You may know the saying, “Do as I say, but not as I do.” Hardly anyone gives that instruction to another person. It’s more often the satirical comment of a third party observing the activities of the one giving the instruction. Yeshua commented in this way on the leadership of the hypocritical scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 23:3): “So whatever they (the ones in authority) tell you (those under their authority), do and observe. But don’t do what they do; for what they say, they do not do.”

Long before we came to associate this practice with hypocrisy, Yeshua deemed it so, lavishing that label on the various behaviours He observed springing from the same mindset.  In Matthew 23:28 he also associated hypocrisy with lawlessness. That is noteworthy, because the scribes and Pharisees were all about ‘law’. They were both the teachers of the law and what you could call religious ‘law enforcement’. Yet, they behaved as if they themselves were above the law, or lawless.

Such behaviour by those in authority wreaks havoc in the lives of those under their authority. Yeshua said, “You make him twice as much a son of Gehenna (hell) as yourself.” In other words, the ones being trained under such authority become even more lawless than their teachers, in this “Do as I say but not as I do” model of instruction.  I see a similar attitude permeating our society, by which we (even some Christian parents) are actually training our children to be more lawless, or less law-abiding, than the parent generation.

A very simple example that we see every day has to do with road usage and observance of traffic laws. Picture this scenario. Little C (child who is learning to read simple words, count, recognize and understand numbers) sits high in a booster seat, keenly watching the scenery flash by as his parent drives along a road. Here and there, a sign with a single word and a single number catches C’s eye. C recognizes the number, figures out the phonics of the word, and asks for the first time, “What does ‘max-i-mum’ mean?”

Glibly the parent explains, “It means the most, or the highest.” With or without further explanation, C rightly concludes that the sign means “80 is the highest speed allowed” on that part of the road, and that it’s a rule. C soon makes the connection between the number on the road signs and the numbers on the speedometer display that he can see over his parent’s shoulder. Then comes a shocking discovery … his dad and/or his mom are very often breaking the rule!

This of course begs the question: “But Dad / Mom, how come you are driving at 90?”  Dad replies, “It’s OK. Don’t worry. The police allow us to go up to 90.”  Now poor C is confused. If maximum means what Dad and Mom said it means, and if the road sign is a rule, then how can the police allow people to break the rule and go up to 90?”

Eventually, C – who is of average intelligence – concludes that people don’t really need to obey these rules of the road. As he grows, C makes the further discovery that sometimes adults don’t even obey the rules that they tell him to obey. What is C’s take-away from all this?

Here it is, in some well-known terms. “They don’t really mean what they say; and besides, rules are made to be broken.  I can push the boundaries … I can push the envelope.” Later will come the clincher: “Now that I’m old enough I don’t even have to listen to what you say. I’m free now to just do as you used to do, and in fact to do more!”