"JUDGE SIN NOT SINNER" IS HYPOCRISY
Judging a person as a sinner may be disguised as merely condemning the action not the person. But if hypothetically you had a choice - to make x who does wrong never have existed and make y who is a better person exist you would un-create x completely. You deny x the right to exist.
Judging the sin is a way of
saying judging the sinner
Teachers judge children when they punish them. So do
parents. The law of the land punishes. And all of these may claim to love the
sinner and hate the sin. They seem to think that loving the sinner means hating
the sin in the sense of justly punishing it.
If you refuse to see the person as evil then why care
if they are virtuous or not? It doesn't matter then about encouraging people to
be honest or humble etc. Those who claim to judge sin not the sinner constantly
prove that they do in fact see sin as describing a person not merely actions,
they see the sin cannot be separate from the sinner because it is a symptom of
being a sinner. The only problem with the actions is what they say about the
person.
To call a person evil is hate speech. If you are to
hate and eradicate evil then it follows that if evil people exist then they
should be destroyed and regretfully tolerated if they cannot be eliminated. But
none of that proves that judging the sin not the sinner is the answer. It only
proves that some people try that route to get around the problem. They are doing
it in fear and desperation. The danger of classing people as evil does not prove
that evil people are a fiction. Judge sin and not sinners is in fact based on
fear of the truth and the consequences and its supporters are intolerant and
suspicious of those who know the truth. The person who judges a few people, eg
Stalin, Moses, King Herod and God as evil is demonised by the hypocrites all in
the name of loving sinners and hating sins. Whose side are they on?
Impersonal judging would be
worse than judging people
Judging the sins is impersonal. If you do that and
punish people while keeping the focus on punishing sins not them then you will
be danger of hurting them more than they deserve. You treat both their sins and
themselves as objects. This is far worse than judging people. Judging sins has
consequences for people for sin is based on the notions of law and punishment.
Law and punishment are about afflicting law-breaking people. It is the people they
target.
People know that if you hate their sin you personify it and treat it like a person whom you want to see suffering punishment and retribution. You end up as hateful and twisted as you would if you had the honesty to hate them and hate them directly.
We tend to be grateful to things when they benefit us. We feel a sense of
gratitude towards the car that gets us to hospital. We kick and curse the car
and swear at it when it breaks down. We treat events and things as if they
consciously bless us and curse us. If you really hate a sin, you are
personifying it and you are as good as hating a person. That hate will be just
as poisonous as hating a person and make you bitter and dangerous.
What is happening is the hate of sin is disguised as love for the person and the sin is effectively treated like it was a person. So in reality when somebody sins and their sin is hated the believer in religion ends up seeing two people - the sin and the sinner and hating both personally.
In the following ways, it is worse to hate a thing (sin)
than a person because
*Hate by definition and by how we experience it is a person to person thing. You
are lying to yourself if you say you hate sin and love all the sinners who
commit them
* Some people say that the reason you hate others is because you view them NOT
as people but as things - you dehumanise them in your head.
*Hating a sin understood as an force not as a person is good practice for hating
people.
*If you hate a thing intensely you will soon start hating people for hating
somebody's bad habit soon leads to hating the person. We are programmed to hate
and fear people rather than sins.
*It is irrational to try and hate a thing such as sin. It is self-hate because
hate is not good for you poisons you and hate can only be sustained by creating
new hates. Self-hate is an ingredient that you need in the recipe for hating
others.
* If you need to hate a person, then turning a sin into a
person into your head is trying to satisfy that need. What if it does not
work? Inventing persons to direct hate at is the sign of a twisted lunatic
and a totally vindictive person.
Why judge sin not sinner?
Some say you cannot hate the sinner with the sin for
you are a sinner yourself. But you can hate yourself as well. If you can hate
sinners as the hate sin doctrine suggests then why not love yourself despite
your sins and hate everybody else for their sins? You cannot love the sins of
others just because you are a sinner yourself. The Christian “gospel” makes that
clear.
