A Poor Painted Hypocrite

“for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.” — 1 Samuel 16:7 (KJV)

One day Bunyan was standing at a neighbour's shop window, “cursing and swearing, and playing the madman, after my wonted manner.” The woman of the house heard him. She was no saint herself, but she told him he was “the ungodliest fellow for swearing that ever she heard in all her life,” and that he was “able to spoil all the youth in a whole town, if they came but in my company.”

It went straight in. He stood there with his head down and wished “that I might be a little child again, that my father might learn me to speak without this wicked way of swearing.” He was sure he could never change. And then, to his own amazement, he did. “How it came to pass, I know not.” He just stopped swearing, and found he could speak “better, and with more pleasantness, than ever I could before.”

Around then he got to know a poor man who talked about the Bible in a way he liked. Bunyan started reading it himself, mostly the stories. He cleaned up his life, set the Ten Commandments in front of him as his way to heaven, and when he broke one he said sorry and promised God to do better. He thought, he says, “I pleased God as well as any man in England.”

The neighbours could not believe it. One minute he was the worst swearer in the village, the next he was a model of good behaviour. He compares it to a man from Bedlam, London's hospital for the mentally ill, suddenly becoming sober. People praised him to his face and behind his back, and he loved it. “For though, as yet, I was nothing but a poor painted hypocrite, yet I loved to be talked of as one that was truly godly.” He kept this up for about a year.

There is a strange little story from this time. Bunyan loved bell-ringing, but decided it was a vanity and gave it up. Yet he couldn't stay away, so he went to watch the others ring. Then he began to think: what if a bell fell? He stood under a big beam. But what if a bell swung, hit the wall and bounced onto him? He moved to the door. Then: “How, if the steeple itself should fall?” The thought shook him so much that in the end he ran away from the church altogether. Giving up dancing, he says, took him a whole year.

Looking back, his judgement on that year is blunt: he was “all this while ignorant of Jesus Christ, and going about to establish my own righteousness.” He had changed his behaviour and his reputation, but he still didn't know Christ at all.

Two things here are worth taking home. First, it is possible to get really good at looking Christian, and to enjoy the praise, while your heart hasn't met God. Bunyan's word for it is “painted,” like a face with make-up on. A phone full of filtered photos makes this easier than it has ever been. Second, notice that steeple. Bunyan had a mind that ran “what if” chains, each one scarier than the last. Lots of people do. If yours does too, you are not strange, and you are not alone. We will come back to that, because it matters for what happens to him next.

One thing to do this week: do one genuinely good thing this week that nobody sees, and don't mention it to anyone or post about it. Notice whether keeping quiet about it is easy or hard. That tells you something about who you are doing it for.