Who Condemns You?

an affirmation of humanity

If our bodies were formed from the dusty earth and animated by God’s breath, then we are inherently hallowed and consecrated: holy ground.

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The Creation of Adam (part of the Sistine Chapel) by Michelangelo

For years, I avoided the full length mirror because I didn’t want to catch a glimpse of a self I loathed. Sin, I learned early on, was embedded within my being. Sinner was our collective identity (we were sinners saved by grace after all). And so much of that sin nature was tied to our flesh and the flesh of others—most especially to our sexuality. The mirror reflected every bit of my corrupt body and depraved soul, the naive self I’d been conditioned to believe was guilty for merely existing.

We were warned about the forbidden fruits of knowledge, the slippery slope out of Biblical inerrancy into more expansive theology. Slippery slope has long been the cautionary metaphor against deception, slipping out of approved doctrine into “dangerous territory” due to reading or thinking or questioning too much. But I found myself slipping as soon as I exited a like-minded environment; I started slipping when I realized common ground isn’t the same as holy ground.¹

…

I know many people who found their way to affirming theology through research. When a limited doctrine’s been presented as absolute and essential for eternal salvation, knowledge is absolutely vital for a renewed mind. Books and podcasts and videos have served as guiding lights throughout my continued work of deconstructing/self-clarifying my beliefs, or rather, my ethos for living. 

But it wasn’t books or church or even therapy that led me to finally shirk off all the sexual shame and judgment I’d long carried. It’s been a slow process; slow because first I had to unlearn everything I’d been taught about God and then hell and then body. I had to stand still before the mirror like Barbara Brown Taylor² and repeat affirmations about my body, being, and sexuality before I could affirm anyone else’s. I looked in the mirror and recognized years of self-loathing and deeply embedded shame. I looked in the mirror and saw a self-made wretch. 

Maybe it's our theology, not our humanity, that makes us depraved: the theology of condemnation, exclusion, eternal hellfire. Maybe it's practices like “loving the sinner, hating the sin” that makes our works like dirty rags.

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Jesus and the Woman Taken by Kathleen Peterson

There’s a story I return to often, a story that has kept me in the faith though I’ve come close to tumbling out of it. It’s a story I’ve referenced many times before, but I can’t stop thinking about its implications of a redemptive, non-condemning, affirming Christ.

It’s the story of a nearly-stoned woman, a “woman caught in adultery,” a woman whose alleged action became her identity. She’s brought before Christ to test his response to sexual sin. And though we’re not told the situation, we can imagine what may have actually transpired for a woman living in a patriarchal world without protection, rights, or agency.

Accusing men stand ready to slay her, carrying their own dirty secrets, fueled by the worst kind of sin: hate.

But Jesus turns it back on the crowd, highlights the reality of a loveless, hateful mob—none of you believe in your own dignity and worth, let alone the dignity and worth of a woman. He writes something in the sand—a message we’ll never know but it does something to this murderous crowd.

Stones drop, the men turn away, and this humiliated woman, full of shame, overwhelmed by fear, is left alone with Christ.

“Who condemns you?” He asks. She looks around at the pile of stones and sees no remaining accusers. 

“No one,” she says.

“Neither do I.”

He says “go and sin no more” not in response to whatever she may have been caught in, but in response to her self-condemnation, her self-hatred, her disbelief in her innate belovedness. For this is where sin stems from, not from a depraved birthright but a worldview of condemnation for ourselves and those around us.

Jesus does not condemn this woman’s actions that, according to tradition and expectation, merited death by stoning.

And Jesus does not condemn you.³

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Once, I wore a theology of judgment because I judged myself harshly, convinced every hidden desire was a mark of my inner evil being. I read the story of Adam and Eve through a lens of shame and grave human error, absorbed the teaching that sin was connected to who we are, not what we do. I heard the phrase “go and sin no more” as a warning without welcome, an asterisk added to Jesus’s non-condemning stance. As if he would only cease condemning if the woman ceased her sinning.

