Love the sinner, hate the sin

[kaberett]

So I seriously need to work this out some more, but given that I'm still struggling to make words happen, here's a sketch:

I grew up as a small queer Catholic, who had to be closeted about both the queerness and the Catholicism, and was made very ill indeed by fighting my way clear of love the sinner, hate the sin.

And my sticking point with rehabilitative justice is routinely "okay, but what about the people who know exactly what they're doing and are doing it for fun and are categorically uninterested in stopping?" Of whom I have known... several. And I think at least part of my problem there is my pseudo-allergic response to anything that looks even superficially like love the sinner, hate the sin, where if you're just kind and loving and gentle with people for long enough they will Realise The Error Of Their Ways and that They Were Wrong All Along, because of how toxic and gaslighting that can be.

Which brings me back around again to the thing I've been attempting to write a post about and failing since shortly after my "I am twitchy as fuck about the rhetoric I'm seeing around antifa, here's why" (thank you for your engagement and input on that, various, it was enormously helpful and I haven't stopped thinking about it), in the general vicinity of talking at cross purposes, and I haven't managed to actually pin it down yet but I'm still intending to. But this I can sketch, around ideas-that-turn-toxic and abusers-will-abuse-anything and baby-and-bathwater and examining-my-motivations, so. Here's a sketch.

Comments

[kaberett]

(I am aware that using "closeted" with respect to a Christian religious identity in a Western social context is contentious, I have reasons for so doing that I'm satisfied with, if you're not familiar with my backstory I am willing to go into detail but please be aware that this is all Very Trauma for me and my terminology is thoughtfully and deliberately and consciously chosen.)

[child_of_the_air]

While I am sort of curious, I don't want to dig up trauma by asking you for an explanation. I certainly have seen enough Catholicism-phobia from American Protestants to know that it's something one can have to be closeted from, though I'd hoped England was better. (I was not raised in the Church but sort of next-to it? Catholicism was clearly the specific religion my family didn't practice, and most of my extended family were practicing Catholics, so we went to Mass when visiting them for holidays and such.)

Also, I would like to have a conversation with you some time about reclaiming Catholicism in a pagan/polytheist context.

*offers hugs*

[ewt]

As someone who has spent significant time in non-Christian religious contexts in the West, I affirm that yes, it's possible to live in e.g. London and need to be closeted about one's Christian beliefs and/or religious identity. The privilege that Christianity has in general in the West does not mean that there are no contexts in which it is contentious and/or risky for an individual to be out as Christian.

(I would be interested in knowing more of your backstory, but not at cost of unease for you, and certainly not as some kind of justification for your use of the term "closeted".)

TW religious abuse

[meneltarma]

And my sticking point with rehabilitative justice is routinely "okay, but what about the people who know exactly what they're doing and are doing it for fun and are categorically uninterested in stopping?

I just want to say as someone abused by serial abusers who did it on purpose largely for fun, yes this I struggle with this issue immensely because my abusers cried crocodile tears in public, framed themselves as victims, and have gone out and abused again and the particularly savvy ones use social justice rhetoric to get away with it and even get people to support them as they victimize others. And how do you stop that?

I grew up in Cults of Personality, which is different from Catholicism in important ways, but Cults of Personality love "love the sinner, hate the sin" so it's... complex, because my survivor trauma, and also my terror of the unjust legal system which is stacked against me and caused me harm based on what I am (on a different metric), smack into each other hard and that's not even getting outside my own head into other human beings. Your desire for nuance and to understand this is making ME think deeply, so thank you.

[sebenikela]

YES. THIS THING. It is so hard to make words about and so important.

I grew up in the Mennonite church and they're ALL ABOUT rehabilitative justice. The problem I see most often is the thing where the language and structure of rehabilitative justice is used to tell victims that they have to forgive the people who hurt them _and accept those people back into their lives/churches_, because we have to accept the perpetrator back into the community and not hold grudges and be kind, because we are all children of God and we are all sinners and........yeah.

