The Scarlett Letter - Hypocrisy

Justin Chan
Period 7
11/11/09
Ms. Weiss
Hypocrisy: Living a Life of Lies
Hypocrisy has always been prevalent when dealing with religion. There are always people who pretend to live moral and religious lives when, in reality, they don’t really believe it themselves. In The Scarlett Letter, Arthur Dimmesdale is the epitome of hypocrisy. He is a minister, a clergyman, and yet, he still commits the crime of adultery. Not only that, but he keeps his sin a secret, and he continues to live as a so called “holy man” when in reality he is not. Although the sin may not be as serious, there are many “Dimmesdales” out there in the world today living lives filled with lies.
Unfortunately, I feel as if I can count myself as one of the many “Dimmesdales” of the world. I am a Christian, and there are many times in my life during where I’ve lived hypocritically and against God. At church on Sundays, I would do my best to provide an act such that people would look at me as a very spiritual person. It was easy to do so. All I had to do was to say the right things and act a certain “holy” way. However, as soon as I was out of those church doors, a change would occur in me. I would become who I really was, and it wasn’t the saintly person that the world saw me as. I would become just another bad kid and curse, be rude, fight, and basically go against almost everything the Bible says. However, I still had the nerve to call myself a Christian. Christians are called to love and to spread God’s love to everybody. What I was doing was the complete opposite; I was living a life filled with lies.
There was one particular event in my life where I did something completely opposite of what God wanted. It stays with me today, and I really regret it. There was one day when I was walking along the streets of Manhattan. Suddenly, on the side of the sidewalk, I saw a homeless man. He had tattered clothes, looked dirty, appeared hungry, and he was begging for money. He asked me for money as...