But in the beginning, as the lore goes—the lore I learned later, not the lore I was taught—God created Adam: human. Neither male or female. In today’s terms: non-binary. God split the human into two parts: male and female. Adam did not come first and Eve was not his subordinate. Gender and sexuality is not the goodness God notes: but the humanity of the two beings bearing Their likeness.⁴

Some argue this is a twisting of scripture to fit a narrative, but for years I only heard scripture used to fit narrow narratives: narratives of literalism and certainty and exclusion. Naturally, our approach to scripture is bent by culture and modernism and interpretation. But it’s most harmful when we take up scripture like stones and cast our condemnation out upon the world as if we’re not guilty ourselves of half-hearted love.

For a long time, I understood scripture as “firm” on “issues of sexuality.” But now I see it was only firm according to some translations and some traditions and some conveniently added language. My adopted firmness made me hostile towards the whole of humanity, a humanity God called very good and Christ wept ove. Missing from our churches and conversations, sermons and media was honest wrestling, real life stories, empathy, humility, genuine welcome and safety, the fruits of the spirit embodied in the pursuit of justice and shalom for the world.

Missing was the connection between divinity and flesh. 

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A few months ago, I read Sara Miles’s memoir Take This Bread—a story of radical conversion. She writes about an ordinary Sunday, walking through her San Francisco neighborhood when she decides, for no reason beyond, perhaps, the Holy Spirit, to enter her neighborhood Episcopal church.

She’s offered the Eucharist without question of her sexuality or family or even state of belief, and describes a near immediate transformation upon tasting the bread and drinking the wine: a transformation from religious indifference to untapped spiritual hunger.

What I love about the story is that Sara is welcomed as she is (a gay, partnered, activist/writer/mother/former atheist). The table is open, the bread and wine offered, the sanctuary a true place of respite. Far too often conversion stories are self-deprecating but here’s one about welcome full stop, inclusion, the affirmation of dignity and the sort of change that comes by actively loving God and neighbor. From the first taste of bread and wine, Sara is compelled towards neighbor care, eventually opening a church food pantry to provide nourishment and community to her neighbors. Conversion for Sara was an acceptance of radical love that spilled out into a wider world.

Sara writes, “Repentance means turning toward other human beings, our own flesh and blood, whether they’re oppressed, hungry, or imprisoned; it means acting with compassion instead of indifference.”

Repentance is like the woman kneeling before Christ, seeing the discarded rocks and accepting she is not condemned. Repentance is standing before a mirror and truly seeing the body as beloved, making right what’s been wronged. Repentance is a tumble out of certainty into widening wonder. It’s adding leafs to tables and affirming humanity as very good, honoring our dusty bodies as image-bearing. Holy.

What if our bodies are the holiest ground there is?

1.

Nicole Mason

wrote a beautifully thoughtful essay a few weeks ago called Down the Slippery Slope I Go, a phrase I resonate with entirely as I’ve been tumbling down a steep precipice for a while. In the essay, Nicole writes, “If ‘sliding down the slippery slope’ means ending up further from environments that desire to condemn faithful women and LGBTQ+ individuals before condemning Christian nationalism or a literal genocide— then honestly, good for me.”

2. In An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor writes about standing naked before a full-length mirror to truly see herself and connect with God. She writes, “I think it is important to pray naked in front of a full-length mirror sometimes, especially when you are full of loathing for your body.”

3. I posted a version of this to my Instagram account last year.

4. I first had my mind blown by the concept in this episode of BibleProject. Hosts Tim and Jon explain the faultiness of most English translations, that the he/him pronouns used for Adam did not mean male but human. The supposed rib that formed Eve (the missing male rib many of us were taught is still a scientific reality) is also inaccurate. The original text is more akin to side of body rather than single rib—the creation of both Adam and Eve came from a split of the original human, not woman emerging from man. So when the text says God created Adam in his image, Adam is humanity—not men. And God is divinity/source/creator—not male. While conservatives use this text to debate trans rights, the story is not about gender. It’s about love and bearing the image of God, which is not distinctly male or female but a combination of what we see reflected in humanity.