I wrote about this a few weeks ago, but it happened again and I have given it more thought. I was at a social event and a 
woman walked up to me and told me I looked familiar. She really couldn’t tell who I was and I danced around it a bit until I told her I was former pastor of a church in the area.
That’s when it all came together for her. It’s usually the same treatment when they realize I was the pastor who committed adultery. There’s this flash of shock in the eyes followed quickly by a step backwards (or two). Then, there’s an immediate need on their part to exit the conversation. Their speech begins to get quicker, their eyes dart around the room for someone else to connect to, and there is a sudden need to do anything – anything – but talk to you.
Yeah, I get it. I’m the adulterer. I’m the guy who sinned almost four years ago while pastoring a church. Before I did it I would probably act the same way as you.
There are other types as well. They are the people who see you in public and make accidental eye contact with you. They do everything they can do to avoid running into you. I like to wave as big as I can to them across the store. I don’t know what the proper thing to do there is, but I figure if they’re trying to ignore me, they need a big happy smile.
The whole thing makes me think about leprosy. Yeah, that nasty disease referred to in the New Testament. It could have meant any number of skin lesions that people suffered from. They were societal outcasts who had to keep their distance from someone. Ever talk to someone with a skin disease? What’s our first response? We may not mean it in a bad way, but we usually flinch or step backwards.
Same response we give to people we know are sinners. People who were leaders and fell due to great sin. People covered with tattoos (who actually might be a youth leader at a local church). People we find out are in recovery. But we like to flinch. We may say nice little things with our mouths, but our bodies want to run 100 mph in the other direction.
If you’ve never been on the receiving end of a flinch, you have no idea what it’s like or how it feels.
But I know someone who never flinched around a leper or a sinner – Christ. He touched lepers, the weak, needy, poor, adulterers, prostitutes and downtrodden. He went out of his way to interact with them. When no doctor, priest, church leader would have any contact with them, he gave them hope.
He’s our model for sinner interaction. Better yet, he reached out to us in our sin and died for us – the Bible says, “such 
were some of you.” Think about how we looked to God – who cannot look upon sin – covered in sin, far from righteousness – and yet Christ came to us and saved us.
Maybe we should watch our actions around others. Those who offend our delicate senses with their sin. Maybe we should be people of compassion like Christ and start leaning in instead of stepping back.
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Ray Carroll is author of “Fallen Pastor: Finding Restoration in a Broken World.”