Does God Ever IGNORE Sinners?

The other day I was rewatching an episode  one of my absolute favorite shows— Arrested   Development—and I stumbled upon a fascinating  theological question. See if you catch it: [clip] For those who don’t know the show, the older  lady in this scene, Gangy, is the matriarch of an   absolutely degenerate family that owns a housing  company in trouble with the law, hence the show’s   punny name, Arrested Development. She is petty  and cruel, constantly manipulating people to   get what she wants, and so when her son, Michael,  says that God is not going to take her call after   all of these years, the viewer sees the humor in  it: she is so bad that even God doesn’t like her.

But it raises an interesting question,  doesn’t it? Here you have a woman who   is completely wrapped up in herself,  curses others, drinks to excess, and   does everything she can to make others unhappy…  and yet, is in a seemingly genuine, vulnerable   state with at least some level of contrition.  Would God take her call after all these years?

In other words, does God listen to the  prayers of sinners? In a state of mortal   sin, are we really cut off from God’s  grace. The answer… is that it depends.

Our first thought is obviously yes, that God loves  everyone and that no one is ever too far gone,   and yet scripture can tell a different  story at times. There are A LOT of   passages showing that God does not like  nor listen to the prayers of sinners. In Psalm 66:18, we read, “Had I cherished evil  in my heart, the Lord would not have heard.

” Proverbs 28:9 teaches that “Those who  turn their ears from hearing instruction,   even their prayer is an abomination. ” Most striking is probably psalm 5 in which we  read: “You are not a god who delights in evil; no   wicked person finds refuge with you; the arrogant  cannot stand before your eyes. You hate all who   do evil; you destroy those who speak falsely. 

A bloody and fraudulent man the LORD abhors. ” It’s because of this that we can see in Isaiah  that God himself condemns the worship of wicked   people because of its hypocrisy: “Trample my  courts no more! To bring offerings is useless;   incense is an abomination to me.

New moon and  sabbath, calling assemblies—festive convocations   with wickedness—these I cannot bear. Your new  moons and festivals I detest; they weigh me down,   I tire of the load. When you spread out  your hands, I will close my eyes to you;   Though you pray the more, I will not  listen.

Your hands are full of blood! ” Even the blind man cured by Jesus gives testimony  to this in the Gospel of John when attempting   to prove Jesus’ innocence to the Pharisees:  “We know that God does not listen to sinners,   but if one is devout and does  his will, he listens to him. ” Clearly, the way we live has  at least some connection to our   prayer life.

Those who are sinless  in the eyes of God will be heard,   and those who sin gravely will either be ignored  or punished for their hypocritical prayers. So, on the one hand, yes, it is true that  sinning is not in our best interest when it   comes to praying. If we want God to hear and  answer us, approaching him with arrogance or   hatred in our hearts, or with every intention  to sin again is not going to end well for us.

That being said, this is obviously not the  whole story, which is why it’s important to   temper some of those passages with ones  showing the immensity of God’s mercy. For instance, much of the book of Hosea  is about God winning back Israel after its   idolatry, colorfully depicted as a harlot wife.  Despite her many sins, God declares, “Therefore,   I will allure her now; I will lead her into the  wilderness and speak persuasively to her.

” “I   will betroth you to me forever: I will betroth  you to me with justice and with judgment, with   loyalty and with compassion; I will betroth you  to me with fidelity, and you shall know the LORD. ” While sin abhors God, he does not  abandon sinners… he goes after them. How many times does he send prophets  to win back sinful people.

How many   times does he beg them to turn their  hearts? Despite their unfaithfulness,   God is always faithful. Despite their straying  from his love, he never withholds it forever.

After all, what does Jesus say defines his  mission? “Those who are well do not need   a physician, but the sick do. I did not  come to call the righteous but sinners.

” And so, caveat number 1 is that, while God  does hate that people sin and the sin within   us creates separation between us and God, we  are never completely cut off from his love   and grace. Even if we turn our back on him  and run away, he will continue to pursue us. Because of this, we know that God  does not expect us to be perfect   immediately but is always at work  in us, converting our hearts ever   so slightly.

Even a minuscule turn  in the right direction is welcomed. In the story of the Pharisee and the tax  collector, Jesus praises the tax collector   for recognizing himself a sinner. The man  does not completely renounce his post,   he doesn’t make up for all those he  extorted, as Zacchaeus promises to do,   but there is movement in him, the beginnings  of contrition.

