Todd and I saw a man kill himself 2 months ago on the side of the road in Kentucky. We, along with his girlfriend, were the only witnesses. It was the most violent thing I’ve ever seen, even in movies, and my mind was firing on all cylinders. In the moment, I thought a million things from “Who invented the 9mm?” to a scene from the film Just Mercy to “Will Todd be ruined forever? to “Can this woman afford therapy?” to a sermon I heard in seventh grade when a pastor said people who commit suicide are selfish and go to hell.
God, have mercy.
I’m willing to bet my life that this man had never witnessed a suicide before. For all 172,000 words in the English language, “selfish” is at the bottom of the list of ways I would use to describe what I saw. When we drove home that afternoon, Todd and I wept in compassion for him— both of us affirming we saw Jesus cradle him in his death while whispering, “Father, forgive him. He knows not what he does.” If we, complete strangers, have such compassion for him, how much more does the God who made him?
In my sexual ethics class, my professor talked about Christian missionaries that went to polygamous African tribes back in the day and told them God created marriage for one man and one woman. The only choice, the missionaries said, was for the men to pick one wife and divorce the rest. This caused hundreds of women and children to be displaced from their homes, torn away from the safety of their families, and left with both food and financial insecurity. It disrupted an entire ecosystem and disproportionately disadvantaged the already-marginalized members of their communities… all in the name of God.
The closer you’re wiling to get, the more complex life becomes.
It reminds me of the time Jesus talked to a group of Pharisees and said something like, “The law prohibits you from working on the Sabbath but if your donkey fell into a pit, who among you would not pull your donkey out of that pit?”
Man was not made for Sabbath, Jesus affirmed, but Sabbath for the man.
Life isn’t back and white, is it? So often we pin down butterflies and smash cookie cutters on top of them, clipping their wings so they fit into our circles. But greater than our ideologies or theologies or good ideas is love. Love looks to the dignity of every person and discerns where the Spirit is leading. Love does not cripple, it heals. Love does not condemn, it shows mercy. Love is not weak, it is powerful— and praise God, love persists with unfurled wings despite our grating attempts to control her.