“I remember,” says C.S. Lewis, “Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man’s actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner. For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man?"
[Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) was arguably the most influential Christian writer of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. His major contributions in literary criticism, childre's literature, fantasy literature, and popular theology brought him international renown and acclaim.]
“But years later,” Lewis continues, “it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life—namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it.”
‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD” (Leviticus 19:18).
“'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these" (Mark 12:31; cf. Matthew 22:39).
As the 2014 Ebola outbreak spreads across Africa, and now across the world, fear of contracting the virus is spreading even faster than the disease itself. In the US, new fears have been sparked by the news that a healthcare worker--a nurse--at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas has contracted the deadly virus from a patient, Thomas Duncan, a Liberian who brought the virus into the country last month when he came to the US to visit family.
What makes this case extra frightening is that the nurse seemed to have followed all the rules, adhering strictly to CDC protocol for prevention and protection. "On the surface," reports CNN, "the nurse seemed to have taken all the precautions needed to protect herself from Ebola." The operative words in that report are "on the surface." The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) is scrambling to determine how and when the "obvious" breach in protocol could have occurred. From frightened citizens, to concerned relatives, to the CDC, and even the White House, everyone is asking, "How could this happen?"
The CDC promises to get to the bottom of it, but as blogger Betsy McCaughey, Ph.D. (chairman of Reduce Infection Deaths and a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research) has put it, "It's hard to trust the CDC when there is no room for error."
No room for error. That is the precisely the daunting situation we all find ourselves in as we face the scourge of sin in our lives. Sin, like a deadly virus, threatens to kill us all. Yet, smugly, we don all our protective gear--our good works, our self justification, our denial--and we dare to stand in the presence of a holy God. We've convinced ourselves that we've followed the protocol to the nth degree. But in the end, the contagion of sin contaminates our very being.
It doesn't take much. a single "break in protocol" results in a sentence of death. The Apostle James declares, "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it" (James 2:10).
Protocol cannot save us. But just as survivors are sharing their blood in hopes of saving those stricken, Jesus blood, alone, is the vaccine that can inoculate us against the ravages of sin.
"In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace …" (Ephesians 1:7, ESV). "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1, ESV).
The American Psychiatric Association now includes among its vast list of "mental illnesses" and "disorders" the following:
When, exactly, did "sin" become a "disorder?" Although this subtle shift of vocabulary may not seem significant to some, it makes a big difference in how we approach a solution to these problems. If these are sins then repentance is possible. If they are "disorders" then we are excused of full responsibility.
"If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us" (1 John 1:8-10).