The Harder Task
How easy it is to dismiss a statement or an idea because of who said it. One of the good consequences of teaching in a school is the dialogue that happens between the teacher and his or her students. The teacher presents an idea, and the class works with it. Sometimes the class raises questions or makes arguments that require the teacher to think more about what he is teaching. This happened to me on many occasions when I taught at a Christian high school. One incident stands out. I referenced the line, “love the sinner but hate the sin.” The class batted this around for a while and one girl in particular seemed to take exception to it. She made a number of comments and I tried to respond as best I could. Eventually, however, we moved on with the lesson. The next class this same girl came in and said she repeated this statement to her father and both of them searched the internet for its source. They determined it was Mahatma Gandhi—the leader of Hindus in India in the early twentieth century. I told her Dietrich Bonhoeffer also said it, the Lutheran pastor martyred in Nazi Germany. In fact, both of them are known for saying, “Love the sinner but hate the sin.” But this girl (and her father) rejected the statement because Gandhi said it, he was older than Bonhoeffer, and Gandhi was not a Christian. Therefore, as far as they were concerned, the statement had a non-Christian origin.
I decided to investigate the source of this statement a bit more. I found that Augustine expressed the same idea in a letter to the nuns at a monastery where his sister had been a prioress. She had died and Augustine was writing to encourage the nuns to respect their new prioress and live according to the Christian rule in their community. He called out the moral vice of being obstinate or headstrong toward others. Augustine gives instruction for strict discipline of this behavior and then follows it with this line, “Moreover, what I have now said in regard to abstaining from wanton looks should be carefully observed, with due love for the persons and hatred of their sin….”
The question for the Christian is whether “loving the sinner but hating the sin” is in accord with how God responds to sinners. This quickly becomes a long discussion and it is not the main point of this blog to work it out. I will add that the testimony of scripture is that God is opposed to (or hates) sin and those who are caught up in it (sinners, the wicked) are under his judgment (Romans 2:9). At the same time, scripture testifies that God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son” (JN 3:16). Augustine commented on this verse and said the world that God loves is not neutral but a mass of sin. God’s love for the sinful world— sinful humanity—highlights the magnitude of God’s love. Jesus also teaches us to love our enemies, which are first of all God’s enemies. It can be argued that the statement to love the sinner but hate the sin makes good sense of the testimony of scripture. Even so, there may be debate about whether or not this statement is appropriate in relation to scripture and the church’s faith.
However, I wish to make a separate point. It is fallacious to reject an idea or statement because of who said it, rather than whether it accords with what is right and true. Christians do this far too much. They dismiss something because of who said it rather than think through what was said, which is the harder task.