Posted by Helen on: 09.20.2006 /
JG gave me permission to post these comments, which he sent me in a recent e-mail:
Its unlikely we will ever meet someone with whom we agree 100%. But we shouldn’t let the bits we disagree on prevent us from appreciating the positives.
And when we have held someone in high regard, when we find some weakness or mistake, or something we disagree on, we shouldn’t write them off. We tend to put people on pedestals and then knock them off.
In one breath Jesus was telling Peter he was the rock on whom he would build his church. In the next breath he was saying Get behind me Satan. I don’t see a contradiction here. Instead I see Jesus discerning both good and bad in Peter. The bad was simply something Peter said that was wrong and it was Satan that Jesus rebuked not Peter. But Peter was not written off because he got it wrong.
Even the best leader can get it wrong at times. We need to discern what is right and what’s wrong in what others say no matter how highly we regard them – but not write people off when they get it wrong.
Comment by: NCxian
1Yes, I think this is an essential element of the grace that Jesus taught. I believe somewhere he says that forgiving 7 times is not enough–we should forgive 7 X 7. That’s some serious grace! (I know somebody can provide the cite for me–I am bad at that).
I think some will say that with a position of authority comes a higher standard to be judged by. My personal take on that is that nobody has authority over me (at least in a religious sense) that I don’t give them. So it is up to me, as JG says, to discern what is right and wrong in somebody whose lead I may be following. I guess I am not a very good submitter!
This is a theme that I have noted with interest in the New Testament, particularly in Paul’s writings. That another person is not our enemy, that it is the capital E–Enemy (powers and principalities, etc) that is our enemy. While I don’t envision evil in such a personified form myself, it does seem to be a useful way to deal with evil in other people. They continue to be valuable as human beings, but that the “evil” in them (child abuser, greedy corporate villain, whatever) is no less deplorable. It gives you some wiggle room when you believe in and are trying to practice “loving your enemy”.
Comment by: Helen
2NCxian wrote:
NCxian, yes, that definitely is serious grace!
Was this the passage you were thinking of?
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times (or seventy times seven)”
(Matthew 18:21-22)
Yes – I’ve found that helpful too.
Comment by: David H
3People are sometimes villanized because it is easier to get others to fight a something rather than a someone. Depersonalization has been a human problem since the beginning of time. If you understand the problems, the background, the hopes and fears of someone, then it is harder to hang them or shoot them or ostracize them.
But if you can stop thinking of them as a person and see them as evil or a homo or a religiour fundementalist, then you can do anything because they are no longer a person.
It is a constant struggle for me to see the humanity in everyone, from my child-molester father to Osama Bin Laden to Jerry Falwell. In a key respect, they are just the same as me. They are all broken people who sometimes attempt to work out their problems in the wrong way. It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t oppose what they do, but the hard part is to never lose sight of their essential humanity. In other words, to love the sinner but not the sin when they are committing really terrible sins.
Comment by: Eliza
4Recognizing this and being able to remind yourself of it seem like very big steps toward seeing that humanity in each person – but steps that it seems many people don’t seem to value. It’s especially useful for a group to have a dehumanized “villian” to rally their members against, whether that group is an entire country, or a political party, or an interest group. It may make it especially hard to think of someone’s humanity when it the “mob” all around you is demonizing them & calling for their blood. (It’s certainly not a popular move!)
I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you, David H, to have to decide how you feel about your father, and how to interact with him. Do you find it’s harder to love the sinner but not the sin when it’s someone close to you?
Comment by: Helen
5Eliza wrote:
That’s a fascinating question, Eliza.
It’s always hard to get over being seriously sinned against – that’s a particular nuance of David’s situation.
In general I think it’s easier to ‘love the sinner without loving the sin’ if it’s someone close to us. With people close to us we see the whole person and we have a relationship that makes it hard for us to write them off even if we are deeply concerned by aspects of how they’re living their life.
With someone who isn’t close to us it’s way too easy to say “Sure I hate the sin and love them” and not to beyond the words to doing things that show evidence of that love.
Comment by: Karen
6I dislike the phrase about “loving the sinner, hating the sin” because the only time it was ever used in my FE Christian experience was as an attempt to mask over homophobia. It became almost a code phrase that allowed Christians to justify anti-gay bigotry. :-(
And while I think it’s useful to keep in mind that we’re all flawed human beings, I also think there comes a point where we do have to look at someone’s life and analyze the choices they’ve made for good and bad, and come to an opinion about it (if we need/choose to make a judgment). As an atheist, I’m thankful I don’t feel an obligation to “love” everyone (and I don’t even think that’s possible, frankly).
Demonizing one individual may not be especially productive, but I cannot pretend I feel sympathetic towards or try to make excuses for someone who has deliberately chosen to abuse children, promote violence, or condone suffering and cruelty.
Comment by: Helen
7Karen wrote:
I hear you, Karen. I’m not so fond of that phrase either.
I agree that people should be held appropriately responsible for the choices they make.
With the caveat that the forces which brought to bear on them when they made the choice, and whether the bad consequences of those decisions were foreseen by them, should be appropriately taken into consideration.
