Despise child molesters? The bitch of Christianity...

Even murderers and rapists think child predators are worse than scum under their toe nails. Of COURSE you and I are far better people; heaven was made for good people like us, wasn't it. Naturally. People whose sins are relatively white. Oh that opens up a can of racist worms I won't tackle today...But I mean, our sins aren't really quite as dirty as theirs... right?

And child molesters. There's a special place in hell for them. I mean that's what we think, right. That's what we hope in the dark corners of our minds...the corners we thought were all bright and shiny but which in Truth are little bastions of fallenness, the dark 'kingdom' of self righteousness.

I currently live in a fairly small and very conservative town in the south. There is a lovely hair stylist I go to who is a transvestite. I don't have a safe pronoun to refer to this person in a way that's neutral and doesn't plant myself firmly in one view or the other of their (there's the pronoun we settle for in the abstract, but it's hard to get by with when you're talking to an acquaintance of the person in point) current gender. This person was male and is transitioning into a female identity, which is pretty persuasive, and has chosen a genderless name, but I'm going to use Valentine as a pseudonym.

In a town this size that's overrun with the most self righteous God squads you could find anywhere in the U.S., people gawk and judge. That's what we humans do. It's like we think it's our birthright. After talking to this gentle, wounded soul, I learned that all of their 3 siblings died in separate incidents the same week! Their father was never present and rejected his child because of their gender issues...and this year their mother died too. My heart broke for Valentine. Eventually I would hear people talking about Valentine the transvestite, people who liked V. But amazingly it seemed that all anyone really knew was the transvestite part. I didn't meet anyone who knew about him but who also knew the horrible, horrible pain and brokenness Valentine was dealing with.

I was so struck by how mesmerized people are with the tawdry side of one person's biography, so much so that they were totally oblivious to the gaping wounds that beg for salve and bandages. We are gawkers who want to see some gore, who find some sick attraction to knowing about people's stigma (which we may regard as sin), but who allow ourselves to be completely distracted by the by that fascinating aberration from the norm and completely sidetracked from the mission of saving and healing people--bringing them rescue... we don't come with a stretcher and a first aid kit. We come with hand cuffs and a big stick. And a video camera. And we often come disguised as vigilantes when in our sick, not yet fully sanctified minds, we are really voyeurs.

Jesus never approached people and said, Hey, you suck and you're going to hell. Wait, Jesus never did that to 'sinners.' Meaning He never did it to people who knew how lost they were. He only did it to the Pharisees and the teachers of the law... and boy did He have some choice insults for them.

You want to talk about the emperor's new clothes? I give you religious people.

But to those who were not wrapped up in their own so called 'holiness'. . . With everyone who knew that they were not righteous in themselves, Jesus did not begin with their sin. He always began with their wounds. He saw their pain and He spoke healing into their pain and THEN after healing them, He would say, Go and sin no more. The fact is that we don't have the power not to sin until He heals us. Nobody does. Not one stinking human. First He has to heal us, then we can be made whole, and then we can be made holy.

I can't believe how many American evangelicals seem to think that the Good News they're supposed to be sharing with the 'lost' is that they are vile and filthy and fall short of the glory of God, "but if they repent and put their faith in the blood of Jesus and His sacrifice, AND you follow this list of 300 rules about what you can say and wear and eat and drink and speak and think, THEN you can join our group and get into heaven (maybe, if you don't f up along the way, depends on how many points you rack up and how recently you confessed your sins when the rapture strikes)'. They seem to think that the good news is Hey we've got even more rules you have no hope of following on your own--come feel even crappier about yourself than you already do, and that is the road to salvation.

It is like they are finding a person being chased by wild animals at the foot of a cliff and saying, Good news, climb this 1 mile sheer cliff and when you get to the top you'll find someone there to help you climb it. We make people get holy before we'll talk to them or welcome them among us. That's not what Jesus did. That's not what the good news is. When you are Jesus to people, you come to that person and you say, 'Get on my back and I'll carry you to the top (because somebody carried me, and now I have the grace to help you too) and then we'll work on your wounds and I'll introduce you to this Person who took away my sin and set me free...'

