Then the second category of sins are those that Christians have struggled with and have found some measure of success in overcoming (or that they are utterly consumed by) that they now resent and detest in others to the point of making public pronouncements against said sins to ensure that all and sundry know that they consider these sins abhorent. Ted Haggard might merely be an unusually famous example of this. In this category you could put things ranging from consumption of alcohol to dancing to sexual immorality to theft to lying to abusing others for personal gain to delusions of grandeur.
I could write about the first category of people but those do not interest me for the time being. Fear of the unknown or the unnatural as perceived by the first category could explain everything there that is not derived from a reading of a biblical text, a church teaching or tradition, and so on and so forth.
What is the difference between the motive for Christians to rail against sin and sinners in category 1 verses railing against sinners in category 2? Why is it that the least humble people will rail at the sin of pride in others without grasping the level of their own vanity? Why does a pastor who struggles vainly to deal with same sex attraction and activity publicly denounce homosexuals? Why does the most wanton fornicator in his pre-marriage or pre-Christian youth (not to say that these two automatically coincide) feel obliged to consider fornicators the lowest of the low? Why does someone who is obsessed with body image and weight and yo-yo diets herself into physical breakdown look down on other women for somehow being too fat or unhealthy? Why is it that people will berate others for fiscal irresponsibility when they have their wages or bank accounts garnished because they have not been responsible enough to manage their own debt and have had debt troubles year after year? Why, in summary, do people in category 2 find it so easy to berate those who struggle with the same sins as though they themselves were somehow in category 1 and not category 2 with those sinners?
I can understand a Christian, ignorant of the struggles of those they cannot understand, berating sinners for struggling with this or that thing. In other words I can totally understand the moral outrage of a parent that someone is sexually predatory toward children. That makes sense both from the standpoint of protecting the children you love and really not understanding that some people are tempted to have sexual relations with children. Having a difficulty or the complete inability to relate to the temptations a brother or sister in Christ may have in those areas makes sense. It makes sense how one would be unable to have compassion on people who struggle with or commit sins that you don't have any understanding of.
What I find hard to understand is the other impulse, the impulse to demonize a sin in others precisely because it is the one you are most likely to be guilty of. In certain circles this peculiar tendency has led to what some have describes as the "raging closet case". Usually, of course, this parlance refers to a particular kind of sexual behavior but the spiritual, emotional, and intellectual dynamics of the raging closet case can appear for any sort of sin. The vitriol at the particular sin can be seen as a gross form of overcompensation. Your distance from a particular sin is indicated by finding it repulsive to a degree that other people who don't struggle with the sin may find profoundly baffling.
For someone who isn't good at managing money their ability to look down on others for making what they consider to be financially foolish decisions can be far greater than it would be if someone simply lacked discernment about the direction a relationship was going (insert Christianese "relationship" as a euphemism for anything to do with sexual attraction and relationships that have a potential sexual element). Where as a person who does not normally struggle with financial problems could see going into debt over unexpected medical expenses, or having to get loans for school because a person comes from a low-income family, a person overcompensating for his or her own debt management problems may declare that getting loans at all is a sign of moral weakness. Well ... yes, spending someone else's money to invest in your education CAN be a sign of weakness but not necessarily.
A person who has problems with sexual immorality may be all the more vigilant and loud about denouncing it in others. Or, having attained a measure of self-control the person may denounce it in those who are not where he is at now. Paul's counsel was that it is better to marry than to burn, which suggests a startlingly pragmatic view of marriage while having a high view of it. As Tim Keller once said in a sermon, this is a view of human sexuality that properly understood has been and will remain scandalous. A friend of mine recently noted that when it comes to the desires and frustrations of sexuality, sexual desire, and human mating it seems as though the world at large can find ways to transform these yearnings and frustrations into actual art whereas Christians (evangelicals at any rate) seem to do more than to transform these things into bad theology.
A person who has problems with eating or lack of exercise may find it easier to look down on someone else for being overweight or unhealthy even though this is precisely his or her own problem. What is the benefit? Does it make a person feel better to look down on someone else as being a failure in physical health so as to divert attention away from the frailty and mortality of one's own life? People who get themselves to a point where they have to manage diabetes or heart conditions can find it easy to look down on others as bringing their health-doom upon themselves but don't like to consider that by that line of reasoning this is how they should judge themselves.
Some of them DO judge themselves by this measure and it isn't always a certainty that this automatically means it is true. If you don't know anything about half of your family background, for instance, you're at a significant disadvantage for averting major health risks. What if you have never been on speaking terms with one of your parents? Then you won't necessarily know about health risks that, knowing about, would have helped you forestall or avoid health issues you might be dealing with now.
Of course in the midst of all this one can become a hypocrite, someone who pontificates long and loud about the failures of others while exemplifying those failures in your own life. It should not continue to amaze me how profoundly Christians fail to grasp the implications of Romans 2. If you know someone who has experienced the failure of an organ and you have had an organ fail then you could choose to look down on them for their lack of self-control and that might have some truth to it but would you accept that proposal being returned? If not then perhaps a little compassion is in order. Do you know someone who has problems with debt management?
Don't look down on them as some irresponsible lout with no desire to improve and consider that you yourself may end up acquiring massive debts due to unforeseen expenses. Do you know someone tempted toward get-rich schemes? Consider that if you are a workaholic who defines yourself by your work that you are no less defined by your love of money.
Sadly, people who lament injustice can be the most unjust people around. The people who most resent the abuse of power can be the biggest cheerleaders of abusing power when they feel it is in their power. I have known men who had no problem assasinating the character of other men at any opportunity in season or out of season who, when the shoe was on the other foot, deeply resented being the target of suspicion from others. I don't hold to something so simplistic as karma and I agree that "reap what you sow" often doesn't seem to apply, but Jesus did say that the measure you give will be the measure you get, pressed down and presented back to you.
Sometimes we most resent sin in others because it mirrors our motive but does not mirror our method. The single guy who resents married people because they can have sex and emotional bonding may see those people as having what he covets and they may have a codependent marriage with some idolatrous tendencies, but at the same time that guy's own desires for "marriage" may be essentially self-gratifying. The difference between the resentful single guy and the married guy who worships his marriage or his wife may not be the nature of the idolatry but the means through which it operates. Something that sticks with me about Barefoot Gen as I have been reading it is that even though Gen's father is an ardent pacifist he was capable of surprising physical violence toward his children. As Dostoevsky's Zossima once grimly observed a person who professes a love for all of humanity may actually hate everyone he knows. And it may be, oftentimes, that the sin you hate most in others is often the sin you find in yourself but it is easier to condemn your weakness in others than to admit how profound your own weakness actually is.
So these are a few thoughts I have had lately.
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