Hypocrisy

God. Faith. Religion.

There are many things I do not understand in this world; that would include the three words mentioned above. You can easily define things; say that this is defined as this or that has that definition. But mumbling out a definition is quite different from understanding. You could easily be spitting out words that actually mean nothing to you. It is one thing to memorize the definition; it is another to truly understand.

With that in mind, many times, I had come to ask myself: "what is Faith?:" Yet, the answer would elude me like a nymph of enchanted trees.  Robert Langdon, a character from the book “Angels and Demons” (authored by Dan Brown), calls Faith a gift. “Faith is a gift I have yet to receive” he had told the camerlengo. I sometimes think that he and I are in much the same boat. And, then, sometimes, that I am in much worse a position; worse in the sense that I do not even know whether I had received that gift or not; Or, if I had lost that gift as I journeyed through life. Maybe I took the wrong turn at fifth street or made a u-turn somewhere down the path and started to walk the other way. Maybe there was a fork in the road of life and I decided to take one street while my Faith took the other and we said goodbye at that point. I do not know. I sometimes have the sense that it is just there, hidden in some deep trench within my being – buried; covered over by the piles and piles of foolish insanities I had stacked up through my years. And sometimes, I feel like I had never had it. Faith is a gift. Maybe it is there and I had just not taken it out of its wrapper yet.

Sad, isn't it? Yet even sadder is the fact that I find no reason to search out the truth of my situation. From time to time, it does occur that the thought of whether or not I have faith pops into my head. However, it takes only a second before I discard the thought as unnecessary, a waste of time.

I do not know whether I believe or not. And yet, here I am, teaching the one thing that I have the least belief in. Everyday I get up and gather my things, readying myself for the day ahead. Every night I prepare the lessons for the next day; lessons for the class I am going to teach. I check journals and essays about the Catholic religion; grading them; righting them. Intellectually, I do understand the principles of the religion. I know its history and I have studied, quite thoroughly, its teachings. But instead of getting converted into belief, I feel instead that I am reading some Greek drama about Zeus or Persephone. I relish the feel of antiquity and romanticism it exudes, and I appreciate the mastery with which the tales are spun. However, that is as far as I go. My mind refuses to go any further.

It is amazing, isn't it? The extent of my hypocrisy is so far reaching that even I cannot grasp its bounds. At times, I try to escape the label of hypocrite by reason. I tell myself that the class is a purely academic exercise; that I am not preaching a religion (one, especially, that I have little, or no, faith in); that all I am doing is opening the students' eyes to the existence of it. I tell myself that all I am doing is showing them what the religion is about, according to the facts and documented beliefs of the thing; that all I am doing is righting some possible misconceptions about one of the largest congregations on the planet. Everyday I tell myself that. And, everyday I cannot fail to see how hypocritical I am because what I say in class is so different from what I actually do.

If someone were to come up and tell me to my face that I am such a hypocrite, I would probably shake his hand and tell him: "that is so true." I know that I am a hypocrite no matter how much a part of me tries to explain otherwise. However, I see no real reason why I should change this. I am not hurting anyone else. My hypocrisy affects only my own psychological health. In addition, it gives me interesting topics to think about on dull days when there is just nothing interesting to do.