He’s not a perfect disciple   putting God above all else, but he is  still lauded for his humble prayer. We can see the same with the prodigal son. For the  father, it is the mere act of turning around that   is enough to be welcomed back.

The son is not even  given a chance to apologize before he his hugged. When a sinner recognizes that they have  sinned, no matter how grave the sin is,   the Church teaches that the Holy Spirit is  at work in them and that God is pleased.   They are far from perfect—motivated  at this stage only by their fear of   punishment or disgust with their sin rather  than a true love for God—but it is a start.

The catechism calls this imperfect  contrition, or attrition. It is a   gift from God, a prompting of the Holy Spirit,  and “can initiate an interior process which,   under the prompting of grace, will be brought  to completion by sacramental absolution. ” And so, caveat number 2, while God does hate  that people sin and the sin within us creates   separation between us and God, if we show even the  slightly bit of sorrow and disgust for our sins,   even if we are not completely resolute to  reform our lives and love God completely,   God does listen to our prayers and works with us.

You give God even a seed of hope  and He is going to start watering. But there is one more another  caveat that we need to make,   and it may be the hardest for some Catholics to  accept because it forces us to acknowledge the   radical nature of God’s love that goes  beyond rules and conventions. Again,   according to the catechism, someone in a state  of mortal sin, someone who has turned from God’s   love in the worst possible ways, can not only be  heard by God, but be forgiven by him directly.

“When it arises from a love by  which God is loved above all else,   contrition is called ‘perfect’ (contrition of  charity). Such contrition remits venial sins;   it also obtains forgiveness of mortal  sins if it includes the firm resolution   to have recourse to sacramental  confession as soon as possible. ” Notice what the church teaches here, drawing  on the decrees of the Council of Trent.

It is   not that someone in a state of mortal sin is  floundering out there on their own with God   ignoring them until they go to confession,  it is that even in our sinfulness, even in   the gravity of our actions, God so desires our  conversion—and is so much more powerful than our   sins—that he is not only listens to our prayers,  but if they are spoken with perfect contrition   and firm resolution to go to confession as  soon as we can, it is the act praying to God   and desiring reconciliation, not the sacrament of  reconciliation itself, that forgives mortal sins. This is not to say that the sacrament then becomes  optional, as the Council of Trent makes clear. The   desire for the sacrament, which necessarily leads  to the sacrament being celebrated at a later time,   must be included in the act of contrition  for it to be considered perfect.

But it is   to say that forgiveness can occur  before and outside the sacrament. And so, does God hate that people sin  and does the sin within us creates   separation between us and God,? Yes. 

Does this mean that he refuses to take   our calls or is limited in answering  our prayers? Absolutely not. For those   with arrogance in their hearts or pray  without contrition, he will ignore us,   but for those who genuinely desire him above all,  he will reconcile us to himself as soon as we ask.

The problem, it would seem, then, has  nothing to do with God’s faithfulness to us,   and everything to do with our ability to  make a good prayer in the first place.   It is not our sin that turns God away from  us, but our sin that turns us away from God. Nowhere in the catechism does it say that God  ignores the prayers of those who commit mortal   sins or withholds his grace from sinners.

Rather,  it says that mortal sins “results in the loss of   charity and the privation of sanctifying  grace, that is, of the state of grace. ” In other words, when we do really bad  things, it becomes harder for us to   love and harder to participate in the work  of God. Something has been wounded in us,   predisposing us to choosing  more evil things in the future.

God may be chasing after us. He may be trying to  forgive us. He may be waiting by the phone for   us to call, but the reason he never takes our  call is because we are so weighed down by our   sin and caught up in ourselves that we never  bother to make the call in the first place.

That, I believe, is the problem right  there, and why sin separates us from   God. It is not that God turns from us,  but that we are less able to turn to him. And so, do you have a prayer for God?

Are you  worried that you’ve been away too long and he   might not answer. Have no fear. Approach him with  humility and contrition.

Even if you’re not ready   to completely change your life just yet, even if  you don’t have perfect contrition, go to him with   even as little as the sadness that you’re not  sad about your sins, and speak from the heart. You may not be perfect, but he will take what  you can give. He will find the sorrow in your   heart and he will crack it open, filling you  with what you need to go forward.

Your sin   is not keeping God from you, it is keeping  you from God in your shame and selfishness. Let is go. Let it all go.

Turn to God,  give him what you can, and he will listen.