The two camps emerging on the issues of marriage, sexuality and family (“A clash between law and love”, 6 June) would do well to converge and gather around the words and practice of Jesus Christ. His first commandment, "Love one another as I have loved you" could not have been clearer. Nor could his assertion that carnal sexual relations are proper only in a committed love relationship between a man and a woman.
Harsh and uncompromising as his stance might be for those of different orientations, it was not condemnatory. On the contrary, his words came from a man who loved us literally to death and who never withdrew his call to follow him. How often did Jesus heal and forgive and with the words "Go and sin no more" and then leave the person concerned free to carry on with their life as best they might in the light of their encounter with him? He did not harry them, recruit them into his company of followers, or put them under surveillance. In the community which formed around him he set up no police force or judiciary.
The Church is the custodian of Christ's teaching and has to proclaim it. It is also the custodian of his fundamental law of love and of his way of relating to people, ie sinners, since we are all sinners, because sin is basically a failure or refusal to love. Which of us can claim innocence on that criterion?
Surely the challenge for the Church is to continue to hand on Christ's word in his spirit of love and mercy and to encourage all of us to nurture our relationship with him. The difference between "sinners" like those in "irregular" relationships and me is that they are "known sinners" whilst I enjoy anonymity in my sins – except to God.
Peter Simmons, North Berwick
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