FW: [HoB/D] Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin

[Louie Crew <lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu>]

*********,

Jesus was not wrong, as you suggest, to demand that we deal first with our
own sins before we address the sins we see in others.  Jesus was not wrong
to point out that our own sin serves as a beam to interfere with our
ability to see the sins of others.

I have been an academic for 50 years.  Please don't dare suggest
that I would want suppress anyone's intellectual exploration of  the
"other."  We'd be in a worse mess still if we had to try out every
experience before we came to a judgment about it.

I have been a sinner for more than 70 years and I know how easy it is to
make of the "other" a scapegoat for what I am not prepared to address in
myself.

The two examples I gave were not euphemisms for sin, but direct ways for
redeeming sin: 1) Address your own sin first.  2)Find the most broken
person you can find of the ones who trespass against you, and love the
person unconditionally as God does, as if a member of your own family.

You always want to stake a claim on the middle ground.  In this instance
it sounds like you want it as a position of control, not a position of
shared vulnerability, not a position of co-passion.

Louie, Newark deputation