When I heard that Michael Jackson died last night I was shocked. They had just taken him to the hospital, and then he just... died. That's not the script. He gets sick but he recovers...He's too young, he's too famous...I wanted him to recover so he could have more time to find healing for all the wounds in his heart. I was talking to my transvestite friend and was amazed to hear Valentine dismiss Jackson as a child molester and express his preferred sympathy for Farah Faucet (who had better hair). It seems that no matter how marginalized you are in a society, you can still hate and despise someone else, usually the child molesters. (And I am reporting what someone said about MJ, I'm not professing to know what he did or did not do) Because their sin doesn't emerge from holes in their hearts that they are trying desperately to fill to deaden the horrifying pain??? Sin is people trying to meet legitimate needs through illegitimate means. Putting the wrong things in the holes in your heart to try to fill the gaping wound, and wounding others in the process, and widening the holes in your own heart, too.

Every American Christian I think knows/believes/has heard that if they had been the only person on earth Jesus would have died for them.

Here's the bitch. Jesus loves the person whose entire identity you are summing up as 'child molester' enough to die on the cross for him or her even if s/he had been the only person on earth, too. He would have died for him. The bitch is that Jesus loves the child molester just as much as He loves you! The bitch is that you stand at exactly the same place at the foot of the cross, right beside the child molester and the serial killer and the rapist...

Again, for those who have ears to hear, Here's the bitch. Yes, Jesus would have died for you had you been the only human on earth. But guess what? Your sin (and mine) is so filthy and despicable next to the holiness of God that YOUR SIN would have REQUIRED that Jesus die for you to save your sorry ass even if you had been the only person on earth. Put that on a T-shirt and tell them I sent you. I crucified Jesus. With my own self absorption. With all the messes I've made in my life and those of everyone connected to me, whether it was my express intention to do so or not.

I'm so glad that God has the same mercy for me that He has for Michael Jackson. Who may not have committed all deeds attributed to him. But even if he did, I'm so glad that Jesus looks at him and looks at me and sees our brokenness and our wounds and is able to let His compassion overrule His wrath as long as we but humble ourselves and acknowledge that whatever our sins are/were, they are/were black enough to require the ultimate sacrifice from the one perfectly beautiful innocent loving Person who ever lived.

How dismaying that at our core, we almost always want mercy for ourselves, but justice for others.

Oh that He would transform our hearts and we would wish the same mercy we have received on even our greatest enemies. Here is the test of how much Jesus there is in you. Thankfully, His mercies are new every morning and His compassion never ceases- all we have to do is cry out for mercy and throw ourselves on His, and He will give us Jesus' righteousness to wear straight into the Holy of Holies. Right after the child molester in front of us, who has found grace.

I hope that something happened in Michael's heart in a realm we could not see that enabled him to surrender to God's grace before he died.

There are so many people who really do not want a part of any God who could forgive a child molester or some other low life, say hanging on a cross next to Him, where there was obviously not going to be any opportunity for him to 'redeem himself' by his good deeds after getting sanctified.

How critical that event in the life of Jesus-that it was recorded for us--that we see Him promise paradise to a person who had no way in this life of deceiving himself that the real redemption was in what he achieved after he became a Christian. The beautiful deeds He does through us as He transforms us after the salvation experience are evidence of His glory and His love and His amazing power. How easily we think them evidence that we are redeeming ourselves. That we were really pretty good after all and deserved saving.

Thank God for the thief on the cross. Thank God for every repentant child molester and murderer He has had compassion on and sanctified with the same blood of the Lamb that sanctifies you. Thank God that He has the same mercy for me that He has for them. Thank God for His mercies which are new every morning! Thank God, Thank God, Thank God, Thank God! Glory to God in the highest! Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. Holy Holy Holy.