As a Christian, I have often heard that we should “love the sinner and hate the sin,” and I believe it. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. If we are not careful, we will love some sinners more than others and hate some sins more than others, and a lot will depend on our own perception of the seriousness of the sin and the contributions of the sinner.
Orthodoxy
“We Have Sinned and Grown Old, and Our Father Is Younger than We”
Remember how the story of “Jack and the Beanstalk” begins: Jack bought magic beans which, when planted, grew into a giant beanstalk that reached to the sky.
Now, what if Jack found a way to mass produce those beans. Then everyone would have them. They would no longer be magic, they would just be part of the way the world works: apples seeds grow into apple trees and “magic” beans grow into giant beanstalks. If something always happens it’s not seen as magic, it’s seen as a natural law.
G. K. Chesterton’s “Adventures in Pursuit of the Obvious”
In the beginning of his 1908 book, Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton compared himself to an English adventurer who set out by sea to discover new land, and thought he did just that—until he discovered that he had accidentally returned to England.
In addition to feeling embarrassed by his mistake, the sailor would also feel fortunate, Chesterton speculated, to have experienced both the adventure of discovery and the comfort of the familiar: