Paradox

This week my mind has been flooded with the reality of loving a person while not accepting or even understanding their actions. It is one more paradox of life that we find ourselves confronting at times. We were taught by Jesus to love the sinner, but hate the sin. These words are much easier to recite in a Sunday school class than to actually practice in life. To practice such words, we have to learn to live with the paradox of emotions that we feel all at once. It is almost the same mix of emotions we feel when someone dies; only in this situation the person is still alive. The life of the person seems to only complicate things since we are confronted with their existence and their continual life on earth.

My mother is the one that taught me how to live in the paradox of such feelings towards others. She taught me not by her words, but by the way in which she lived her life. When I was in high school we lived in a very small town. It came out one year that a very active older man at church had molested a small child many years earlier. It was an unthinkable act. The man’s actions caused pain and hurt to so many. My mom knew and understood this, but at the same time she saw the pain and hurt in the one that was the cause. He was immediately ostracized in the town and no one would have anything to do with him; that is no one but my mother. She would on occasion go over to his apartment to take him cookies or home-made bread. Her going over there was not her accepting his behavior in any way. Just like everyone else she did not understand it and was saddened by it, but she was able to see the man behind the action. She saw the lonely man that she knew that Jesus still loved. My mother allowed herself to have Christ’s eyes for the untouchable person in our town. By her actions she taught me what it is to live in the paradox of emotions that are present in such a situation. She showed me what it means to actually live out “love the sinner, hate the sin.” My mother was an amazing woman who knew what it was to love those who are the most unlovable.