Forgive them for They Know not What they are Doing
Eliseo Mercado
Her words: “I grew up in a terrible home and was abused and unloved as child. I became bitter, suicidal, and acted out in every way. I bit in order not to be bitten and broke every commandment except murder (which in fact I contemplated), but I really don’t believe I ever sinned, even though I knew I was doing wrong at the time. Why don’t I think I sinned? Because sin is a betrayal of love and nobody, as far as I knew, had ever loved me. God was loving me, I know that now, but I had no way of knowing or believing that then. I did what I needed to do to survive.
Sometime after my fortieth birthday a miracle happened. I fell in love and that person fell in love with me. I experienced love for the first time. I know now what it means to sin because I’m loved. Now when I do something wrong it’s a sin because I am betraying love. But you first need to be loved in order to betray that. When I didn’t know love and had no way of sensing God’s love for me, I had nothing to betray, at least as far as I knew. That’s why I believe that, even though I did many wrong things, I didn’t sin.”
Often times when we do wrong, we aren’t betraying love because we don’t know love to begin with. That doesn’t mean our behaviour isn’t destructive, that it doesn’t ruin lives, wreak havoc with happiness, and that it doesn’t continue (as scripture so graphically puts it) to murder God out of ignorance. Our actions have real and often permanent effects. When we do wrong, we hurt others and hurt ourselves, even if we aren’t sinning. I suspect that while our actions may be very wrong, they’re not sinful because we don’t know what we’re doing.
Mercifully God’s compassion and understanding are deeper than our own and God’s love can descend into hell itself and, even there, forgive and redeem us.
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