minister to them.

That's the distinction forced street cred misses. Christian credibility isn't: “He's just like me.” It's: “I trust his judgment.”

A woman who approaches a church because her marriage is collapsing already has friends who can take her for drinks and tell her what they would do. Presumably she approached the church because she thought the church might have something different to offer.

And if it doesn't, why did she need the church again?

Some of this may come from insecurity more than rebellion. Maybe the forty-seven-year-old guy in the tight shirt isn't trying to deceive anybody. Maybe somebody convinced him that being himself wasn't enough. And if so, that's a shame.

Churches have spent years telling leaders to be authentic, relatable, culturally relevant, and capable of “getting on people's level.” Those aren't necessarily bad ideas, but perhaps ordinary Christians eventually started believing they needed credentials from the world before the world would listen to them.

So they manufactured an alter ego: a little edge, a little rebellion, a carefully displayed vice, a story polished until it sounds rougher than it really was. A sad attempt at a Bruce Wayne/Batman thing.

And it's okay if you don't have street cred. That in no way takes away your knowledge of Christ or your ability to sow its seeds.

One Christian can honestly say, “I've been exactly where you are.” Another can just as honestly say, “I haven't, but I care about you, and I'll walk with you.” Both can be authentic. Both are useful.

Maybe holiness was never the problem. Maybe pretending to be holy was. Somehow, in trying to fix that, we decided pretending to be worldly was the answer. That pendulum swung way too far the other direction.

We spent years trying to get rid of the Pharisee. Instead, maybe we just turned his hat backwards.