Some of it is "abusers will use whatever system they have to hand to manipulate people," some of it is good old-fashioned victim blaming, some of it is people not understanding power dynamics. In some cases I know about (e.g. sexual abuse of students by a professor, or church members by a pastor), people want to deny that hierarchies of authority exist, because they don't really think they _should_ exist. (Because the priesthood of all believers, assorted church doctrines I won't go into). So they ignore those power dynamics. But they're still _there_, people just don't acknowledge them, so they just sit there leaching poison into everything.

And look: I think rehabilitative justice CAN be really...well, transformational is the buzzword, but _good_ anyway...when done well. But it's also not something that's going to work for every victim or every perpetrator. And so I think it has to be the victim's choice to pursue that path, because even if the process is done well, it asks a lot of everyone involved. And not everyone is willing to go through that--and that's okay, and that HAS TO be okay, and a respected choice. Otherwise it's only rehabilitative for the perpetrator (maybe, like you say), while for the victim it's re-traumatizing.

Anyway. I don't know how much sense that makes, but tl;dr I also think a lot about these things and I'm glad you wrote this down.

(I'm using "victim" and "perpetrator" because that's the language I learned this stuff in, and I need some words. Not to imply that these are the only correct ones you could use)

[cesy]

Yes - it can be a useful tool, but it can also be used badly or inappropriately.

this is my face of grump

[sporky_rat]

And there are times when that is not the tool that is needed at the time.

Off topic

[haggis]

For me, "we are all sinners" was the gaslighting phrase because it is used to a) undermine anything you know or believe that is inconvenient for the church or in conflict with their position and b) to gloss over any wrongdoing by authority figures in the church because it is so mean and judgemental to hold them accountable. It's a brilliant way of containing/deflecting criticism *rage*

Re: Off topic

[sebenikela]

oh yes that one is toxic for me too, because ALSO no, sorry, "was (occasionally, in isolated incidents) mean to someone I care about" is not the same as abuse/assault/whatever. There really are degrees here and pretending everything's fine because nobody's perfect is so unhelpful.

[highlyeccentric]

I grew up wishy-washy liberal protestant, asyouknowbob, with exposure to charismatic/evangelicals though school. This is actually the first time I've seen anyone make a link between 'love the sinner, hate the sin' and 'rehabilitative justice' (or I think restorative justice was the buzzword I encountered most often), but... yeah. Especially in the watered-down, somewhat appropriative way the latter gets used by white liberals (my youth church network sure did love stories of restorative justice coming out post-apartheid South Africa and/or post civil war Rwanda).

I internalised a /lot/ of forgiveness oriented christian messaging: god forgives all and therefore so must we, etc. This, combined with your average Geek Social Fallacies, left me very vulnerable to abuse (actually by outsiders, not from people within the church, for whatever reason). My Worst Ex had previously Done A Thing That Is Bad, and prior to confessing this to me, spent plenty of time building up 'even your God couldn't forgive me' logic. Of course my God could! And he's not doing it ANYMORE, so... it would be unfair of me to walk away, right?

I don't think Worst Ex is in the category of 'abusers abusing for fun and don't care'. Some of the time it's obvious that he does care, and from outside observation he does seem to be a bit _less_ terrible now than he used to be. But that doesn't make him reliable, yanno? He probably IS rehabilitable but that's... a job for a professional shrink.

(And yet. No one is truly rehabilitable without community support. Humans don't work like that.)

TL;DR forgiveness rhetoric is a dangerous beastie

[hydrangea]

Due to my issues, I have a Very Hard Time connecting to/understanding things/extrapolating from a previous understanding. This post was absolutely eye-opening for me.

The person I know with the strongest belief in rehabilitative justice is atheist. When he argues for it, it seems perfectly reasonable.

This post opened my eyes to the other side of it too. Thank you for making me think!

[lunabee34]

I was raised in a Protestant, Evangelical environment, and I heard "hate the sin, love the sinner" a lot growing up. It was almost always in the context of homosexuality, so that phrase always gets my hackles up; I think (generic) you can hate stealing and still love someone who steals. I do not think (generic) you can hate homosexuality without also hating at least part of a person who is homosexual. I also heard it in the context of my own choices; my parents hate that I became a liberal, that I rejected their religion, etc., but they claim to still love me. And I'm sure they do still love me, but hating my "sins" feels an awful lot like actually hating me.