It often makes more sense to me to think of love in terms of ‘action’ rather than ‘emotion’. I suppose maybe I think of love this way: if someone I had reason not to like had a legitimate need I could meet and I was in a position to help, would I help or not? Which…basically, is what the good Samaritan story is about, I suppose. It’s about, would you help someone you don’t like, if he/she needed help and you were in a position to give it?
Comment by: Julie Marie
8I have found that when I find out the answer those questions about people who have “wronged” me I am able to work towards reconciliation, if that is desired.
I too have a dislike of the hate the sin love the sinner. Its a concept that I understand intellectually, sometimes…but its awfully hard to practice without being impersonal. And I don’t think of love as impersonal.
Comment by: Karen
9Helen:
Sure. And we certainly all make bad choices at times; it’s inevitable.
You’ve probably seen the sociology research (I think it was done way back in the 50s or 60s)that shows how about half of ordinarily “good” people will inflict pain on subjects in an experimental setting if an authority figure (a guy in a white lab coat, in this case) orders them to do it. I find it heartening that 50 percent have the gumption to refuse, but the point is that even “good” people will make the choice to do “evil” if they’re told to. The power of expectations and social pressure at work, I suppose.
Comment by: David H
10I don’t mean to ignore this discussion but am having some trouble finding a perspective on it. For the moment let me recast my troublesome phrase: Avoid the sin, but not the sinner.
Also, let me add, at the risk of getting repitious, something I posted on a different discussion. It is too easy to say one act is blessing while another is a sin. According to the Bible, Jesus told religious leaders and his disciples that they could follow the law precisely and have it be sin because of what was in their heart and mind. In fact, sin doesn’t even have to be an act, it almost always begins with a self-centered thought. The converse may also be true, that something some would lable sin is rendered righteous by the motivation behind it.
Perhaps God — if he/she/it cares — is more concerned with my whys than my whats. So when I say, avoid the sin, it isn’t code for: don’t fornicate, don’t be gay, don’t steal. I am trying to say: don’t serve myself at the expense of others or myself. And love others and myself even when I know that is what we are doing.
Comment by: Eliza
11I kind of translate this mentally to “hate the crime, try to understand the criminal” or something secular like that – since “sin” and “love” as used here are words I wouldn’t normally use when talking about someone who has done something wrong. (Remember, I’m a token non-Christian here. ;) )
For me, that takes it away from what I’d consider minor transgressions, or a code phrase for homosexuality, & puts it in the realm of serious transgressions. And I think it’s more realistic for me (again, a non-Christian) to try to understand someone I don’t like and who I think has done something awful, than to love him or her. And it seems to me that understanding is important – to try to prevent it from happening again, figure out why the situation got as bad as it did, and to see if the person can be rehabilitated. (As an unsubtle example, if we persist in considering all Muslim terrorists to simply be “vey bad people” & don’t try to understand what drives them down the path of terrorism, we have no hope of addressing the root causes of Islamic terrorism. And there seems to be no shortage of young men willing to go down that path.)
Comment by: Helen
12It seems like humans often would like things to be black-and-white, including other people. It would be easier if life were like simplistic movies and we could either trust someone completely or write them off entirely. Maybe it’s partly a regression thing, that when life is hard we wish we could go back to when we were tiny and believed in human authority figures who could do no wrong.
But authority figures do sometimes do wrong to children at that age and it is so hurtful, because the child has to conclude “The problem must be me”.
The value of seeing things as an adult and recognizing the complexity of other people is that we don’t have to say “it must have been me” any more. We don’t have to repeatedly put humans on pedestals, so we have that authority figure, for security (or so we have the ‘perfect spouse’), only to be disappointed when they turn out to be as human as we are.
Comment by: David H
13Perhaps sin is a loaded word with which I am too comfortable because of my upbringing. But I’m not trying to over-simplify the acts or the actors. People do bad things all of the time. Some are big; some are small. But it isn’t always as easy as saying: this list covers bad acts and this other list has good acts. It is often motivation that determines the goodness or badness. John Wayne Gacy dressed as a clown to entertain children, but not all birthday clowns are bad. It isn’t putting on the suit or going to the party that makes the difference. We can try to understand the things that made Gacy do what he did, but that doesn’t change that when he went to those parties he was doing a bad thing.
For me, sin is every act of selfishness or every time someone acts against someone else out of fear for their position (not necessarily their life). I may have good reasons for doing that, but that doesn’t make what I do good — even if it has the appearance of good.
Comment by: Helen
14David wrote:
I recognize this definition and I think it’s a fine one.
I don’t like the word ‘sinner’ because no matter how Christians feel about it, my experience is that people who aren’t Christians often consider it an insult to be called a sinner.
I don’t think it’s a very good strategy to use a word with people that they find insulting and then have to explain why you didn’t mean it as an insult after all.
Comment by: Karen
15Helen:
Exactly. And the other problem with “sin” – in a discussion that includes both As and Cs – is that some of the things Cs term “sin” (like lust or blasphemy) aren’t “crimes” or even “bad actions” in the secular world view.
So, in a discussion amongst Cs (or even more generally – religious believers) “sin” is a word that’s well-understood, but it’s confusing in a general conversation because it doesn’t translate well.