When Sin Hits Hard

 The following post contains references to God, my faith, and the principles of Christianity. If you do not believe in God, I respect you and your views. Please extend that same respect to me.

If you follow anything I write, you know I have been completely absorbed in the Caleb Flynn murder trial in Troy, Ohio. I’m not even entirely sure why. Maybe it’s because I’m from there and understand that small-town Midwest way of thinking and living. Maybe it’s because I have a granddaughter involved in youth and children’s ministry in that same area, and some of their circles intersect. Maybe it was simply the sensational nature of the case.

Whatever the reason, for the past couple of weeks I have followed nearly every detail. So when both sides rested and the jury began deliberating, I felt that strange buzz of anticipation that comes after investing so much time in something. Then, only about 2½ hours later—including their lunch break—the message came: The jury had reached a verdict. I was convinced it would be guilty. On all nine counts. I watched as the judge read each charge. Guilty. Again. Guilty. Nine times.

I watched the defendant, now convicted of murder, seem to shrink further into himself with every verdict. I watched Ashley’s family grieve as each charge was read. And I watched his parents sob over what had become of their son and what his future now held. That part didn’t surprise me.

Because despite everything that happened, they are still people. People love. People hurt. People grieve. What surprised me was my own reaction. I expected relief that justice had been served. Instead, I felt an overwhelming sorrow. A heaviness I could not shake. I had been saying throughout this trial that this wasn’t a television show. These weren’t characters written into a crime drama. These were real people.

A woman is dead. Her family will live with that loss forever. Children have lost their mother. Parents watched their son convicted of murder. Another family has been shattered. Lives have been forever changed. Do I believe Caleb Flynn is guilty? Yes. Without hesitation.

Twelve jurors heard the evidence and reached the same conclusion. But I still couldn’t understand why the verdict made me feel so deeply sad. So I reached out to a friend at work and told her, “I need to have a spiritual conversation.” She wasn’t familiar with the case, so I explained what had happened and finally asked her: “Why am I grieving over this?” Her answer stopped me.

She said, in essence, that God grieves when His children sin and turn away from Him. And perhaps, as a Christian, what I was feeling was a small glimpse of that sorrow. That opened my eyes. Because somewhere along the way, choices were made rooted in lust, betrayal, anger, deception and ultimately violence instead of turning toward the very faith, prayer, grace and strength that were professed on Sunday mornings. And then I realized something else.

Before I point too hard at someone else’s sin, I have to remember my own. We are all human. We all fall short of the glory of God. I certainly have. More times than I could ever count. My failures haven’t looked like his, but Christianity has never taught me that I get to stand on a pedestal because someone else’s sins are bigger, uglier or more public than mine. It teaches me to recognize sin. To seek forgiveness. To repent. To try again. And to remember that God’s grace is something none of us earn.

Maybe that was the heaviness I felt watching those verdicts. Justice and sorrow can exist in the same moment. You can believe someone must be held accountable and still grieve the destruction left behind. You can condemn an action without losing compassion for human beings. And maybe that is where the spiritual and the human meet. We are called to recognize right from wrong—but we are also called to remember that every person standing in that courtroom was somebody’s child, somebody’s parent, somebody’s family.

Faith doesn’t require me to stop feeling sorrow when justice is served. Perhaps faith is exactly why I felt it. Because when one human being destroys another, there really are no winners. There are only broken people left behind—and a God who asks us, even in the middle of that brokenness, to choose truth, accountability, mercy, forgiveness and love.