Question

MsDahl said:

How do you teach your children to separate the sin from the person in order to judge the sin as sinful without hating/condescending the actual sinner? More specifically, how do you handle teaching a child about homosexuality when the child lives next door to two homosexual couples?

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I'm not sure if a sin can be entirely separated from a person, because something in that person is causing that sin. People don't just randomly sin randomly. But that's just my opinion.


Whatever you do. Don't promote hate. Don't tell him he lives next door to pedophiles, or terrorists. Don't tell him they hate America or the military. And don't promote hate. There's enough hate going around. And I've never heard of anyone who stopped sinning because people hated them.

And btw, just IMO, hating a sin, is, in a way, hating the sinner.

"I hate the way you..."
"I hate it when you..."
"I hate it when people..."
"I hate the things you do."
"I hate everything you did today."
"I hate your..."

Oh, but they don't hate you, just everything about you. I don't know, seems a little counter intuitive.


*Knows he's not wanted, and quietly unsubscribes*

We are called to be like Christ, actually calling ourselves little "christs." If we intend to live up to that, we must love everyone the way Christ loves them. When Jesus was questioned by the rich young ruler who was consumed with the love of money, the Scripture says that He "looked at him and loved him." (Mark 10:21) The man's sins had no effect on Christ's love.

There is no darkness in light. We cannot mingle our supposed love for people with hatred for them. Sin is a parasite on what God created to be good, pure and holy. People who sin are not the sin they commit.

M.

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And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. --Ephesians 5:2



Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. --Ephesians 4


All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. --2 Corinthians 5:18-19

What Monica said. We are never supposed to love the sin. We are supposed to forgive the sinner seven times seventy.

As far as children go, we have to communicate that we hate some things that people do, but that we mustn't hate the people, but to remember when we also do things that God hates.

MsDahl said:

We are definitely looking and open to the idea of moving. I'm praying that maybe they'll move instead. I did talk to my priest and he'll be arranging to come by for another blessing of our home. He mentioned that we should have notified the police that day (which I considered in passing but didn't give it much thought).

The world is just such an evil place, it's hard to see any goodness in it via people/society.

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There is a world of information competing for our attention every hour of the day,and there's a power behind the scenes manipulating it for our downfall.


My wife and I trained our children in the most primitive and ordinary way we know, and knew: We lived to the best of our knowledge the life we believe God wants us to live. The values our children learn are those they see us living. The abnormalities, if you will, and questions beyond our ability to answer we got help and advise to supply.


Sin is sin, regardless of who is involved. Unless of course, there is a rejection of God and His Word!


the sinful and unworthy servant

127.0.0.1 said:

I'm not sure if a sin can be entirely separated from a person, because something in that person is causing that sin. People don't just randomly sin randomly. But that's just my opinion.


Whatever you do. Don't promote hate. Don't tell him he lives next door to pedophiles, or terrorists. Don't tell him they hate America or the military. And don't promote hate. There's enough hate going around. And I've never heard of anyone who stopped sinning because people hated them.

And btw, just IMO, hating a sin, is, in a way, hating the sinner.

"I hate the way you..."
"I hate it when you..."
"I hate it when people..."
"I hate the things you do."
"I hate everything you did today."
"I hate your..."

Oh, but they don't hate you, just everything about you. I don't know, seems a little counter intuitive.


*Knows he's not wanted, and quietly unsubscribes*

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I think a little GK Chesterton is good for the soul - anyway, this is worth considering:

Take another case: the complicated question of charity, which some highly uncharitable idealists seem to think quite easy. Charity is a paradox, like modesty and courage. Stated baldly, charity certainly means one of two things--pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving unlovable people. But if we ask ourselves (as we did in the case of pride) what a sensible pagan would feel about such a subject, we shall probably be beginning at the bottom of it. A sensible pagan would say that there were some people one could forgive, and some one couldn't: a slave who stole wine could be laughed at; a slave who betrayed his benefactor could be killed, and cursed even after he was killed. In so far as the act was pardonable, the man was pardonable. That again is rational, and even refreshing; but it is a dilution. It leaves no place for a pure horror of injustice, such as that which is a great beauty in the innocent. And it leaves no place for a mere tenderness for men as men, such as is the whole fascination of the charitable. Christianity came in here as before. It came in startlingly with a sword, and clove one thing from another. It divided the crime from the criminal. The criminal we must forgive unto seventy times seven. The crime we must not forgive at all. It was not enough that slaves who stole wine inspired partly anger and partly kindness. We must be much more angry with theft than before, and yet much kinder to thieves than before. There was room for wrath and love to run wild. And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

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"Orthodoxy" ch 6, "The Paradoxes of Christianity"

I don't think Christians need special reminders of injunctions to love others, so you are quite right as far as that goes.
In Scripture, however, there are numerous times when we are told that God Himself hates things. Hate is not an unqualified vice, if God Himself does it. There are proper objects for hatred - although in the case of dealing with other humans it is specific actions of theirs. It is true that what they call "a lifestyle" (see the thread on Evil Euphemisms) is a choice that is central to their behavior, but it IS behavior - not the person itself - and so is a thing which could be changed, and is a thing which we may, and ought to hate - and is NOT the person. People are NOT "gay". There is no such thing as "BEING gay". They choose to act on a passion of unnatural lust - the experiencing of which may not be 'their fault', but is nevertheless an unnatural thing which they ought to forsake, as all (including us) ought to forsake sin in general.

So we are NOT called to hate "everything about them" as you put it. But we should hate the things that they do that are built around that choice to act on their passion, as we should hate the anger that causes fighting and little children to cry from fear and sorrow because of sin - but to STILL love them as fellow sinners and human beings. That's the nature of the paradox. It is pagan to be unable to distinguish between the sinner and the sin - and it is what much of our society has returned to, having abandoned even Protestant Christianity, and so soon we can expect to be persecuted for the "hate crime" - another term of modern nonsense - of hating the sin, because an apostate-cum-pagan/unbelieving society can no longer tell the difference.