A Gospel Way That Is Neither Liberal Nor Conservative

Okay, so I'm home on my day off supposedly finishing a fence project that I started last summer. The wife and kids are gone to the zoo to give me peace and space. I look forward to their return even as I enjoy work in peace. As I work I'm listening to the radio and what I'm listening to is hacking me off.

At present I'm listening to Michael Medved. He's talking about this story which I agree is horrific. But the way he's talking about it reveals the paucity of his conservative Jewish worldview.

How does liberal politics deal with sex offenders? Here's in a nutshell (the fence awaits my attention after all!) what a liberal view says: criminals are not bad people, yes they've done some bad things, but if they get a better view on life via rehabilitation (like education only later in life after you've screwed up), they can reenter society.

How does conservative politics deal with sex offenders? Here's the summary: criminals are bad people, that's why they've done bad things, they may be convinced that the spoils of crime don't add up to the benefits of right living, if so they can be released but if not keep them locked up and never let them back in society. This last phrase is what Medved is saying about the recently arrested man who kept the sex slave for 19 years.

Here's my hasty analysis... the liberal gets it wrong because they don't see people as really broken and sinful. The conservative gets it wrong because although they see people as truly broken they don't believe true internal transformation is possible.

The gospel way to think about this (and apologies in advance if this offends you, but if it offends you, you've got more of the gospel to understand my friend) would follow these lines: we're all broken and sinful including sexually, we express our brokenness in different ways, some people are more careful with their sexual perversion than others, but all people - NO MATTER WHAT kind of sexual perversion they have (and we all have them, including the writer and the reader!) - can be freed from the power of that perversion by conversion under the gospel and kept from that perversion by the power of the Holy Spirit.

This perspective is lacking in Medved. Sadly it's also lacking in other conservative talking heads who espouse Christianity or a form of it. We can't leave "perverts" hopeless or we leave ourselves hopeless. Either the gospel applied by the Holy Spirit CAN transform the "very worst" of sinners or its simply something to help us "lesser sinners" get along in life. Which is it?