do we hate sin more than we love other people?

A person who took the lives of women in some part because he had learned to hate sexual sin to such a degree that he believed killing other women vs working on his understanding of those issues within himself was a good plan…

His faith community told him to hate sin more than he loved other people.

I am reminded of a story - a medieval murder mystery - where the local priest of a village is found dead in the river. The man had been chosen by the abbot of the nearby monastery as a man upright in all things, knowledgeable and educated, and more than fit to teach the parishoners all they needed to know of the things of God.

More than suitable, right?

Well, a newborn was birthed and considered sickly, and they ran for the priest to baptise it, but he was at his devotions and wouldn't rouse from them, even for this. He came afterwards, but the baby was already dead. And because it wasn't baptised, in the tradition of his faith, he wouldn't allow it to be buried in consecrated ground.

A mentally deficient young woman would sleep with any man who cozened her, and ended up giving birth to a child out of wedlock. But when she tried to return to the church, the priest told her she was an unrepentant sinner and excommunicated her. In grief, she went and drowned herself.

Yardage between the priest's allotment and a local man's plot was considered 'flexible', and the local man had used it to drive his cattle acrosss with the blessing of the previous priest. But now the new priest demanded that it be tilled for his usage all the way to the edge, cutting off the local man.

A freeman born operated a piece of ground that was traditional serf-held, and the priest required that the freeman prove his status or else he would be held bound to the land. The town elders held the freeman's freedom and the priest backed down, but claimed he had done nothing wrong.

The priest was theologically sound, legally within his rights, morally correct... But he had no heart for people. For 'sheep without a shepherd' as we are taught Jesus looked upon the crowds.

I did a little questionnaire about men's mental health this morning - teenaged son of the pastor of our church - and while I know the stereotypes of masculinity that tend to be bruited about, I also know that I follow a faith that grounds itself in a God - divinity, authority, power - who clothed himself in fragile mortal flesh, endured the little twinges of human existence, wept, grieved, submitted to brutality, and is still considered the lynchpin of our faith. Like, the Jesus of the gospels - whose harshest words were for those who led others astray with religiosity, whose most brutal action is against the bleed-em-til-they're-dry monetary systems of the day, who refused to take up arms against armed soldiers who came looking for him - is everything humanity should be, and he embodies so few of the 'masculine' traits that a group of kids would probably pick if you asked them to choose.

But back to having a heart for people - not just 'the lost', as churches like to phrase it, but people. Even those who have cast Christianity away. Do we still love them? How capable are we really of hating the sin and loving the sinner?

Because I think that, in our Sydney Evangelical context we hate the sin far more than we love the sinners. And this is a big problem going forward.

Sin is something to be wary of - absolutely. But one of the tensions of human existence is where it is better to restrain sin or sinfulness and where it is wiser to show love. And Jesus walked it perfectly - mostly by showing love to the 'sheep without a shepherd'. We can't hope to match it perfectly, but I think we should try to follow in love more than in hatred of sin.

on rape, truth, and why the church is silent

My guess is that the reluctance of Christian organisations to address rape culture or the denigration of women is multi-layered.

Even once you get past the 'sexual assault is a woman's problem, not caused by men and male entitlement' line, Christianity has to deal with the "we've been pushing the 'ladies, be modest in your dress so you don't inflame men's desire' for centuries and we can't admit it was wrong because church outsiders might challenge us on other matters of authority" blockage. That's a pretty huge blockage, and the church self-defends against it in every way, shape, or form - and has historically, from the theory of evolution being in opposition to biblical literality, to women's equality being valid and necessary, to it being a sin to be same-sex attracted no matter what you did or didn't do with that attraction.

Once it swallows that, it needs to address "well, obviously a woman being sexually assaulted must be sinning (because of course marital sex isn't rape, and 'good women' don't put themselves in a situation where rape could happen - see 'be modest in your dress...') and we shouldn't be helping to make her sin consequence-free". This is a pretty common 'sin-conflation' among Christian organisations. The premise is that "the problem is that the little sins are the same as big sins in God's eyes" which means there's no essential difference to the church's mind between a woman being sexually active outside of marriage, and a man taking a woman against her will.

