Right Mind

Lacey Spears
Photo: Westchester County DA's Office

Would you continue to do something if you knew it would bring you or someone else harm?

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? - Romans 6:1-2

In today's reading from the letter to the Romans, we have a strange question.  Would we continue to do the wrong thing just to gain grace?

I think it is an interesting topic.  When we hear t he word "sin" what do we envision?  Is it something that only hurts ourselves or something evil than inflicts pain or even death?

The more vile the action, the more we like to believe the person is out of their mind, insane, mentally ill.  No one in their right mind would do such a thing, right?

Is Lacey Spears in her right mind?

The woman who inflicted pain to the point of death on her own son used his "illness" to gain attention for herself, with a blog and Tweets.  She developed a following.  Women tried to comfort her in her pain, a pain that was not only inflicted by her, but one she didn't seem to feel at all.

How does one live in that place?

We say she is ill and we name her illness a syndrome, a sign that it is not from normal thinking and being.  We do that because we can't bring ourselves to believe we are capable of such things ourselves.

If we don't label it a disease, we might see that we too could do such a thing, and that would be horrible, wouldn't it?

But, we might see ourselves doing little things, things we call sins.

Perhaps we have become too sophisticated.  We have so many classifications and categories for the crimes and misdemeanors we commit, masking the fact that these are all acts of moving away from God.

Jesus described these behaviors as acts of demons, and he called them out, healing and freeing people from the clutches of sin.

We don't buy that, do we?

Instead, we create a scale of evil actions and we struggle to decide if we should hold the person who commits them accountable or not.

So, what will we do with Lacey Spears?

Whether she is indeed insane or not, she has been convicted of second-degree murder.  She will serve her time and will not be able to harm anyone again.  Her son, though, has gone home.

I guess we should pray for both of them, though that may be hard to do.  She certainly needs to find her way back to God and that demon that possessed her needs to go where demons go when they are sent away.

But can we live with that?

Can we label someone insane and then accept them back when they return to their right mind?

I imagine that is how the people felt when Jesus would heal the possessed in his day.  Who would want them back?

No, we are more civilized.  We lock them up and throw away the key.

More to come...