I may be a right-wing fanatic Christian to some. I may be a clueless emotional liberal Christian to others. The truth is that Jesus Christ loves us, not because of who we are, or what we’ve done, but because of who He is (paraphrased, “I Surrender All”, Newsboys).
With the “traditional” family as the framework, I understand the situation of unwed mothers who made mistakes. While the error was significant, people’s obsession with it is damaging. I also completely understand to maintain the social norms and such. However, Jesus forgave those who came to Him and asked for forgiveness (out of honest repentance). Can we do any less?
People make mistakes. Christians make mistakes. Even Perfect Christians (see Wesley’s
A Plain Account of Christian Perfection) make mistakes (of course, within the context of this blog post we are talking about a sin, not a simple mistake).
A woman recently died in England. A few months before she did, the 50-year old body of a baby was found in a suitcase. She compounded one sin with a worse one. God will judge her, but my heart aches for her. To have carried that burden so long.
We in the Church must be concerned with sin, for that is why Christ came. However, we must not let that destroy compassion. I was in my Sunday School class this past Sunday, and we talked about how Mary was a failure to the society around her, and probably her family, too. Yet she truly did nothing wrong. From our perspective, Jesus was certainly conceived out of wedlock, but remember He was without sin, thus his conception was sinless as well.
While I know the woman in this case is not Mary, and I suspect by what is not said that was not only an act (or time period) of fornication, but also adultery, it does not change the fact that the pressures put upon this woman created a heart-wound that ended the life of the child.
Pro-lifers, and I am one, need to always keep our hearts open to people such as her.
May she rest in peace.
May her family and those affected by her death and the revealing of long kept secrets find peace as well