Sadly, a large number of Christians are found to be different in their houses or with their friends than at their place of worship.
Average Christians are well behaved when hanging out with other followers of Jesus. They profess a desire and a zeal to better know God and fellowship with fellow believers. They come across as having great insight into God’s word and spiritual issues.
Outside of church, it is a completely different story. Lying and cheating are commonplace. Greed and infidelity are in style. It is however fascinating that the lying, cheating Christian puts forth a great effort to cover this part of his life. He makes sure that those in his church community don’t see this part of his life.
How can Christians live such double lives? First and foremost it is because of the human’s ability to be deceptive. People who have committed heinous crimes were not caught because they were able to deceive society into believing they are normal folks. It is frightening to find out that even family members of of some criminals had no idea about the fact that these persons committed murder and other horrible crimes.
Such killers were indulging a fantasy while living in the real world because of how well they were able to deceive everyone.
Another factor of two faced living has to do with the evil human heart. Sinful actions of the heart, even if not yet committed, are condemned by God.
Consider the word of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. He points out, You have heard that it was said to the people long ago,’Do not murder,’ . . . But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment(Matt. 5:21-22).
In other words, I can boast about not killing but if I get angry with my brother I am two face, and guilty of a similar attitude as that of a killer.
When we get angry we lose control and it often gets us to do things we later regret. Many times, when we get angry with those close to us, we are momentarily numb to the fact that they will be brutalized through our anger. And then we fight such an uphill battle trying to put broken pieces back together.
We must come to the understanding that the things played out in our heart and our mind, are the same as the actions themselves, in the sight of God.
The tendency toward horrible things in our minds, makes us people living two lives, even if the outside of our life seems to be going fine.
