Tag: hypocrisy

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The Harper Valley PTA

When I was very, very young, I actually kind of liked this song, even though it was country, and obviously a little cheesy.

The Harper Valley PTA sends a note home with a little girl. It’s addressed to her mother. The Harper Valley PTA has decided to take it upon itself to correct Mrs. Johnson’s approach to parenting. Mrs. Johnson, it seems, has been going around with men, drinking, and just generally “going wild”. She wears her dresses “way too high”.

The PTA just happens to be meeting that afternoon and Mrs. Johnson struts right over to the meeting and walks up to the front and lays it on the line for the Harper Valley PTA:

Well, there’s Bobby Taylor sittin’ there and seven times he’s asked me for a date
Mrs. Taylor sure seems to use a lot of ice whenever he’s away
And Mr. Baker, can you tell us why your secretary had to leave this town?
And shouldn’t widow Jones be told to keep her window shades all pulled completely down?

Well, well. I really do like the wrap-up:

And you have the nerve to tell me that you think that as a mother I’m not fit.
Well this is just a little Peyton Place and you’re all Harper Valley Hypocrites.

I liked that “as a mother, I’m not fit”– punchy and thunky. Wow. You almost feel sorry for this mythical institution, the Harper Valley PTA. I liked the song. Everybody did– it was a huge cross-over hit. I dare say I thought, there, that will be the end of hypocrisy in the world. Now that we’ve all agreed about how contemptible it is.

The funny thing, you just know that the thousands of Harper Valley PTA’s across the country all loved the song too. They all probably sang along, snapping their fingers, and shaking their heads at those hypocrites.

It calls to mind Jon Stewart’s joke at the Oscars in 2008: listing the films that dealt with important social issues, he closes with “and none of those issues was ever a problem again.”

Or fat, pant-suited, middle-aged women in Las Vegas joyfully singing along as Kenny Rogers contemplates putting Ruby “in the ground”.

There was a brief flurry of songs about hypocrisy in the early 1970’s and Joe South– improbably– won a Grammy with “Games People Play” in 1968.   There was “Signs” by Five Man Electrical Band and “Indian Reservation” by the Raiders.  There was “Billy Don’t be a Hero”.   and “One Tin Soldier”.

It was a veritable orgy of righteousness and purity.

It was real trend!

Don’t forget– this is the year the “Little Green Apples” beat “Hey Jude” as “Song of the Year”.

The New Seekers had a worldwide hit with a Coke jingle (“I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing”). How sad is that? Wow. Makes me wish I could go back in time just so I could hate that song even more than I did.

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The Lonely Sinner

There is a church in my denomination which has decided to try to be welcoming to gay members of the body of Christ. The rest of the denomination goes, “Amen, brother– what an opportunity to bring the ministry of the Lord Jesus to those depraved souls! May they all, the lord willing, repent and be welcomed into the body of Christ as former sinners.”

That isn’t exactly what they had in mind. What this church had in mind was to welcome practicing gay Christians to their fellowship, to accept them as fellow sinners, and to share communion with them.

So, in other words, these particular sinners are still sinning. Unlike the rest of us sinners who sin no more. But we wouldn’t say that, would we? Would you say that you don’t sin anymore, now that you are a Christian? I wouldn’t.

We don’t commonly tell people that we don’t sin. If we did, and if people believed us, then we would be comfortable reaching for the stones if we met someone who said, “I still sin.” No, no– we smile indulgently. We are all sinners.

If we all take a deep breath and count to three and speak the holy words, “I am a sinner”, we can all smile knowingly to each other…

…and then, when we spot a homosexual, shriek, “now there is a sinner.”

And then welcome him or her into full communion.

Of course, we do not.

So what on earth do we mean when we acknowledge that we are all “sinners”? I’ve been a member of a church for almost 50 years and I couldn’t tell you. I don’t think it means anything. I don’t think we honestly believe that we are sinners. We believe that we are righteous and virtuous and morally pure. We’re reaching for stones. We do it all the time. Nothing makes us feel more righteous and pure and holy than reaching for a stone.

If it doesn’t mean anything, what do we think it means when we say it? Do we think about that time we looked at someone we were not married to and wished for a forceful embrace? That time we were rude or mean to a colleague? Maybe our fantasies about owning a Hummer and crushing a few Corollas underneath those massive wheels? Or the fact that we didn’t give very much, last year, to help people less fortunate than ourselves?

The key difference between the sinner we acknowledge within our selves and the sinner we see in the homosexual is that we really seem to believe that our sins are over. Whatever it is we acknowledge having done wrongly, we seem to believe that we don’t do it anymore.

That’s also the peculiarity of sexual sins. When the preacher stands in front of a congregation and rails about the evil fornicators and homosexuals and adulterers out there– we can safely assume that he doesn’t mean me. We might be doing it, but it’s something we keep secret anyway and can safely assume no one else knows about it.

That’s why preachers would rather preach about those sins than about indifference or materialism or hard-heartedness or hypocrisy.