She’s Baaaaaack! Look Out, Here Comes Monica Lewinsky

So it seems dear ol’ Monica Lewinsky is back in the public eye. This time she’s on a mission, setting out to single-handedly finish off cyber-bullying once and for all.

But she’ll never be able to move on. She’ll never leave her past behind and ever be a “normal” public figure (still, are any of us normal?).

It’s not that Ms. Lewinsky wants to stay stuck in her past. She doesn’t. Here’s the problem:

We won’t let her.

She’s going to be the brunt of jokes and off-color remarks for the rest of her life because we, as a society, are going to keep reminding her (and each other) of her past sins and mistakes.

I don’t condone her past behavior, and sometimes the off-color jokes come quickly to us, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. Jesus was a big guy on giving people a new lease on life. He met up with a woman once who had been married multiple times and was living with a man to whom she wasn’t married. Jesus didn’t condemn her but used her as an instrument to tell the rest of her town about him.

Another time some religious leaders brought a woman caught in adultery before Jesus. This is the famous, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” story of the Bible. Jesus didn’t condemn this woman either. Instead, he sent her on her way with a new lease on life and told her to leave her past behind her.

If we are to take our cue from Jesus, we ought to be in the business of helping people move beyond their past failures and sins and move into a new life where grace and forgiveness abound.

Seriously, who HASN’T done something stupid you wish you had never done in the first place? Yet our humanity likes to force people to wallow in their past failures.

Jesus doesn’t let people wallow. He ushers us into a new tomorrow where the past is forgiven and we get a new chance to be. So, to Ms. Lewinsky and the rest of us who have ever screwed up:

Here’s to forgiven yesterdays and new tomorrows.

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