Angelus News | April 9, 2021 Vol 6 No 7

INTERSECTIONS
GREG ERLANDSON
Easter and the scandal
of saving sinners
People in Atlanta hold placards March 21 outside
one of the three day spas targeted in a series of
deadly shootings March 16 in metro Atlanta. |
CNS/SHANNON STAPLETON, REUTERS
Through Holy Week and Easter,
I’ve been thinking about Robert
Aaron Long, the accused killer
of eight people, including six Asian
women, in Georgia.
Long was raised Christian in a strict
Baptist church. Yet something in his
life was wildly out of control, apparently
the product of a volatile mixture of
porn addiction, guilt, and self-loathing.
He was obsessed with his own sinfulness,
and he is alleged to have chosen
to kill what he believed was both the
object and cause of his temptation,
women working in massage parlors.
In response, the church he attended
issued a statement that his murderous
actions “directly contradict his own
confession of faith in Jesus and the gospel,”
and as a result, they removed him
from the congregation because “we
can no longer affirm that he is truly a
regenerate believer in Jesus Christ.”
I think of Long because when we say
that Jesus Christ died for sinners, what
we mean is that he died for people
like him. When we say Jesus ate with
sinners and came to save sinners, we
mean not just nice people who have a
few flaws, the way we imagine ourselves
to be, but people who are not
easy to love, people who have done
heinous things, not just lost sheep but
lost souls.
This is the radical nature of God’s
love for us. He died for the worst of us.
He died despite the worst in us. He
died that we all may be redeemed. He
died for the men and women on death
row where Long may one day find
himself, as well as for their victims: the
human traffickers and the trafficked,
the beaten and the beaters, the haters
and those they hate.
St. Paul speaks with experience on
this matter:
“For Christ, while we were still
helpless, yet died at the appointed time
for the ungodly. Indeed, only with
difficulty does one die for a just person,
though perhaps for a good person one
26 • ANGELUS • April 9, 2021