Leave your own life of sin on the doorstep and get the hell out of here.

We are masters of missing the point. I am a master of noticing when someone is doing something that Jesus would not like ME to be doing, and judging them by the standard I am held to.

It is hard to recognize that people must draw their lines differently. To recognize that not only must I draw a line that best allows me to love God and my neighbor, but that the line of another might be quite far from mine. Even to recognize that the line I have drawn now might be somewhere else in five or ten years.

I find it remarkable that, 2000 years later, we are still trying to condemn the woman who was caught in adultery (John 8:1-11). In fact, I have come to suspect that this is where folks have managed to justify the annoying and unfounded phrase, "love the sinner, hate the sin."

It seems that we falter when we linger on the concluding words of Jesus, "Go now and leave your life of sin" (v. 11). This phrase is sometimes mistaken as a mandate for us to point out where the sin lies in the lives of those around us.

"I love you, but what you are doing is wrong."

"I cannot condone what you are doing."

"I don't know whether or not I approve of your life."

These sentiments fail to recognize that we are not Jesus in this story. We do not have the ability to read the minds or hearts of others and we therefore lack the ability to pinpoint what is sin in the life of another (See Jeremiah 31:33-34). As such, we should not be subjecting our brothers and sisters to the constrictions of the law as is is written on our own minds and hearts. If I have a real concern about someone for whom I care deeply, I would do much better to ask how that person feels about what he or she is doing.

Christians are called to love one another, plain and simple. This kind of love has nothing to do with keeping track of or even taking notice of the sins of others. We do not love people in a God honoring way when we must add footnotes on what we perceive to be their shortcomings.

The Scripture readings at the church I attended this morning included the line "love doesn't keep score of the sins of others" (1 Corinthians 13:5). So, let's simply love our neighbors and keep track of our own plankeyed sin.

(P.S. Bonus points if you can cite the movie reference in the title!)