Who’s the Worst?

Do you think my sins are worse than yours? Are there grades of sin?

I remember sweet smiling Minna or fragile Eugenia in her wheelchair at the Winston Churchill Home in the Uruguayan British Hospital who were worried about their sins. I looked at these gentle and humble ladies and thought, what in the world could they do that would be counted as sin before God? Haven’t they reached an age and time in their lives where they are past temptation? They seemed but God’s angels boosting the rest of us along to be like them, forgiving, elegant, unassuming and loving all no matter how filled our spirit is with mistakes.

When we get mad at the dog or complain about a neighbor or bemoan how this country is going under the waves of violence and corruption, are we sinning? It has been such a revelation to me many times when I’ve gone into confession before a priest/bishop that they’ve turned an issue back on me and said, “That’s not a sin. It’s a frustration or a disappointment, maybe wrong, but it’s not a sin.” I wonder how many of us really know what sin is? Is sin only that in relation to the Ten Commandments?

I believe sin is described by love. Our lack of it. Our poor use of it. Our turning from it. Sometimes we bash people with what we think is love - our feelings about something, and our need to get the point over to someone we care about. We only love you, dear. Parents often do this to children. They feel if they believe XYZ then if their children, the seed from their souls, fail to believe this too, then their children are sinners. Aren’t they setting themselves up to be like God the judge?

This issue comes up often in the abortion struggle. A parent thinks because he believes that abortion is an unpardonable sin of murder, then his unwed, underage daughter who has been raped is not capable of making her own decision about abortion. Must she be throttled even harmed by what the parent dictates? The person  most effected is the daughter’s whole future. I read about a case when a teenager was pregnant with a terribly deformed and sick child, one expected to die in a short period in the womb,  and possibly causing great damage to the mother. The child’s head was increasing like an automatic balloon. Through the many X-rays and scans, blood and liquid tests, obstetricians could be sure that the child would be a monster. Of course one can bank on a miracle that the doctors were wrong. But, very rarely does that occur. In this case the daughter felt an abortion was urgent, and the doctor supported the idea. But because her parents were Fundamentalist Christians and believed no creature in the womb of a female could be aborted, the young girl suffered terrible mental and physical problems, separated from her parents, and carried her right of decision to the Supreme Court to win her case, the right to have an abort a fetus dangerous to her health.  The problem is that by the time all the legal process had been scaled, it was even more dangerous. She was a month from childbirth. The fetus was taken. It was, as the doctor had prognosticated, completely deformed and inhuman. What a tragedy. Who was the sinner here? A 16-year-old girl whose life would have been destroyed? It was a tremendous emotional ride for the young girl who’s only support was the lawyer who defended her before courts of rigid men. The relationship, daughter and parent, was broken forever and who knows what effect it had on her faith.

First of all I don’t believe any of us are qualified to judge what is sin or not in someone else’s lives. Only our own consciences know what is right and wrong for us as God’s Holy Spirit is in us and speaks to us. I look at my boys in prison and see how many of them have no notion of what sin is. What is right and wrong. What is morality. They’ve never heard about morals, therefore, they have no idea about them and many are not wise enough to figure it out on their own. Sin is not a word in their vocabulary. No one has ever talked about it, until maybe a priest came along. Crime they know, because it feeds them, gives them things they never had, and they have used it to survive, and now are paying the price. Supposedly crime is wrong. It costs. But there are many things they have done in their unloved lives they have not paid anything for and so do not know the alternatives.  They are always suffering  on the outside due to social standards, so how do they know what suffering is from the inside where it is as normal as a heartbeat?

Jesus tells us the parable of the fig tree. I love this story. A poor fig tree just didn’t bear the fruit that was expected of it. The owner was disgusted after three years expecting something juicy and rich in the way of fruit off this fig tree and finding not even a bud. So he tells his gardener to cut it down. It has sinned by not preforming as expected. It’s useless. Throw it out. It’s just taking up room in soil that could be used for some other tree. But the gardener said, and we all know that Jesus was mistaken for a gardener at the time of his resurrection, could it have one more chance? Just one more year? I’ll work with it personally, put manure on it, take care of the soil around it, water it, and give it every possibility of producing fruit. Just give me one more year. And then if it doesn’t bear fruit then, well, he’d cut it down.  Jesus tells us, we have another chance. We know that when He came to earth, He gave even us Gentiles a chance. A chance to be under His wing. A chance to be relieved of the pain and sorrow of our sins. If we plead to him for repentance, Jesus would let us into his heavenly home. That’s our promise.

