The sin of complicity

The heart is deceitful above all things. So much so that we can successfully hide the deepest darkness in the recesses of our hearts, buried so deep that it can't be seen. In fact, if no one comes around to shine a light on that darkness, the darkness is likely to remain, growing blacker by the day.

I discovered my dear sister-friend's sin entirely by accident when I received an email message intended for her married lover.

I knew the temptations she faced. I knew of her deep loneliness, her long years of forced abstinence related to her late husband's life-threatening illness. And now that death had severed that covenant, she was particularly vulnerable and an illicit relationship ended many years before took only the briefest breath of air to re-ignite.

She discovered her mistake immediately after hitting the send button. That is the trouble with instant communication. You can't pull it back, like a letter left on the mailbox before the postman claims it. Once you hit send, sent it is, and the chips will certainly fall where they may.

Our next communication wasn't long in coming. She was struck to her soul with my unintended discovery of her sin. Suddenly, she was accountable. And it nearly broke my heart and hers.

I longed to assure her that, in this case, in her case, of course it was all right. She had stayed the long and difficult course throughout her husband's illness, tending to him with deep love and compassion, to the point of lying beside him in the hospital bed, her arms wrapped around him in their final embrace, loving him all the way to heaven's door. (I can only pray that if my life's path takes a similar route I can be half the wife to Danny that she was to her husband.)

Not only that, but for many years, before her husband became ill, the marriage had suffered as most marriages do, and she had laid down many dreams to accommodate his dreams. Now that death had separated them, surely she was entitled to some joy, some love, even if that love had been pledged to another. Surely, if anyone was entitled to renewed love and passion, she was.

I longed to tell her it was OK, but I didn't. I couldn't. That would have compounded her sin, to have me join her in her sin with my complicity. Gently, ever so gently, I only affirmed to her what she already knew. And though she longed to seize the rationalizations and call them justifications, she chose not to and ultimately, turned away from her sin in full repentance.

With another dear sister-friend, the story ended quite differently. This sister-friend revealed her sin with purpose, on purpose, in a handwritten letter that could have been called back, even after the stamp was glued in place. But she had already determined her course and announced in that letter that she was leaving her husband and moving in with another partner, one of the same gender.

Again, my heart was moved with compassion. I had known her since Ben was a baby and we had shared, not only our common faith in Christ, but our hopes, our dreams, our fears and many a tear in those years of growing our families up and growing up with them.

I also knew about the abuses she had suffered at the hands of her mother's many boyfriends and I knew how she struggled to be the wife she wanted to be. Her struggle didn't seem to be anymore burdensome than that of any other very young wife and young mother. Through it all she assured me that she trusted that struggle to Jesus, so to hear from her own hand that, after 20 years of marriage, she was abandoning all of it, including the power of Christ to carry her through, to enter into this illicit relationship was a complete shock.

Nevertheless, my first inclination was to offer her support and understanding. And in subsequent correspondence, I did so, as much as I was able to, without becoming complicit in her sin by endorsing it. Too late. She had already conducted all of the arguments internally and answered them to her own internal satisfaction and could not be persuaded to turn from her sin, nor even to recognize it as sin, though the same commandment as in the first case applied to her case as well.

None of these conversations were easy. Not for them and certainly not for me. In the first case, my dear sister-friend remains my closest sister-friend and yes, she knows she is part of this column. She is happily married, having been blessed with a wonderful, generous, witty and, she admits with a blush, passionate man, with whom she shares every hope and every dream, her testimony to the healing power of forgiveness restored.

In the second case, I can only presume that my dear sister-friend remains in her illicit relationship. Ours was completely fractured, though I miss her with every thought. News over the grapevine indicates that her husband, after many years of a forced bachelorhood he never desired, has married. It is my earnest hope that he too has found a wonderful, generous, witty and passionate woman to share every hope and every dream.

Why do we so often fail to gently confront a brother or a sister, with love and compassion, when they are caught in sin? Is it to preserve the relationship? Or do we doubt the power of sin to destroy? Do we remain silent so that our sins may remain hidden or do we question whether or not it really is sin, in this case, for this person? Surely, we do not purposely seek to find sin so that we may don black robes of judgement, nor do we manufacture sin, knowing that where the Word of God is silent, we have no right to put words where there are none, but if the Word of the Lord is plain, so must be our response. Sin found in the life of a brother or a sister must be dealt with. In both of these cases, relationships that mattered to me in my deepest heart, were on the line. The conversations were difficult. The temptation to join them in their newfound happiness -- to celebrate with them the pleasure that was theirs -- was strong. But their relationship to the Lord was worth more and as a believer, it fell to me to speak up for that relationship above all else. It may fall to each of us, if not today, than perhaps tomorrow. The very character of Christianity -- the power of the Cross, the life-giving, life-changing strength found only in Christ -- depends on it.

"In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." Luke 15:10 (NIV)