Love The Sinner, Hate The Sin

TRANSCRIPT:

The phrase, "Love the sinner and hate the sin,"  it's one thats really started to bother me lately. Ok, there's two parts to this quote. The first is, "love the sinner". The second part is, "hate the sin". But with my experiences that I'm gonna share with you, it seems like church members seem to spend way too much time on the second part, hating the sin, and almost no time at all on the first part, loving the sinner.

So a couple years ago when I was back in Oregon living with my parents and going to their home ward (the ward I kinda grew up in), it was the third hour, Elder Quorum. Which is my least favorite hour of the three hour block. Anyways, in the first row is the guy that always has the Peter Priesthood answers. And I don't remember what the topic was that day in class, but I remember he said, "I really do love the sinner but I hate the sin", and then he proceeded to spend ten minutes explaining how he hated the sin. I didn't think of it at that point, someone brought it up to me later when I was telling them about this story, and they said, "shouldn't he be spending more time loving the sinner instead of hating the sin?"

He spent ten seconds saying he loved the sinner but that was negated by the ten minutes afterwards explaining how much he hated the sin (which really was about hating the sinner). And so I thought, you know, thats so true. Aren't we as church members, as christians, aren't we in charge of loving the sinner and don't we leave hating the sin up to God?

So, let me take you back now two weeks, when I was in Washington for my grandma's funeral. I stayed for Sunday and with what family was left  went to church. And in Sunday School, I can't remember the topic—which you know, maybe something teachers should take note of when you can't remember the topic but can remember one or two quotes, maybe you should spend more time teaching the topic. Anyways, there was three separate people in the class that seemed to love to take everything back to gay marriage and how they opposed it and it was wrong and it's destroying the world and in fact one gentleman said, "it's enough that was have to tolerate the gays, now we have to tolerate gay marriage?"

Now, I don't let thinks like that bother me because really— it's words and I live by, "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me."Anyways, a few minutes after those comments, my sister lend over and asked, "whats the scripture about the way we judge others is the way we're gonna be judged?" So I Googled it and found it for her. And then a few minutes later, she looked over at me and she said, "I'm really sorry. I hope you're ok. You know, this class isn't this bad usually. I'm really sorry." I explained, you know it doesn't bother me.

She explained that the reason she looked up that scripture is because the gentleman who said, "it's enough that was have to tolerate the gays, now we have to tolerate gay marriage?", she said, He really has no place to judge because he has a child in jail. And so in her own way, she wanted to defend me.

But, it got me thinking, and I actually wrote down, "the only people Christ chastised were the religious people who were chastising others."

If you think about it, the woman who was brought to be stoned because of her adultery, who did Christ chastise? He chastised the Pharisees, the religious people, for chastising her, the sinner.

I think one of the things we should learn from that and something that I wish everyone knew, is that we as humans, church members, Christians, we have the responsibility to spend all of our effort, one hundred percent, loving the sinner. We're suppose to leave the rest of that quote up to God. That's not our place to do.

So if we spend our time loving the sinner and leave the rest up to God (hating the sin) all we have to do is love. And what I know Christ's gospel to be is love one another. First, love God, the great commandment and the second is like unto it love thy neighbor.