Why
I Can't Say 'Love the Sinner/Hate the Sin' Anymore
Posted:
12/31/2013
I'm done.
I can't look my gay
brother in the eye anymore and say "I love the sinner but hate the
sin." I can't keep drawing circles in the sand.
I thought I just
needed to try harder. Maybe I needed to focus more on loving the sinner, and
less on protesting the sin. But even if I was able to fully live up to that
"ideal," I'd still be wrong. I'd still be viewing him as something
other, something different.
Not human. Not
friend. Not Christian. Not brother.
Sinner.
And despite all my
theological disclaimers about how I'm just as much a sinner too, it's not the
same. We don't use that phrase for everybody else. Only them. Only "the
gays." That's the only place where we make "sinner" the
all-encompassing identity.
Then we try to
reach them, to evangelize them. We speak of "the gays" in words
reminiscent of the "savages" from those old missionary stories --
foreign and different and far away, the ultimate conquest for the church to
tame and colonize and save.
Maybe we accept
them in our midst. But even then, it's sinners in our midst -- branded with a
rainbow-colored scarlet letter. They aren't truly part of us.
Even that word "them" makes me cringe as I speak it, as if my brothers and sisters are somehow other, different from me.
It's a special sort
of condescending love we've reserved for the gay community. We'll agree to love
them, accept them, welcome them -- but we reserve the right to see them as
different. We reserve the right to say "them" instead of "us."
We embrace them with arms full of disclaimers about how all the sinners are
welcome here. And yet, they're the only ones we constantly remind of their
status as sinners, welcome sinners.
In all this, we
turn our backs on all the gay brothers and sisters already in our church,
already following Jesus. Our "us vs. them" narrative leaves little
space for those who didn't choose to be gay, but did choose to follow Jesus.
Using "gay" and "sinner" interchangeably, we force them
away from the Table and into the shadows.
They say Jesus was
a friend of sinners, but he didn't describe himself that way.
His motto wasn't
"eating and drinking with prostitutes and tax collectors." Those were
the labels used by the religious community, by the disapproving onlookers.
What's amazing about Jesus is that when he hung out with sinners, he didn't act
like they were sinners. They weren't a "project," a "mission
field." They were his friends. People with names. Defined as beloved
children of the Creator, not defied by their sins. Icons of God's image. His
brothers and sisters.
It was the
Pharisees who looked at them and scrawled "sinner" on their
foreheads. It was the accusers who drew circles in the sand with themselves on
the inside and "those sinners" on the outside.
Those words --
"a friend of sinners" -- were spoken with an upturned nose and a
self-righteous sneer. And that's the same phrase the church has adopted to
speak of our own brothers and sisters -- "Love the sinner, hate the
sin."
It's the same
self-righteous sneer heard in the words of those who dragged the woman caught
in adultery to Jesus: "What should we do with such a woman?" They
defined her by a moment. She was "one of those." Not a sister. Not a
human. Just a pawn in a political debate. A sinner.
But Jesus knelt
with her in the sand. Unafraid to get dirty. Unafraid to affirm her humanity.
"Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more."
He could have said
"You're a sinner, but I love you anyways." But she knew she was a
sinner. Those voices were loud and near and they held rocks above her head.
Jesus refused to
let his voice join theirs. By telling her "go and sin no more," he
affirmed that sin is not her deepest identity. It's not how he saw her. It's
not who she was at the core of the being.
I am a sinner.
But before I was a
sinner, I was created in the image of God. While sin has twisted and smudged
that image, it can't erase it. Sin is so terrible that it killed Jesus. But it
doesn't define me any longer. I am a new creation.
Because of Jesus, "sinner" is not how God sees me. It's not how I see myself. And it shouldn't be how I see my brothers and sisters in the church.
There is no condemnation for those who are in Jesus. To look at my gay Christian brother and say "God loves the sinner" is to set myself against Jesus and bring condemnation again to those he's already redeemed.
So I'm done.
I'm done with
"Love the sinner, but hate the sin."
I won't say it
anymore.
I'm done with
speaking as if I'm different, better than you.
We are icons. We
are children of the Creator, redeemed by Jesus. We are brothers and sisters.
And today, that's
enough.
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