Understanding Hypocrisy
By Anthony Casperson
3-8-25

Within some of the Arkham series of Batman video games—Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, and Arkham Knight specifically—a large part of the main storyline revolves around Joker’s use of a substance referred to as the “Titan formula.” (Spoilers for the games from 2009-2015 will abound below.)

Players discover during the events of Arkham Asylum that Joker—and the scientists that helped him—used the substance called Venom, which gives Bane his bulk, as the foundational piece of the Titan formula. And at the end of that game, Joker injects himself with the formula in order to physically fight Batman. But the Caped Crusader has an antidote ready to reduce Joker back to his original size.

However, during the events of Arkham City, Joker reveals that the Titan formula has been slowly killing him, in spite of the injected antidote. As this is revealed, the Clown Prince of Crime injects his own blood into Batman and a number of Gothamites, thus convincing the hero to find a cure for all of them.

Batman undergoes a great deal of trials throughout that second game in the series, but ultimately cures himself and his fellow Gothamites of the negative repercussions of the Titan formula. But as the Dark Knight heads off to face the Joker, with cure in hand, a conundrum hits the hero. Should he save this criminal who will continue to go on hurting others, or by inaction allow him to die?

As Batman wrestles with his thoughts—because of his code to never kill—Joker sneaks up behind him and stabs the hero in his arm. This causes the cure to drop and the glass to break. Thus dooming Joker to die. (I warned you there were spoilers.)

Throughout the cutscene near the end of that game, Joker laughs at the hypocrisy of Batman. How he allowed Joker to die, despite his code to never kill.

And this sentiment continues through the events of Arkham Knight, where among other obstacles, Batman must struggle with an unforeseen side effect of having Joker’s Titan-fueled blood in his system. Namely, part of Joker’s psyche remains inside Batman’s brain. The hallucination continually calls the hero out for his hypocrisy for allowing Joker to die, while still clinging to his code.

But I feel at this moment that I must cut in and say that I don’t think the Joker knows what hypocrisy is. And by extension, it seems that the creators of the game series don’t understand what it is either. Although to be honest, western culture in general has a faulty understanding of what it means to be a hypocrite.

Even I have fallen prey to misunderstanding the word. Many times throughout the years, I’ve said that everyone has moments of hypocrisy because we all occasionally act in ways that oppose our own specific worldview. But as I’ve studied the idea of hypocrisy further, I’ve come to realize that such a statement proves our shared lack of understanding about what hypocrisy is.

Hypocrisy isn’t having our actions—or inactions—lead to results that oppose what our worldview, moral compass, or personal code would call good. Just because the end result is something that our system of understanding the world would consider bad or evil, it doesn’t mean that we are a hypocrite.

The fact that Batman failed to deliver the cure to Joker doesn’t make him a hypocrite any more than if he’d failed to create a cure to begin with—the results would’ve still been the same for the villain. And even the hero’s momentary pause to consider the option of refusing to hand the cure over doesn’t make him a hypocrite. It makes him human. Because doing the right thing quite often is the difficult option.

Besides that, Batman bears no fault because he had decided to deliver the cure before the choice was stolen from him. I mean, Joker’s back-stabbing tendencies are what really left him to his fate of death. Interference from others can alter the outcome of what we’ve chosen to do.

So, this leads us to have to ask the question of what a hypocrite is. And we’re not talking about the original definition of the Greek word, which is just a term for an actor in Greek plays who wore a mask—which allowed for one actor to play multiple roles as long as the characters never shared the stage.

When it comes to the negative connotation for the term, we see that it’s Jesus who seems to be the first to use it in such a way. (And I believe it was a hard-hitting derision against the Pharisees who were such good little Jewish boys that they’d never be caught dead in the place that their playacting ways belonged.) So, looking to how he used it should shape our understanding of the idea of what hypocrisy is.

Of the seventeen times that the word “hypocrite” appears in the New Testament, about a third of those occasions come from Matthew 23. Since I’ve recently written about this chapter in another blog, I’ll just hit a quick overview of six verses in the whole speech of Jesus: verses 23-28.

Verses 23-24 speak of the hypocrisy of focusing on the finer details of the Law while totally disregarding the more important aspects. They’re so blind to the point of God’s word that they strain out the gnat, but leave the camel. Even slurping it up. While no one would want a tiny fly in their drink, such a thing would be easy compared to swallowing an entire camel. Therefore, a hypocrite is one who points to their purity in certain tiny details, but misses the larger point of their supposed worldview.

