How Do We Treat the Sinner Among Us?

-- The Rev. Coleen Lynch

Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.
(Matthew 9:13)

Surely you’re not talking to us, Lord? In these last weeks the news has been full of human beings most despicable acts upon the helpless and innocent. What are we to do with those whose names have become notorious for the horrors they have reaped upon others?

Christians are often at the front of the line calling for harsher sentences, corporal punishment and even the return of the death penalty. What happened to the concept of mercy among us who dare to call ourselves followers of the all loving, all merciful God made one of us in Jesus Christ, the Lord and Saviour of us all? Whether we like it or not, and we don’t, God created all those whose crimes and sins seem unbearable and too horrid to imagine or endure. Why? – we ask, with no hope of a response.

Criminals do not sin because they are sinners, they sin because they are wounded, just like you and I. When any one of us has not received the healing we need for our own hurts, then we think and act in ways that are hurtful to others and ultimately hurtful to ourselves. This is never to excuse our behaviour whether we murder by weapon or character assassinate by word.

Repentance and conversion are obligations for all of us whether we’re living in prison or on a farm. I am yet to meet an incarcerated individual in the 30 years I have been in prison ministry who was not themselves a victim of someone else’s sin. If we want safer communities, then let’s treat each other appropriately. If we want our children to have healthy values, then we better be teaching them the values that make for a better world. If we are dishonest, abusive, gossiping, backbiting, hateful, and unforgiving then expect our children to be the same.

You will not have to look very far for an opportunity to ‘learn mercy’ as the Lord is asking us. Look at your family, neighbours, friends, colleagues, community members. Monitor your own qualities of mercy, compassion, forgiveness, kindness, generosity, truth telling and love. What is the Lord showing you about changes you need to make in your own thinking and acting? Ask for the Lord’s forgiveness for your own hurts you have caused others. Ask Him to help you to be the person He wants you to be. Pray for those who hurt and wound others so badly that we can barely stand their existence among us. Pray for healing for all of us that we may have a better world in which all of us may love each other truly as our Lord loves us and calls us to love.

We do not need bigger prisons. We need bigger hearts.