Chester the Actor
Back in the 1970s, Chester was our class clown. Nature had given him a natural ability to break everyone up whenever he wanted. One very hot July day, my cousin Darrell and I were supposed to go down below West Point and help Darrell’s dad haul some hay. We needed one more person to help and we got Chester to come along.
Darrell’s dad, Ben, was driving the tractor that pulled the baling machine. Chester, Darrell, and I were collecting the bales and stacking them on a large flatbed truck as we went across the field. If you have ever hauled hay (before the days of the huge round bales picked up by large, front-end loaders), you know that there are few jobs that can make you as hot, tired, dirty, and itchy. We had started early that morning and had been at it until the middle of the afternoon. Even though we were only about sixteen or seventeen years old, we were tired and ready to quit. I offhandedly remarked to Chester that he should faint so we could go home.
A few minutes later, Ben made another pass close to the truck with the tractor. Chester and I were on the truck bed stacking bales. As the tractor approached, Chester suddenly put his hands to his head and buckled at the knees. Picking up on his act, I caught him at the armpits and laid him down across a couple of bales. Darrell, having earlier heard my remark to Chester, quickly got into the act and jumped up onto the truck and began showing feigned concern. Ben had stopped the tractor and was running toward the truck to ask what had happened. We told him Chester had fainted. By this time, Chester was starting to “come around”, but was doing a marvelous job of looking wild-eyed and disoriented. Ben immediately concluded we should go home. I can still hear him saying to this day, “Boys, it’s too hot to haul hay; y’all go on home.” We agreed and laughed all the way home.
What Chester started with his wobbly-kneed collapse, and what Darrell and I joined in, was an act of pure hypocrisy and outright deception. As hot as it was, I would like to think that our hypocrisy was justified, but it probably was not. A hypocrite is one who pretends to be what he is not. Chester pretended to be on the verge of a heat stroke while Darrell and I pretended to be mightily concerned.
Jesus often used a term from which we get our word hypocrite. The word hypocrite came to English from Old French ypocrite in the early 13th century. The French obtained the word from ecclesiastical Latin hypocrita, and the Romans borrowed it from Greek hupokrites which means "an actor on the stage, a pretender, a dissembler." Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth was near the city of Sepphoris, which had a Roman theater in operation at the time seating about four thousand. It is likely that Jesus was very familiar with real hupokrites – or what we would call actors. However, in his teachings, Jesus wanted to make it very clear that our lives as Christians should be anything but an act. Jesus wants us to be genuine. Once when he was speaking to the Pharisees, he called them hypocrites and spoke of people honoring God with their lips, but having hearts that were far away from Him. In other words, they were people who simply went through the motions, but didn’t have their heart in it. They were acting, but hoping God and their fellow human beings wouldn’t notice. May God help us to be more genuine in our daily walk with Him.
—Jim Shelton