I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together

Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans and myself from the community of sinners. – Miroslav Volf

These past few days, I’ve been thinking about faith even more than usual. Between the horrors of what’s happening in Haiti and the unfathomably callous and stupid remarks that a few public figures have made, it’s hard not to. Harder, still, to reconcile some of the comments I’ve heard from someone dear to me, the most surreal one of all: an angry statement made to me about the Haitian people “complaining” on TV and their lack of gratitude.

At least two of those speakers consider themselves men of faith: Christians, in fact. And while I don’t often take on issues like this publicly, I can’t keep my mouth shut about this. I’ll speak plainly, because there’s not much to my point.

I’m a Christian. In fact, I’m a Born-Again Christian. Until shortly before I became one, I hated Christians, as I’d only ever known bigoted/privileged/white/uptight/uneducated/over-educated/judgmental Christians. But one does not become a Christian for the people (or perhaps I’m alone there?); one does it for the Christ part. All of this to say: I know the rules.

Christ gave us two rules. Two! Only two. They are:

1) Love me above all things
2) Love each other as yourselves

That’s it. Okay? Two rules. If you don’t love Christ above all things, there’s a problem. If you don’t love others as yourself, there’s a problem. Me? I run into these problems every day of my life. Every day. I do my best; I strive; I aim higher. Every day I fail. And I will continue to do so. I know this.

That’s also how I know that I have no business appointing myself God’s hall monitor. Because in Christianity, sin is sin is sin. So if you’re not loving your neighbor as yourself, then guess what? You are no better than those people who, uh, “made a pact with the devil.” If you lie, if you cheat, if you overeat, if you lust after someone else’s spouse–if you do anything, in other words, that we have all, at one point or another, done–then you are no better than anyone else.

I have an outstanding capacity for being an asshole. I swear, a lot. I’m quick to anger. I’m judgmental. And do you know what that means? That means I have no right to point fingers at anybody else. None. None at all. It means I’d better get busy sorting my own life out, in fact.

Just needed to get that off my chest.