Consider the following

It was the spring of 2005 my last term at Portland State. I was sitting in a Sr. project class (I had in a previous criminal justice class wooed this same professor by playing a crime and punishment lullaby in front of the class). This days topic was not our usual culminated learning experience, rather the subject was about men who rape and murder women and children. I remember the professor asking the class to raise their hands in response to the question, "who would ever forgive them?" He was trying to make a point, whatever he was saying wasn't significant enough to remember. My solitary appendage in the air, frustrated the illustration. He looked at me and said, something like, "I know Christians are supposed to forgive but there's a difference." And then he continued with his deflated illustration. I thought it odd that with 50 or so people in that room not one other person raised their hand with mine to forgive. I'm reminded of a Sufjan Stevens song John Wayne Gacy Jr.

I love how magnificent and tragic our faith is. I am compelled to release the most putrid sinner, it really was one of Jesus' prominent points. If you do not forgive your brother then your Father in heaven will not forgive you. Often men and especially tough guys have a hard time with this aspect of Christianity because they feel the sinner deserves the highest level of disdain. Which is partially right, the act does deserve intense guttural hatred. But the human (not deservingly) by grace is applied forgiveness and even dare I say love. The Christian is not called just to forgive the sexual deviant murderer but to love him. Forgiveness is so large it's scary. So where's the paradox.

The paradox is here that we are called to hate sin so much that we cast those in sin out of our midst, 1 cor 5. , that when our own members walk in rebellion we call them witches 1 sam 15 and when Christians start turning others away from Christ and toward themselves we Damn them to hell Gal 1. That is not a faith full of weak edges, pulling punches. It is violent and vicious.

We are often times heavy on forgiveness and light on sin or heavy on sin and light on forgiveness, examples clearly abound in both of these categories. But we were never called to be lukewarm either in our kisses or our cursing. We are to despise drunkenness for we are royalty but hug the homeless man with stale vomit in his hair. The unrepentant woman in our midst we must label the proverbial whore who wipes her mouth and says I've done nothing wrong but the next day we must go to the red light district and offer a prostitute a way of escape.

Our strength is not in having a right arm we work out all the time and a left that gets used in case of emergency. Our strength is our symmetry our balance, but not soft balance, raging, blazing balance otherwise known as paradox.