I guess, I am constantly like the gardener of the fig tree: asking for another chance. One in particular was my friend Tapia, who was behind bars in Uruguay. He was consistently in trouble. Tapia was in my Pro Egreso group (preparing prisoners for freedom)  so I had known him for three years. He was there for homicide, but as he explained to me, homicide of a terrible drug dealer who was scamming everyone in his neighborhood. He felt he should be a hero, not a prisoner. He didn’t quite understand, like so many of these boys, the taking of any life is sin. But, what can one expect when he had a mother who was a prostitute and his step-father was the pimp who sold his mother?

Tapia had been my constant struggle. He was small. He had a mouth. And he enjoyed drugs. He loved to play soccer more than anything and dreamed of playing on some soccer team when he got out. He was feisty and defensive but respectful. There was something about him that I liked. I can’t exactly describe it, but there was a glimmer of hope in him. He has been sent to the calaboxes (like the hole in or prisons)  in punishment. He was removed from the preferred minimum security modulo 13, first, about 18 months ago, and then sent to the worst of the modulos as a punishment for pushing a policeman who pushed him first, he said.  He was moved from one modulo to the other after the famous motin (riot) in which he was taken out of his cell and beaten on the head and back. I saw the wounds. He was allowed back in Modulo 13 about a year later.  

The night before the public performance of the play El Herero y La Muerte, for which he was the light man, his cell was searched three different times for drugs, and one of the guards beat him so badly that his eye was blood red. And yet, he kept silent because he didn’t want to lose the possibility of being part of the theater group. He took the beating. But a few weeks afterwards, the director once again removed him from Modulo 13 and sent him to the worst cell block. He was accused of drug trafficking. I tried to stay out of it. After a month or so, I begged the director once again if I could have Tapia back. Had he learned anything? I had hoped he had. I had hoped now maybe I could start encouraging him to learn things so he would bear good fruit and not always be an instigator. The Director said if there were any more problems, Tapia would be sent straight to Libertad, the most horrific prison in Uruguay. Disappointed as I was, I thought that might give him an experience.

But one Wednesday night, there was a fight. His cellmate, an older man in frustration broke the windows on the guards quarters, furious because he wasn’t granted gracias (early release) by the supreme court. There is always so much false hope when the court visits to see if a few can get early release.  Tapia said he went to rescue his cellmate and tried to stop a fight and was stabbed two times in the stomach by another prisoner. They rushed him to the Hospital Pasteur to be put back together. I sat with him a while two days. His liver had been damaged, and his lungs were full of blood. He was in shock, going from hot to cold. He was frightened. He was frightened because he knew the director would send him to Libertad. He begged me to help him so that wouldn’t happen. I was sort of at a loss before the director. The story Tapia told me was, obviously, different from that of the police side of the story. I know that the prisoners are always “doing nothing in my cell.” when anything erupts. I cannot know who did this to him. But I know Tapia didn’t stab anyone. They stabbed him. He was a victim.

Yet, I could not know too much because I was still trying to garden Tapia into a better person. He had the toughest judge, Ana Lima, who was a friend, and who only now after seven years was allowing him 12 hours leave per month to be with his family. Tapia had a nice girlfriend. A precious child. Both his ex-wife and his girlfriend showed up at the same time at the hospital, started a ruckus outside the room reserved for prisoners,  a real fist fight, and the police carted the two ladies off to the police station until they cooled down.

Wherever Tapia is, problems seem to stir up.  But he didn’t have much hope of bearing fruit until he can repent and change his ways. Drugs are an unruly host in a man. They are ruthless on the spirit. True, Tapia knew how to survive in prison. But he didn’t know how to survive in freedom.  If he didn’t change his ways, he too would perish. He would be cut down by the tree owner. I didn’t know how much longer I could win his battles. But I am sure God sent him to me.  Tapia will always be one of mine. I hope God did not give up on Tapia nor struck him down in the wilderness. I know His love for him, as for each one of us, did not let him be tested beyond his strength, but that somehow, in the testing or through prayers, God has embraced him with His Heart so that Tapia has been able to endure whatever was given to him in the heavens. I miss him.

 ~ Rev
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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
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