"Love the sinner, hate the sin"

[Dark_Lite]

Best dodge 'em rhetoric ever devised?

[seebs]

Not quite, but it certainly gets abused.

Many people I've seen on TV appear to love the sin, and hate the sinner. They want to punish sinners for being bad, but then they spend all their time talking about their favorite sins, and use those sins to drive up donations... Sounds like they value the sin a great deal, and would have to scrabble for something else to talk about if it went away.

[zoziw]

Best dodge 'em rhetoric ever devised?

Unless the person has asked me to keep them accountable for something my general philosophy is love the sinner...that's it.

[Treasure the Questions]

As seebs says, it gets abused.

People don't seem to be able to grasp the love the sinner bit very well. I think C.S.Lewis discussed this - did he coin the phrase? He said there was a sinner he loved a great deal, even though he hated the sins he committed - namely himself.

First we need to have a healthy, but not over-inflated, love of ourselves, and for me that has developed as I have better understood that God's grace means he loves me, warts and all (metaphorically speaking;) ).

Secondly I think we may be deeply grieved by sin in ourselves or in others because of the damage it causes, but perhaps to use the word "hate" is unhelpful.

This seems to take me back to "love your neighbour as you love yourself". We want the best for ourselves, so we should want the best for our neighbour, and if we think they are heading over a precipice we may feel the need to say, "stop!". However, we wouldn't think anyone who was continually offering criticism of all we did really had our best interests at heart: we'd just feel nagged.

Loving ourselves involves accepting our weaknesses as a part of who we are. Perhaps we will be working to improve in those areas, with God's help, but unles we accept that we have faults and are no worse than anyone else (nor any better) because of it, we don't truly love ourselves.

So accepting others as they are, warts and all (even a real one on the end of their nose :D ) is reall love.

If I don't add anymore for a few days, that'll be 'cause I'm not going to be around over the weekend and may be too busy today. :wave:

Karin

[fragmentsofdreams]

It is technically correct, but it is often used as a shield for those whose hate for the sin is crossing over in to hate for the sinner.

My philosophy is that if you need to say this in order to show any love, something is going wrong.

[McCravey]

Not quite, but it certainly gets abused.

Many people I've seen on TV appear to love the sin, and hate the sinner. They want to punish sinners for being bad, but then they spend all their time talking about their favorite sins, and use those sins to drive up donations... Sounds like they value the sin a great deal, and would have to scrabble for something else to talk about if it went away.

Makes you wonder who they worship.