More Heinous than the Other?

I agreed to lead the ladies bible study at our church after what happened with our previous pastor because I thought it would help me in my healing. It would push me past the insecurities and the fear I clung to that kept me from developing relationships, and it has.

I chose the topic, Respectable Sins, because my sister struggled with homosexuality. She was a Christian. She was instrumental in bringing me into the kingdom. When she revealed (actually it was a subtle hint) that she struggled with this particular sin (which she hated) I immediately rejected her, and cut her out of my life.

For almost ten years I clung to a pious attitude convincing myself that I could not even tolerate the APPERANCE of evil. In my mind my sister and her actions were decidedly evil. 

Here come my favorite words: BUT GOD in HIS mercy, grace and timing decided to open my heart to the error in both my thinking and my doctrine, thankfully before my sister passed from this world, and my sister and I were reunited and restored.

I wanted to write about this now because I had a conversation just this week about this very topic. I was talking with a friend about current pop culture trends and asked if she had seen the video of Rebel Wilson and Ellen singing to Salt and Peppas “Shoop” which I thought was quite funny because Ellen can NOT dance, and the lyrics ask “What’s my weakness? Men” is the reply the rapper gives (in this case Ellen, and well, you know) and my friend said (with a wrinkle of her nose) she didn’t listen to Ellen, EVER because she was GAY. To which I replied, “Oh…hm…and how is being gay different than any other sin?”

That’s the point of this study by Jerry Bridges you know.

We, frail, human, sinners compartmentalize sins into categories. In our minds, some sins are nastier, grosser, more worthy of death and damnnation. God, however, does not view sin like we mere mortals do.

This leads me back to my discussion with my friend:

She posed a hypothetical situation to me, a what if. What if a person sexually assaulted a child, that child’s life would be altered forever. Do I mean to say that THAT sin, that heinous sin of sexually assaulting a child, which has forever altered that child’s entire life, THAT sin is as equally grievous to God as the sin of disobedience? I tossed up an s.o.s. prayer for wisdom, guidance and His words NOT mine, and here is what He gave me to say in response:

Adam and Eve were given one command, do not eat, and they disobeyed, and by their disobedience, OUR entire world has been altered forever.  

Sin is serious business, ALL sin. Don’t hate your brother or sister who is caught in sin, have compassion for them, like Jesus had for us. He went to them, ate with them, loved them, and died for them, for us. So next time you are tempted to think some sin is greater than another, remember it was the sin of disobedience that altered that once perfect garden.