I don't think this use of the phrase is exactly what you're talking about, but it's my experience with it.

[vass]

*is listening*

I can see the shapes of at least two important things that I agree with, but I can't tell from here whether either one was the thing you're trying to pin down, and if so which one.

("where if you're just kind and loving and gentle with people for long enough they will Realise The Error Of Their Ways and that They Were Wrong All Along, because of how toxic and gaslighting that can be." YES THIS. And patronising and offputting. And so hard to escape, from either side. And on a theological level -- if discussing a single omnipotent/omniscient God -- COMPARED TO ETERNAL TORTURE FOR UNSAVED SINNERS, I prefer the universalist, love wins, "if hell exists it is empty", "God's grace continues after death and eternity is long enough to heal all wounds in everyone and redeem every possible sin", etc, position. But that's compared to a god who would literally permit people to be eternally tortured for their sins. The loving god with infinite power and infinite time who eventually overcomes the resistance of all the stubborn stragglers by outwaiting them, and then welcomes them to eir arms is better than the eternal torturer, but is still REALLY FUCKING CREEPY AND TERRIFYING imo. Infinite power is disturbing even if the holder is omnibenevolent. Which no humans or human systems are.)

Here's a related problem I keep on turning over, one that often leads me to a rehabilitative justice conclusion, but which rehabilitative justice does not actually solve, at all: how do we live with each other afterwards?

As in, suppose we win (for whichever value of "we" are working for whichever political goals is in view, from "turn the construction pit into a park" right up to revolution leading to a new planet-wide utopia.) What comes next (Hamilton earworm optional) and what does that look like with regards to the people who do (or did) not share our goals, but are still around? Do they no longer exist? How? Did we kill them? (In which case, is that the utopia "we" are imagining? One in which we kill all dissenters?) Convince them of the rightness of our cause? (All of them? How did we manage that? And is our utopia one in which there is no dissent at all?) Or if they are still around (or if not, when later generations start having ideas of their own) how do we live with each other?

The only part of this that I'm sure about is that this is only not a concern if we're anticipating that the "afterwards" condition involves either "they" or "we" being dead. Which of course is already the case if they are trying to kill us.

[hairyears]

I grew up in a school described as "A community of young Christian adults" that was, at best, a living sudy of environmental contributions to the development of sociopathic traits.

And yes, some of them did enjoy it.

So I take a view that protecting yourself, and as many others as you can, takes precedence over abstract moral theories that tend towards appalling outcomes when applied in practice.

In short: be a forgiving person, but not to the extent that you and others are exposed to danger and damagng toxicity.

[silveradept]

I am listening, and see this thing and how it is manipulated by persons looking to hurt others and how themselves.

[recessional]

I tend to think the thing about "rehabilitative" justice is that you do actually have to keep in mind the justice part.

It is not just to require of someone who has been harmed that they sacrifice their wellbeing to that of their predator. It is not just to require a community re-embrace someone who violated it.

Like all justice, of course, you will hit hard and fast into the wall of "there is literally no way to make this situation wholly just": the minute there is wrongdoing justice is broken, and it cannot actually be "fully restored". The best that can happen is finding where the balance is that allows the world to move forward into its most-just form.*

Sometimes that way is through rehabilitation, of one kind or another, but this is also much more difficult and much more expensive (in time, in effort, in resources, in money, in whatever measure you want) than most people who preach "rehabilitative justice" either are aware of due to lack of understanding, or want to acknowledge.

Because in order for it to be justice you have to grasp the full effects of the whole situation, including what justice is owed the victims of whatever crime is committed. For some things, this is easy; for others, it is just about impossible.

It also requires actually engaging fully with what "rehabilitated" means (have you ACTUALLY brought the perpetrator to a point where they understand what they did was wrong etc etc etc?) and not getting fucking lazy and deciding that since they have gone through the ritual process that has been deemed "rehabilitative" they are now reconcileable. To be rehabilitated is in fact to have figured out that shit was wrong and why and to have taken the steps necessary to ensure a lack of repetition and before that happens rehabilitation has not happened so justice definitely hasn't.