Some say it is terrible to judge others - it is really
the only they we believe in. If judging others is so terrible, then it follows
that if there is a choice between judging yourself or others then judge
yourself. Degrade yourself to spare others. Better to sacrifice one for many.
Better to judge yourself for at least you are you and can judge you better than
anybody else. The ban on judging thrives on self-hatred and self-hatred is no
basis for love.
Some say you cannot hate the sinner with the sin
because you cannot judge for you don’t know to determine what extent a person’s
guilt is. You don’t know how guilty the person is or what pressure they are
under when they sin. Nobody tells everybody everything about themselves. But is
it really any comfort if I am a sinner and I know that people hate my sin and
therefore me though they cannot be sure I sinned in a specific act or to what
degree I sinned if I did? They hold that I might be a terrible sinner so any
love I get from them is limited or reserved. It is given to me not because I
deserve it but because they are not sure what to make of me. How can that
satisfy me and make me happy in life? A sin is to be hated for it’s a sin. The
degree of sin has nothing to do with it.
Blackmailing those who see through it
The Christians say they don’t judge people but sins.
Yet they say that if you sin seriously then you are identifying yourself with
your sin and making a complete choice for evil and against God. Some of them say
that everybody in Hell is there because they believe the sinner cannot be
separated from the sin and that sin reveals the sinner so to hate sin is to hate
the sinner. This doctrine is an attempt to blackmail and scare people into
accepting the lie that you and God really can love the sinner and hate the sin
and love yourself and hate your sin. If the lie is seen for what it is, religion
loses its purpose for existing and its virtue is really a passive-aggressive
hatred for sinners. Judge sinners not sins is an attempt to manipulate. It is
not about real love for you. You cannot even love the saint if you have the
following outlook, "If you sin I will pretend to judge your sins and not you. I
will use you to feed my hypocritical ego."
Judge
sin and not sinner a form of moral relativism
The absurdity of the doctrine of loving sinners and
judging/hating sins has driven its victims who swallowed it into moral
relativism - the notion that good and evil or right and wrong do not exist but
are mere social opinions and preferences. It is in fact a form of moral
relativism itself though it is in denial about this. You cannot protest about
moral relativism when you in fact encourage it and set the stage for it. Moral
relativism is far from adorable but sadly it is what the Church and society have
got. One religion creates moral codes while another sets up a contradictory one.
This fuels relativism.
It backfires!
If you judge a person as seriously ill or possibly
seriously ill, nobody cares for it may save a life. It is thought that upsetting
the person is better than the alternative. If the local priest thinks you are
committing hell-deserving sin and is wrong many would say you should not care
because better that than him saying nothing and maybe you going to Hell.
Misjudging you is worth it if it warns you about Hell.
Suppose you are not to judge the sinner and are to
judge the sin instead. What if you say you do this and cause great distress to
sinners and treat them as if you hate them? The rule applies to you as well so
people should take the most charitable view of you. They should say that you
judge sins and not sinners but go the wrong way about carrying this out.
If people persecute you because of your race or
religion or whatever you would say, "They do not judge us but what they think
our sins are. This is the safest way to interpret their behaviour for we have no
right to accuse them of hating us. They are trying to judge and hate sin (or
perceived sin) but not sinners and may be bad at expressing that or implementing
it. But it is their intention that counts. Loving the sinner and hating the sin
can be confusing for anybody so that is all they are trying to do."
If for example nobody argues
that whoever judges you because of your skin colour does not judge you as a
person then why is anybody falling for the love the sinner and judge the sin
instead rubbish? There is something more "judgy" about struggling against
somebody for what they do to hurt you than against them for their skin. So
to assert its judgemental to judge over skin colour is to admit it is far more
judgemental to judge over a personal affront.
The hypocritical notion that you judge actions never
people is harmful. You are left unable to judge anybody as a hater of another.
This would be a hellish and dangerous view to take. It is the sea in which
racists and other bigots swim for their bigotry is treated as nothing.
