Sinners and Pharisees

As Jesus ate with some Pharisees a so-called sinner joined them (Luke 7:36 - 8:3). The Pharisees were fastidiously observant of rules and the “sinners” tended to stray more often. Of course we understand that we are all sinners before God, but we so easily deceive ourselves that we are better than those who have crossed the line more often or in more socially unacceptable ways than ourselves. Our society treats whores worse than bought and paid-for politicians, or bootleggers worse than insider Wall Street traders and gays worse than heterosexual fornicators. We all tend to treat some in our society as more reprobate than ourselves. In all this self-righteous judgmentalism we often forget one important thing: whoever has been forgiven for greater faults loves much more than those who have been forgiven for seemingly more trivial mistakes.