Love the Sinner

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Luke 6:41-42

We’ve all heard the expression, “hate the sin but love the sinner.” At times I’ve felt that I understood that and that I was doing fairly well in a given circumstance. Like many other truths, it’s the fire, the hot button issues, the agendas that show us how we really feel.

In a conversation with a woman I’ve known all my life I came to the realization that she believes me to be a homophobe. At onset I find this amusing, given that one of my dearest, most loved and sadly missed friends was a homosexual. I most certainly did not hate him. I loved him. I cannot say the same for his lifestyle.

Moving on with the replay of my conversation I realized that her viewpoint comes from the fact that I hate the sin. I hate that it exists. I hate the foothold it gives to Satan. I hate what it does to families, to individuals and to the world at large. Suddenly sexual orientation is to be discussed, any and every sexual orientation. Decorum is as much a thing of the past as the rotary telephone, a few people may still posses it but very few actually know how to use it.

The Bible says a man should leave his parents and cleave to his wife. (Genesis 2:24, Mark 10:7) A man and his wife. I do have issues with a man referring to another man as his husband or a woman referring to another woman as her wife. That is simply not possible.  Marriage is a bond between a man and a woman. Find different labels, use other terminology but do not sully the Biblical truth of marriage by borrowing terms that do not apply! Oh yes, I hate the sin.

Let’s look at a different angle. In my close proximity I know off the top of my head, eight different people, (not four couples, eight individuals known to me in various ways) who are homosexual. I like them all. I have great love and respect for a few who are closer to me. I do not hate the sinner.

Jesus calls us to check our own vision before we attempt to influence the vision of another. Amen! We have to know that our feelings, not the best barometer in the first place, come from our beliefs about the sin and not the sinner. After all we are all sinners. When I checked my vision I found that I don’t want to hear a man call another man his husband in the exact same way that I don’t want to hear about “our bed” in “our house” from any couple who is not married.

God made his expectations pretty clear. I don’t meet them and I suspect, neither do you.  Someone, somewhere is peering past his plank to see our specks.

Jesus, truly loves everyone. Look at the people he chose to be his nearest and dearest. Then look further to the people he healed, blessed and saved. Look no farther than the mirror. If that image isn’t too clear, maybe there’s a plank in your eye.