Almost every day there are headlines in the newspapers about people who have committed awful crimes and such people are called ‘monsters’ or ‘beasts’. We buy millions of magazines which will tell us about celebrities who are putting on weight or getting wrinkles and we pour scorn on them. We often read about people whose private lives are falling apart and the media, on our behalf, criticises them for being unfaithful, or selfish or even abusive.

But we should stop sometimes to ask ourselves why we do this. Why do we demonize the weak and the fallen? It seems to be something that is part of our human make up – it is what was happening when we used to burn witches – a community would gang up and pour hatred and violence upon one woman believing that if that one woman was destroyed then their community would be healthy and normal. Similar activity can be seen in other cultures and civilizations. Human beings seem to like to find scapegoats to sacrifice – people into whom they can pour all their violence, hatred and anxiety, people who can be destroyed or damaged in the belief that if they are destroyed or damaged then everyone else will be better and safer.

But in all of this it is likely that something much more complicated and much more unsettling is happening. Anthropologists and psychologists have studied such behaviour and suggest that the reason we look for scapegoats to sacrifice is that we see in them aspects of ourselves, aspects of our own nature that we do not like and sometimes do not consciously recognise. So what we are doing when we demonize criminals and criticise and make fun of so called celebrities is recognizing in them those parts of ourselves that we do not like; our anger and potential violence, our greed and selfish consumption, our unsatisfactory and flawed relationships and, rather than dealing with them and learning new ways to live and think, we convince ourselves that these other people are much, much worse than we are and we concentrate on punishing or criticising them and so are diverted from dealing with our own sins and weaknesses.

confronted by the sins and weaknesses in others we should not judge and criticise we should ask ourselves how they came to act in the way they did? What happened to them in their lives which has resulted in their sinful actions or weak and feeble behaviour? We ask such questions, not to make excuses or to justify sometimes appalling behaviour but to gain some insight into where such behaviour came from, and perhaps to see some echoes in our own lives.

Remember the story of the woman caught in adultery in John chapter 8. As the self-righteous mob gathered around the woman, rocks in hand, ready to brutally kill her for her wrongdoing, this is what Jesus says?

‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ v7.

In other words, before you attack this woman for her sin, look at yourselves, look at your own lives and only if you are without any sin, throw a stone at this woman. We are told that slowly, one by one, the mob dropped their stones and dispersed.

Some time ago I wrote a story around this event, exploring some of the characters involved and the context in which this all happened. One of the little details we are told in the story is that when the angry mob brought the woman to Jesus he doodled or wrote in the dust on the ground. We are not told what he wrote, but in my story I described Jesus looking up at the woman when the mob had gone, smiling and telling her not to sin again. Mightily relieved she looked down to see what he had been writing in the dust to see the words ‘Love your enemies’. I made that up, but the reason I suggest that is what he may have written is that the story of the woman caught in adultery is what loving your enemies looks like in real life. Loving your enemies means; not being judgmental, not vilifying the sinful and weak, not sacrificing scapegoats, not ignoring or justifying our own sins and weaknesses.

We should love our enemies, not just for their sake but for ours. The sins and weaknesses that make them our enemies may be particularly gruesome and dramatic, but the difference between them and us is not as great as we would like to think. It is only when we learn to love our enemies as flawed human beings, rather than ‘scapegoating’ them that we will learn to love ourselves and learn to deal seriously with our own sins and weaknesses. It is only when we are ready to drop the stones we are ready to hurl at others for their sins that we will ever be able to deal with our own. We must learn to understand, forgive and love our enemies for their sakes, for our sake and because it is the only way to make progress in building God’s Kingdom.

Father Michael 523969