How can people say they are Christians when they do not follow a Christian's lifestyle?

[FCEGM]

This quote from a back issue of “First Things” magazine is instructive on the nature of hypocrisy:

…A man is not a hypocrite because he violates a moral norm in which he sincerely believes… Violating norms we sincerely accept does not make us hypocrites. If it did, hypocrisy would not be a peculiar kind of wrongdoing but a concomitant of all wrongdoing.

Wrongdoing like that in my examples is not hypocrisy because it flows from weakness, not malice. Contrary to our sincere intentions and wishes, we sometimes do things we know to be wrong. Immediately after doing them, we acknowledge, at least to ourselves, that we have done wrong. We wish we had not done wrong, and we intend to do better next time. . .

Hypocrisy is a much worse form of moral wrongdoing. It’s a certain kind of lying, and so can be done only consciously and intentionally. In particular, a man’s moral character comes from what he takes as his final end in life, his understanding of the human good, and the hypocrite is a man who dissembles about what he thinks this good is. The hypocrite pretends to accept and live by one set of values when, in fact, he accepts and lives by quite different ones. . .

firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=526