I read the Economist on my commutes when I'm feeling enough awake to comprehend words on a page and guilty about my lack of awareness of current events.
This morning, reading last week's Economist that I had yet to pick up (or more aptly, download), I read an article on Libya. During the war against Colonel Qaddafi, the new authorities sent out text messages to their fighters instructing them to treat prisoners decently with these words, "Remember when you arrest any follower of Qaddafi that he is a Libyan like you and has his dignity like you..."
On Saturday, riding the bus with my boyfriend, we started to discuss the difficult life of Hitler and the effects of his youth on his adult actions. While still holding him fully accountable for his actions and seeing his choices as a gross atrocity and an abomination to the Lord, I remarked, "But I have a hard time when we demonize Hitler. When we treat people who have done horrible things as less than us. As if they are to be hated eternally for what they have done, forgetting that they are children of God and made in his image. Forgetting that if they chose to repent of their sins, they would be our brothers in Christ."
Sometimes, I forget to love others like I should. The words reminded to the soldiers in Libya is not that different than the words I need to hear about those same people. The difference is, instead of seeing their identity as a Libyan with dignity, I see them as a child of God and designed to give glory unto God.
Talking to a friend who spent a year as a missionary in China, he told me that the hardest part of mission work was his coworkers. "I knew God redeemed sinners, but man...."
We are all sinners before the throne of God. Our white lies are as much an eternal condemnation as Qaddafi's mass murders and yet, when we stand before the throne of God, our sins are wiped clean through the blood of the Cross and Christ's resurrection. No sin is too great for our God.
