Who's Responsible for the Lost Being Lost?

It's tempting to blame those who've gone astray for going astray. But Jesus put the onus on the ones in charge. That's frustrating.

If you’ve read the Gospels then you know the deal.

Upstanding citizens kept getting hot and bothered that Jesus routinely kept company with—how to put this—the undesirables of his time.

In order to try and explain why he hung out with them so much (or, more precisely, why the undesirables constantly drew near to him), Jesus once said in plain speak that he was concerned most about “seeking and saving the lost”.

The lost.

Ah, those precious yet confused souls.
The ones who cannot help but follow the ways of the world.
Those who lose the battle again and again to the flesh.

The lost, the pitiable, the doomed.

Wasn’t Jesus just the absolute best for going out of his way to reach the “lost?”

They may have been scoundrels laying in the beds of their own making, but they still deserve pity, right?

Right?!

On second thought, I’m not so sure the way Jesus talked about “the lost” is the same way many of us talk about them today. Actually, let me remove the third person and look at the plank in my own eye: how I used to think and talk about “the lost.”

You see, previous versions of myself bought into the narrative (given me by my religious heritage, thankyouverymuch) that the “lost” refer to those who do not have Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior.

Fair enough, I suppose. Or at least, fair enough within that particular religious tradition (ie, western, protestant, evangelical, baptist Christianity).

But it didn’t stop there. Smuggled in to that definition of the “lost” were also unstated (and at times, stated) assumptions about how depraved, immoral, and generally rotten they were.

We looked down on the “lost” even while we also tried to muster up enough compassion so that we could try and save them.

And when we did manage to save them? Well that was cause for celebration!

Hallelujah the lost are found! The condemned saved! A previously unrepentant sinner (aka, lost person) has renounced their wicked ways and accepted the free gift of God’s grace through Jesus’ sacrificial death and victorious resurrection.

(Fun fact: There was no such thing as Jesus’ death and resurrection during the time when Jesus was out there “seeking and saving the lost.” Chew on that, baby.)

Photo by Greg Willson on Unsplash

Who’s Responsible for Why the Lost are Lost?

But if and when a person is “lost,” who bears the responsibility?

Is it appropriate and/or correct to blame the lost person for their lostness?

Not according to Jesus.

One hot afternoon, while on his journey to Jerusalem, Jesus was yet again surrounded by scoundrels (ie, tax collectors and sinners).

The upstanding citizens (ie, Pharisees and legal experts) grumbled at this.

So Jesus launched in to a few parables. We call them the Parable of the Lost Sheep (Luke 15:3-7), the Lost Coin (15:8-10), and the Prodigal Son (15:11-32).

I’m sure you remember them well enough, but when’s the last time you reflected on the following observations:

• The only way to really discern if one out of hundred sheep are missing (and likewise, unless you’re Rainman, you wouldn’t immediately look at a pile of coins and go, “Nine! Not Ten!”), is if you routinely counted. Checked in. Paid careful attention. They are your sheep and your coins, after all.

• If a sheep wanders astray, it’s hardly the sheep’s fault. It’s what sheep do. They look for food and water. It’s the responsibility of the shepherd to ensure the well-being of the sheep.

• If a coin is not where it’s supposed to be, it’s hardly the coin’s fault. Coins can only do one thing: sit there under the weight of its own gravity. If a coin goes missing, it’s the owner of the coin’s fault (or maybe a large rodent, I suppose).

• While the shepherd in the first parable doesn’t specifically take responsibility, at the least the wealthy woman who was one coin down does. She says, “I found the coin THAT I HAD LOST.”

• BTW, some scholars (and I agree) surmise that verses 7 and 10, which both talk about the joy in heaven when “one sinner repents,” are edits or additions by Luke, and probably weren’t original to the parable as told by Jesus. What would it even mean for a sheep or a coin to “repent?” They didn’t do anything in their respective stories other than just be there and get found.

So here’s my point.

While it fits a certain narrative to blame lost people for their state of lostness, such an attitude doesn’t map on very well to that of Jesus.

According to Jesus, through the usage of parables, I believe he was inviting the Pharisees and the legal experts to look inward and see how they—as the apparent keeper’s of the flock—bore responsibility for the “sinners” of their day.

Hard for them then.

Hard for us, now.

We much prefer the convenience of wiping our hands clean of any responsibility for the outcast, the marginalized, the destitute, the struggling, the downtrodden. It’s far, far simpler for us to blame them.

How would our internal attitude and posture change (to say nothing of how it would change larger systems and institutions) if we first began with honest inward assessments of how it is that we have lost the sheep the coins among us?

My hunch is that at bare minimum, if and when we do “seek and save the lost,” we would show up to that work with boatloads of compassion and empathy and mercy.

Understanding that we (whether as individuals and/or as a society) bear some/most/all of the responsibility for why they’re no longer part of the community, the family.

And when we do that?

When we show up with compassion, and empathy, and mercy?

Well now we’re in the perfect state of being to embody the posture of Jesus.

Now we’re being Christian.