In this world, we struggle to forgive and we struggle to love. God understands this and He has compassion on us. Maybe you’ve been horrifically abused by someone and just the sound of that person’s name makes you feel like you’re going to throw up. God understands the effect being ravaged has on us. He understands how pain and suffering can warp us on very deep levels. He has great compassion on the victims of abusers. But He also loves the abusers, and here is where most of us part ways with God and feel justified in hating those who have hurt us. Here is where we feel justified in viewing other souls as the sum of their sins and hating both with equal fervor. The molester becomes completely defined by his acts of molestation. Any act of kindness the man might have done before or after abusing someone is tossed aside as irrelevant and we talk as though his entire life, person, and character can be summarized by a few sordid activities. We do the same with the murderer, the pedophile, the terrorist, and the rapist. Humans become defined by their worst moments and then we refuse to ever give them a chance at redemption. Once a molester, always a molester. It’s all fine and well for you to repent and reform and finally make something of yourself, but once someone gets his name on that public list of sex offenders, that’s all we see him as: an offender. A walking threat. A scourge on the face of the earth.

Be honest: if you had the choice of being a molester or his victim, which would you choose? The answer is obvious: we’d all rather be the victims of abusers than try to deal with the internal torment that they are lugging around. When you cry about the terrible suffering you endured, people come out of the woodwork to express their sympathy. But when your memories of degrading another human being have you so full of self-loathing that you finally decide to blow your brains out, people get in line to hand you guns and bullets. There is no sympathy for the molester—no one wants to hear about the horrors he went through that caused him to become as warped as he is.