There’s a pretty common saying, at least in my family, that stems from religious roots and well-meaning. Multiple times in my life my mother has told me, “love the sinner, hate the sin” and for most of my life I understood this to be a compassionate way to tell people that they can make their own choices, even if we disagree. However, these things are never that simple. As I became an adult I realized that this was often paired with other phrases like “there’s a difference between love and support” or “I still love them even though they did (insert sin here).” Soon this theology that I had been taught started to seem a little twisted and almost self-centered. You see, Christ would whole-heartedly disagree with this statement. He surrounded himself with prostitutes and beggars, not the type of people who were spotless. Christ would most likely say, “it isn’t one’s place to judge” or “take care of your own housekeeping.” Christ said to “love one another” and to help each other. He would never expect his followers to give conditional statements to their loved ones. It’s become a way of saying “I love you, but…” or “I am so strong for loving you because you are a bad person.” This isn’t Christ-like. In fact, this statement has become the opposite of what I thought it was. So many people LOVE the sin, watching films with language, nudity and violent acts or are obsessed with the news stories about something they would never do. Even more than that, so many people HATE the sinner. LGBTQ+ youth are tossed on the street and hateful Christians speak out against any type of equality due to their own beliefs. I believe that anything that harms another person is wrong, and it is wrong to hurt people with words based on one’s own beliefs.
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Erick L. Graham Wood
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