And sometimes in balancing the justice owed to the victims/the community, their protection from further harm PARTICULARLY becomes a lot more important than The Best Rehabilitative Circumstances of the perpetrator and you have to act accordingly. And then you have to engage with the fact that a justice SYSTEM is going to have to be able to apply and be Mostly Right For Most Cases Most Of The Time across a pretty large population which means you need to make sure you're okay with where the imperfections fall, and people are not usually okay with that falling too much on the side of people who have perpetuated direct personal harm on other people.

Etc.


Which is actually related to "love the sinner, hate the sin" in that both of them are what look like simple descriptions of actually incredibly complex, nuanced and context-dependant things, because love not merely a gooey feeling as previously noted, and ACTUALLY allowing someone to just continue to Be Shit To Other People is not a loving thing to do, so actually Just Be Gentle And Gooey-Feeling To Them And They'll Change is not even fulfilling this exhortation.


As usual, ime, the problem is that people take big huge complicated things and flatten them out to buzzwords and flashy phrases and this fails us all.

*(tl;dr version: the problem with 'eye-for-eye' justice is that humans are infinitely connected: you will almost NEVER find yourself in a situation where you ONLY harm the person who took your eye out by taking their eye out, because their eye/lack-thereof state affects everyone connected to them; and where they are so isolated that this is not the case it is generally because of a failure of justice with regards to them at an earlier point - see also: childhood neglect - so there is actually no way to perfectly "balance" the issue: it's not even that it's potentially "unmerciful" or anything like that, it's that it's not possible.

and that's before even touching issues of "yeah okay but that specifically abled person is not actually responsible for the ablist system that fucked you over and exactly what their moral requirement/responsibility is from being born wil-they-nil-they into said system is Complicated and Fuzzy, anyway" or related issues across axes and what generational shit we are or aren't responsible for . . . )

(aside)

[ewt]

the problem with 'eye-for-eye' justice

There is plausible scholarship suggesting that this is meant to be a limitation on unjust retaliatory punishments (e.g. killing or maiming someone for theft), and I believe the Talmud goes into quite a bit of detail on situations where no equivalent or balanced punishment/requirement is possible.

(And yes, agreed, it's Complicated and simplification makes it get really shitty really fast.)

Re: (aside)

[recessional]

I'm aware :) I spent a non-trivial amount of time reading said scholarship, as part of when I was looking at old Germanic law codes and their very monetary ways of attempting the same balance and social organization. (As well as other models).

However my point is that no punishment is actually balanced: because of how people are interconnected, if you put a theif in jail or confiscate his property you are affecting anyone connected to him - family, friends, people who have no responsibility for the theft. Sometimes it's a huge effect; sometimes it's just inconvenience, like a boss needing to find a new employee. But either way, it's still imbalanced.

And if the person is so disconnected, then it's most likely because of life experiences that indicate they've already been runt targets of injustice. So justice is already irreparably unbalanced.

That it's better than blood feud is certainly true! As well as all the other things. My point is not "this is a bad society/immoral way of doing things" - my point is the second that wrongdoing occurs justice is terminally wounded and there's no way to actually "balance" it. Not that you shouldn't: you CAN'T. It's not possible. You just keep moving the injustice down the line.

And likewise LACK of punishment isn't just either, which is the point: if you unconditionally forgive everyone without process you inflict injustice on both past and present victims.

[cadenzamuse]

Thank you for the aha moment about what milquetoast restorative justice people are missing.

[recessional]

I am actually very invested in the actual fully aware forms of justice that focus on rehabilitation where possible!

Just. All parts of that are very important, as is the protection of those who are harmed. Which is as we all know Bob often cyclical. And yeah.

Which means I'm a lot more invested in figuring out how to avoid the big criminal behaviours and patterns in the first place because that's a way, way more rewarding prospect. >.>

[cadenzamuse]

Oh yeah, primary prevention is the least "heroic" in the Euro-American sense and the most effective and wide-reaching.  Which is why I'm in both social work and public health--public health for the primary prevention, social work for the secondary/tertiary prevention.