Wake Up, Look Up

Hello everyone, thanks for listening to Wake Up,

Look Up, a podcast where we connect events

happening in real time to the gospel of

Jesus Christ.

I'm Zach Weirach, and in today's episode we're

asking the question, can hope overcome hypocrisy?

I read an article this week about the

decline in popularity among Americans of the idea

of climate change.

I mean, climate change is, of course, the

theory that the earth is getting warmer and

warmer and warmer, and that could result in

some devastating consequences, leading ultimately even potentially up

to the eradication of the human species.

Well, that idea is not nearly as popular

today as it was a decade ago.

And the article that I read pointed out

some reasons why, but the number one reason

was hypocrisy among climate change proponents.

Studies have shown that many of the people

touting climate change have pretty big carbon footprints

themselves, including, for example, taking private planes to

go from one speaking engagement to the next,

which, of course, uses much more of the

very materials that we're being told to use

less of than if they flew commercial.

Hypocrisy among climate change leadership seems to be

paramount.

It's something that is rife among that movement,

whether it looks at the homes they live

in, the way they travel, the way they

eat, the way they dress, so on and

so forth.

This, of course, leads to skepticism about their

claims, because climate change proponents have always been

so sure that the world is going to

collapse and that the time is now to

do something, I guess, unless you're them, because

the time doesn't seem to be now to

do much of anything, except for profit from

telling other people not to do the things

they do.

Selective policies, even on the policy level, seem

to be causing more problems than they are

solving.

States like California, which have shifted their environmental

focus almost entirely to climate change, have de

-emphasized and de-escalated their efforts in other

ways that might have helped with things like

drought or fires.

Not to mention that many of the policies

that have been put in place have actually

failed to produce the result.

And the hypocrisy exists on the policy level.

So when Michael Bloomberg was mayor of New

York City, he instituted a number of climate

change reforms while also promoting defense spending at

the national level that would have increased the

climate change impact of the military.

The point is, they've been pretty hypocritical.

But I don't want to limit this to

climate change, because that's actually not what this

podcast is about.

It's about human hypocrisy.

This is how movements die.

We find out that the leaders of a

movement don't believe in the movement the way

they were asking us to, which makes us

feel stupid and makes us feel like the

only thing stupider than trusting them in the

first place would be taking one more step

of trust towards them at all.

This is why, if you're listening to this

and you're a Christian, you should appreciate, in

a whole new way, the fact that your

movement's leader has already proven himself not to

be hypocritical.

After all, the leader of the movement of

Christianity is not a pastor or a pope

or a bishop or a priest or anyone

other than the Son of God, Jesus Christ,

a man who lived his life on earth

totally free of hypocrisy, being without sin or

without any shortcomings, a man who, according to

Philippians 2, emptied himself of all the things

that he could have claimed, leading ultimately to

the cross, an act of service.

Jesus said he came not to be served,

like climate change activists, but to serve and

to give his life for the many.

Jesus delivers on his character and his promise.

He does every single thing that he said

he was going to do.

He told us he would die.

He did.

He told us he would rise from the

dead.

He did.

He ascended into heaven, is seated at the

right hand, and says, based on that resume,

I'm coming back and I'm making all things

new.

Listen, if you haven't internalized this, if you

haven't taken a second to thank Jesus that

the foundation of your faith is him, his

person, his work, his leadership, that this is

the one movement where you can point a

lot of fingers at a lot of people

but never at the leader, can hope overcome

hypocrisy?

Only if, as we move up the org

chart, we eventually get to someone who is

totally worthy of our hope and totally devoid

of hypocrisy.

Friends, that someone is Jesus.

Take a second today and be thankful for

who he is and for how he leads,

and that ultimately he will make all things

new.

This episode of Wake Up Look Up was

produced by Marcus Cunningham and Hallie Andrews.

Our topic researcher is Shanna Young.

This episode was directed by Rima Saleh.

Our podcast coordinator is Hallie Andrews.

Our production manager and audio wizard is Marcus

Cunningham with tech and engineering support from Matthew

Adel and Landon Hall.

I'm your host, Zach Weirach.

Join us for the next episode of Wake

Up Look Up.