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Is it right?

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Samson:

--- Quote from: winner08 on August 17, 2008, 08:08:35 PM ---I can tell you from first hand experience. If you loved that person before the crime ,It is difficult not to love them after the crime. For people who never experience this they will say depending on the crime. They should be killed or sentence to a long prison term. When it is your loved one it is hard to turn your back on them. no matter what the crime was. Anyways, people shouldn't talk about things they don't know anything about.

                                              Darren

--- End quote ---

   Good Point Darren,

                              That's Called, IMO, " Walk a mile in my shoes "; Your right, it's usually unlikely that if someone's very close to you, your going to completely turn your back on them; easier said than done. Think of cases where a parent is strongly opposed to Homosexuality, both Biblically and Politically, and their Daughter or Son reveals they are Gay, do they stop loving them; or the scenario where a Racist has a Son or Daughter that Marries someone of another Race and they have a child, your Grandchild, this may change their perspective.

                              Sometimes, I play these possible scenario's in my mind and pray that God will grant me the ability to maintain a proper balance in all of this; it's easier to apply the principle: Love the sinner and Hate the Sin when it's someone personally close to us, but when it's someone that we don't know, we tend to pronounce the kind of punishment we expect a person should receive, we should be carefull of this. Jesus came to save the Lost.

                                             Kind Regards, Samson.

WhoAmI:
Watch people and how they react when the evening news is on. That will tell you a lot about a person. My favorite one is people who after hearing of a terrible crime yell out that we need to get the guy and make him suffer for a long time and then kill him. Usually you have two or three who chime in with full support of this idea. When your blind you can't see the beast in you, but you surely can see the beast in everyone else.

Kent:
Even Hitler had a wife that probably loved him. If I was a woman, would I want a Hitler as a husband? Probably not. Eva Braun was nuts.

Some of the SS were loving family men that came home from the camps exhausted, after a long hard day of beating and killing prisoners. Would I want to be married to one of them, if I was a woman? I really doubt it. But women are hard to figure out...
They seem to like the bad boys.

If perfect love casts out fear, I'd personally have a hard time turning my back on someone that "commits an heinous crime against God and Humanity".

OBrenda:
What are your thoughts Brian?

Dave in Tenn:
I don't want to get pedantic (though I can't help it often), but define 'Love'.

If you mean as the Greeks defined it a Phileo love (brotherly, familial, fellowship) then yes, I think it's OK to love someone who's committed a terrible crime less...particularly if there is no tie between you...than you would a neighbor, a friend, or a family member.  We're not called on the be 'friends' with people who do evil. 

If such a person WERE in your circle of Phileo loved ones, then a greater love Agape--sacrificial, without expectation of return--would have to take over and you'd be called on to love them MORE than you would love a more casual friend or family member.

If such a person were NOT in your circle of loved ones--a stranger (more or less)--then at the very least we'd be called on to not hate them, and we might be led of the Spirit to love and minister to them with a greater love than we might show to those we naturally care for.

The problem with these times in our media age is that we think we know LOTS of people who we really don't and are exposed to faces, celebrities, criminals constantly.  Unless we are called on to specifically actively love and minister to these people, then again, we're only called on to not hate them and to pray for them as we are led.

"Active" is the key word.  Love is doing, not just feeling.  We encounter strangers with kindness and humility and an attitude of love.  If God leads us across the paths of 'people who have committed gross sins against God and Humanity' then we are to love them too.  All of us are guilty of gross sins against God and Humanity, after all.

   

 

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