And verses 25-26 pick up a similar idea. Here, Jesus calls the Pharisees out for cleaning only the outer parts of their metaphorical cups. Sure, they look good to those seeing it from the outside, but no one would want to drink from that cup. Or eat off the plate that’s only had the bottom cleaned. The important part is dirty. A hypocrite is someone who secrets away the dirty and inner parts, while making a show of how good and clean the outside is.

Again building on the previous words, verses 27-28 show Jesus calling the Pharisees white-washed tombs. They might appear good and clean and pretty on the outside, but there’s death inside. They appear righteous to others, but nothing inside is alive. So, we see that a hypocrite is someone who tries to sell a righteous life while there’s nothing alive inside of them.

In a similar vein to the above verses, we can look at Jesus’ words in Mark 7:6-13. The Pharisees complained about Jesus’ disciples not following the traditions of their elders by failing to wash their hands in the “proper” manner. To this accusation, Jesus quotes Isaiah where the prophet says that the people honor God with their lips, but their heart is far from him. They pretend to worship Yahweh while focusing their teaching on the commands of men.

In essence, their hypocrisy is rejecting the truth of God in order to raise up their own understanding of what’s good.

They look for loopholes in the Law in order to appease their own selfishness. And Jesus points out one such case. While the Law says to honor one’s parents, these Pharisees attempt to get around that command of God by using a doctrine of their Pharisaical elders. This human doctrine of corban said that if one vowed something to God, then it was forbidden from being used by anyone else—even a needy family member. Therefore, the Pharisee could rebuff their own elderly parents’ needs in the guise of spirituality.

In the name of worshipping Yahweh, they found some loophole to seem holy while actually being selfish. Thus, we can see that hypocrites give lipservice to a worldview or personal code, but often attempt to find loopholes in order to make themselves look good while totally going against their claimed morality. Hypocrites understand that what they want to do is against the commandments they follow, but instead of changing their actions to adhere to that code, they search for ways to still call their actions good.

Hypocrisy is saying that there’s a standard but then giving reasons—excuses—as to why the hypocrite doesn’t need to live up to it in this particular case.

It has little to do with the results of our actions, and more to do with the heart that causes us to consider ourselves good while doing wrong. We all will occasionally fail to live up to our personal morality. But it’s how we react to that failure that shows whether or not we are a hypocrite.

When we’re faced with our failings, if our first response tries to defend our goodness despite the failing, then we’re playing the hypocrite. Grab your character mask and get up on the stage. It’s time to perform.

But if we face our accuser with a humble attitude of true repentance—not just guilt for being caught out, but actual remorse for the failure—then we are not hypocrites. We’re being human. Failing to be perfect is part of existence for a fallen image-bearer of God. Our sinful flesh refuses to submit to the goodness of God because of the selfishness of it, like a second pilot steering us places that we don’t really want to go.

Paul speaks of this typical experience of a follower of Jesus who struggles with their flesh in Romans 7:15-25:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. (ESV)

Because of the struggle with his sinful self, Paul admits to doing the things that he hates. The end results of certain choices oppose what his system of belief would call good. But he’s not a hypocrite because of it. No, he continues to struggle against the ungodly desires of his flesh.

And the main reason why he’s not a hypocrite is because of his statement in verse 24. “Wretched man that I am!” He’s not trying to find a way to make his failing sound good. Not trying to polish a toilet and call it fit for a king. Instead, he admits that it is a failing. And then turns to Jesus, the only one who can save him from this selfish cycle of continuing to do the wrong thing.

Paul calls us to admit that our failings are wrong, turn to Jesus for forgiveness, and then allow him to help us overcome similar failings in the future. He doesn’t call us to be hypocrites who resign themselves to the flesh, or seek loopholes to hide the fallenness of our deeds. Rather, we should be fellow wrestlers in this struggle against our fallen, sinful flesh who seek true worship of our God.

Humility and repentance are the weapons against hypocrisy. And any who admit their wretchedness prove their lack of hypocrisy. Despite the fact that we don’t always live up to the standard we believe.

There are many in the world who are quick to call followers of Jesus hypocrites. (And often get excited by the fact that they’re using our Lord’s words against us.) But they don’t really understand what being a hypocrite means. They apply a half-understood meaning in order to degrade. And deafen themselves to the truth we speak because of it.

Let’s refuse to listen to their definition of our Lord’s word. And ignore their attempts to discredit us just because the outcome of our struggle occasionally doesn’t align with our morality.

After all, why should we listen to the words of these Jokers?