And even once they've managed to choke down that idea, there's an attitude of "this is a worldly problem, not a spiritual problem, and church organisations, leaders, or preaching do not in any way contribute to it". Y Helo Thar "Porn Is The Problem", crowd.

Male entitlement, buoyed by the theology of male headship (with corresponding female inferiority), underpinned by a Madonna/whore complex regarding female sexuality? Not even acknowledged, although it underpins many a talk about sexuality and gender in the church and is reinforced by worldly masculinity and advertising.

Oh and then there's the deep-seated perennial mentality of "ew, feminism makes a woman unclean; she can be cleansed of it by the blood of Jesus, but she can't keep the feminism" which dislikes supporting anything with even the whiff of 'feminism' about it. Frankly, feminism is outright sin to the hard end of complementarianism and a 'slippery slope' to the more flexible ones: why, let women think they don't have to submit to the authority of men - let them suppose they're equal and they'll be abandoning their families and thinking they know more about anything than their husbands!

The authority question, incidentally, is also a root of the trans-panic in conservative and complementarian churches; "if we can't define male and female with definitive biology, then how can we be sure that men are given the due authority that their gender entitles them to?"

I don't hate the church or Christians. But I sincerely and truly understand why others do.

March 4 Respect: unsilent women, authority, and feminism.

Some people use the word 'respect' to mean "assign authority". And some people use the word 'respect' to mean "assign human dignity". Which leads to the point where someone says, "You must respect me, or I won't respect you." And what they mean - and will frequently act out - is, in fact, "You need to recognise me as an authority, or I won't treat you with human dignity."

As such 'feminism' is anathema to men who use the term 'respect' to mean 'recognise as an authority' because it no longer takes male authority as the last word. 

It also occurs to me that when men or male authorities talk about "being respected" they're largely talking about being assigned authority and recognised and acknowledged as such. So a man feeling disrespected is most likely because he isn't considered the last word, the leader, the ultimate authority. However, when women talk about "being respected" they're largely talking about being assigned humanity.  A woman feeling disrespected is likely because she's not being considered as a person  - rather, she's an object, a usefulness, or an adjunct.

As such 'feminism' is anathema to men who use the term 'respect' to mean 'recognise as an authority' because it no longer takes male authority as the last word. This explains a lot of pushback against feminism in Christian and peri-Christian (Christendom?) circles. When 'respectfulness' is seen as "you will recognise, acknowledge, and submit to my authority for no other reason than that I am male" then, yes, feminism is dangerous to the rigid end of complementarianism and a slippery slope to the more flexible side.

In contrast, 'feminism' to most feminists means  the recognition that a woman is a person: fully whole, legally independent, individual and worthy of decent treatment without regard to whether or not a male finds them personable, socially acceptable, or fuckable. Women are worthy of existence and human rights simply because they are (...made in the image of God, the Christian mentally adds).

I have never ever had a conflict between my feminism and my faith. Jesus' closest followers included women who not only fed him and washed his feet, but also learned from him and were witnesses to his resurrection. And his behaviour and teachings are what we would these days call 'feminine'. So, yeah, of course God sees me as any man's equal in human dignity, therefore any human dignity accorded a man is my right, too. And yeah, it gets messy when we bring it into society where men hold the power, the authority, and even the truly godly ones are not above tweaking the system to give them the advantage. Human nature is human nature, after all. That doesn't mean it's wrong, just unpopular. (And shouldn't we as Christians know about not-wrong-just-unpopular? I mean, that's a biggie in our cultural victimhood...)

I want to say something cynical about the rather notable silence about the March4Respect from most of the churchgoing people that I know. I won't. Some of them are trying; some of them aren't. Most are focusing on the Great Trans Fight that will kick into gear over the next 12 months, because from that will come the dollar signs of religious education and our right to teach and preach our views like they're dominant and nobody is going to question them.

But I still think we're spending our coin on the drug of 'moral self-righteousness' that will leave the broader church with no witness in the world. But I'm nobody on that point - who'd listen to me?