Also, the rule makes the attitude of personal hate the
the worst sin. So it is not the murder that is the moral problem but the hate it
was done with. If we are to love sinners and hate sins that is a very basic
rule. So the person who challenges it is worse than any murderer and more evil.
If you believe that all sin as an attitude is equally
vile and unjust (it is possible for sinners to mean the same malice by sinning
while the sins themselves may differ in the harm done to others) then there is
no use in accepting "INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY." That principle endorses
judgement of the person and fairness.
Finally
Judge sin is a different way of saying judge the
sinner. Apart from that, there is no difference. Only extreme pride (humility
can be a mask for pride and a form of pride - eg look how many humble people
like an audience and even want to believe that God sees their "secret" acts of
humility) can enable a person to fool themselves that they judge sins but are
too good and fantastic to judge the sinners who commit the sins. To state that
you can do the unnatural and love sinners and not let their sins affect this
love is manifest pride. It is a boast dressed up as a statement.
If you hurt sinners to punish sin and not them, then
you are cruel and evil. Your intention is bad. You may as well hurt the innocent
for you are hurting those who you tell yourself are innocent!
When you do wrong you are a wrongdoer if there is no
God. You are a sinner as well if there is so it is worse if there is a God.
People who believe, "Judge the wrong but not the wrongdoer" have more right to
judge the person than anybody who inserts an accusation of sin into it as well
making it, "Judge the sin and not the sinner." It is less vicious.
To judge a person is to accuse them of intentionally
becoming not doing evil. It is the becoming that is the problem. It is about
hurting the person and causing and risking damaging them further than they have
or may have damaged themselves.
If X or Y has to die, and you have to choose, you will
choose the person who you know will unintentionally do some evil such as having
sex outside of marriage. You are even worse if X or Y has done the evil
purposely. People who are told to judge the sins and not the sinners see
themselves as being harmless to the sinner. They are not. Hypothetically and in
principle, they would harm the person if they had to.
Bad means that which should be willed out of
existence. If it were possible to make evil vanish by the power of your will you
would have to do it. Religion says you should feel you want it to cease to
exist. Thus calling somebody bad is hate speech. It is saying the person should
cease to exist if he or she is bad. If something deserves it, then you should
feel with all your power that it should be destroyed. Your feeling of hate
reinforces your attitude of hate or the way you look at the thing as hateful. It
makes no sense to view a thing as bad and want it destroyed. It only makes sense
to see a PERSON as bad and want her or him destroyed.
Some say it should be love the sinner and help them resist their sin.
Helping a person stop doing something bad is judging them.
To judge a sin while denying the sinner has anything to do with it is not about changing or improving the sinner at all. It is wanton hate through which you try to keep smelling of flowers. It is not about endorsing what is for the best. How could a person who takes such an attitude be trusted when they claim to love sinners and hate sins?
Hypocrisy often describes a person with double standards. A better way to understand it is referring to how people pretend to follow a standard they don't follow. We all pretend to follow a standard we do not follow. For example, to love a good person is to hate a bad one because to love x means to hate what is not x or that would destroy or corrupt it. Love and hate go together for to hate one is to love that one's opposite. To say you hate judging people is to lie for you are admitting to hating people who judge righteously.
Seneca stated that if you judge
one man as evil you must also judge human nature in general as being no better
and hiding its bad side. Imagine what he would say about those who dish
out judgments that are like a manure heap covered by snow and thus who are the
best friends that judgementalism ever had? An honest bigot is better than
a sneaky advert for bigotry.
THE WEB
www.shilohcommunitychurch.org/love_sinr.htm
TRUE OR FALSE? GOD LOVES THE SINNER BUT HATES THE SIN,
FALSE, Errol Hale
www.ffrf.org/fttoday/back/hatred.html
With Perfect Hatred by Dan Barker
http://www.godhatesfags.com/
A Baptist anti-gay site
