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.
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