What to Do with Notorious Sinners

Maybe befriend them? Really?

Golf, like most sports, wrestles with ethical issues. The most recent one involves the birth of a rival league, LIV, that wooed many of the elite players of the Professional Golf Association. The PGA told these players they could no longer compete in PGA events if they participated in LIV events, but these elite players didn’t care: they were going to make a lot more money while playing less golf for LIV (which represents the Roman number 54, the golf score if you birdied every hole).

So what’s the problem?  LIV is funded by Saudi Arabia, which has a record of abusing human rights and is suspected of supporting the horrific attacks on 9/11. (This charge has never been proven, but because 16 of the 19 hijackers were from that country, an understandable anger with Saudi Arabia still simmers.) This was one of the main reasons the head of the PGA criticized LIV and said that PGA players should have nothing to do with the new league. He strongly suggested that joining it was unpatriotic and unethical.

Then recently, the PGA and LIV decided they could figure out how to work together.  The exact nature of the partnership is still being negotiated, but immediate charges of “hypocrisy” and “sell out” were leveled against the PGA.

It is an interesting example of geopolitics. Because the Saudis do some terrible things, should we have nothing to do with them?  Naturally, nations are selective about such matters, and the selection often has to do with what we most care about. 

Boycott China because of its treatment of the Uyghurs?  Probably not, because too much is at stake economically, and besides, we have a hard time sympathizing with a people we hardly know. Boycott Saudi Arabia for its treatment of women? Well, that’s more likely, because most Americans champion basic women’s rights, but still not likely because we need Saudi oil. The criticism is that by doing business with such countries, we are indifferent to or actually supportive of their oppressions. No such thing, reply the supporters of a pragmatic  foreign policy; no country is perfect, and you have to take into account our overall (usually meaning economic) national self-interest.

I bring this up not to untangle the web of geopolitics, for I have no idea when and where to draw the line on such matters. I only note this because, when it comes to personal relationships with notorious sinners, I suspect we’re tempted to mirror these political strategies. 

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A friend has committed a grave sin, and even broken the law—let’s say by having sex with a minor.  We may find it morally reprehensible even to remain friends, especially if we have a teenage daughter.  We may wonder if continuing the friendship will signal indifference to what the offender has done. Or we simply may be confused about how to reach out. In the end, we may not make a conscious decision to reject the offender, but we simply don’t reach out, we don’t stay in touch, we just slowly walk away from that relationship.

That response is understandable—we’ve all done it. But at this personal level, here's the deal: Though God lets sinners walk away from him, he never walks away from sinners.

In my career as a journalist, I’ve watched various and sundry friends and public figures in Christian circles “fall” in one way or another, and it always has surprised me how nearly all of their so-called friends and colleagues simply ignored them afterwards. They were essentially shunned by large portions of the Christian community.

I’m thinking of one man who was accused and convicted of soliciting sex with a minor.  And of a colleague convicted of having child pornography on his computer. And of a pastor who is said to have had an affair with a woman in his church (never actually proven).  And of another pastor who solicited sex from another male. And on it goes.  All are now outcasts, shunned by former friends and colleagues as persons not to be associated with.

Some former friends claim, “If the guilty person would repent, I would be more open to restoring the relationship.”  I tend to think that even after repentance, any sort of relationship would be formal and stiff.  But in the end, the question of repentance is irrelevant.

I refer again to the example of Will Campbell, an ardent civil rights activist who befriended Klu Klux Klan members despite their views of and vile acts toward blacks. Why? Because he realized Jesus died not just for civil rights activists but racists too. As one writer put it,

Many of Campbell’s friends in the movement for racial equality were livid that he consorted with “the enemy”…. But as a seminarian, I was particularly impressed that he dared to take heat for drinking whiskey with the Klan.

We rightly repeat the mantra, “Jesus is a friend of sinners,” but we tend to think only of minor league sinners—those guilty of gossip, pride, selfishness, and the like.  We have a hard time imagining that it applies to big sins of our era, those revolving around sexual morality, abuse, or racism. That’s when we keep our distance.

Nearly everyone reading this will agree that, even though it made him look as if he was indifferent to sin, Jesus befriended prostitutes and extortioners. And we agree that we’re called to do the same. And we do that pretty well with “nice sinners”—the type you find in most churches. Still, most of us—yes, me included--find it awkward to befriend people who have committed sins our world considers particularly heinous. There is our appropriate moral concern about what they’ve done. And then there is this: What would people think?

Yes, in the course of our friendship, when it seems appropriate, we will encourage the guilty to repent. We’re not moral relativists, after all. But hinge our relationship on their repentance?  Perhaps, if the person has violated us or our loved ones and they remain a threat—that is prudent. Yet what if their offense has nothing to do with us?

At such moments, it is good for me to be reminded of the irony that it is a holy God who befriends sinful men and women, while we sinners find it so difficult to befriend fellow sinners.

And even better to recall an even greater irony, that our holy God even befriends sinners who find it difficult to befriend other sinners–which is the key to prompting people like me to be more like Jesus.

Lord, have mercy.

Mark

Image: Zacchaeus being called down from the tree. From The Life of Jesus of Nazareth: Eighty Pictures by William Hole (1908). Downloaded from Wikipedia Commons.