Listen I get it. The history of Christianity is not lost on my modernity. I know and understand that the explosion of Christianity as a legitimate religion was a result of the conversion of Constantine. The bacchanalian reveler who shortly before his death, heeded to the influence of his mother, gave up the paganism of the day, and converted by baptism. I am both a believer and a theologian. I am the ironic meeting of skeptic and saint. I am a student of history and a faithful lover of God. Well amend that, not just God, of Jesus and the Bible, as well. It is from that space that my questioning of this week’s events sits. Uneasy and tenuous, my mind mulling over the constant barrage of thoughts that has woken me up before sunrise on countless mornings.
I recognize that my advocacy of Gay rights and marriage equality is antithetical –to say the least—to my spiritual beliefs. It often leaves me torn. In our “not to offend anyone” society, the awkwardness of saying out loud “I believe homosexuality to be sin” has rendered many in the faith community ducking bigotry labels and silent --myself included. But, if we’re ever going to get to the place of love the Bible calls us to, we cannot afford to be silent any longer. So, here is my personal disclosure. I do believe it to be sin. I simply do not believe that I have the right to impose my beliefs on someone else. As a global citizen, I support the right of 2 consenting adults to marriage. As a woman committed to my faith, I support the right for a pastor, preacher or priest to refuse to participate in the ceremony. I do not believe a judge or justice of the peace enjoys the same exclusions, their authority is legal not moral. I believe that marriage spiritually is a covenant before God. I believe it legally to be a contract that society must recognize or enforce. I am not an advocate of changing the spiritual covenant. I am an advocate of the legal rights of all citizens.
In our nation, it is perfectly legal for parents to allow a marriage between their underage daughter and a man old enough to be her grandfather, but illegal for 2 thirty-something women? It is perfectly legal for any atheist, Muslim, Jew, Humanist or Buddhist to get married, across religious lines –which the Bible expressly condemns-- but under the guise of Biblical validity, it is illegal if two people share the same gender? Suddenly the separation of Church and State seems profoundly important. My pastor said something brilliant the other day, it was something along the lines of, if it is not IN the Word of God, do not make it up and pass it off AS the Word of God.
Hmmm…. Sometimes I’m convinced that the issue of Gay rights, acceptance and marriage is not the issue at all. This is one of those times. It is a hard argument to make that we are all capable of loving the person and hating the sin. Ideally, we should all be spiritually mature enough to do that, but, if we were there would not be Westborough Baptist. As the lunatics get more air time, the rest of us go shrieking off into obscurity. We take solace in that love that allows me to want God’s best for you, without imposing my desires on your life, understanding clearly that until you know God for yourself all you have is me. Ultimately, leaving my words and actions to decide how you feel about God forever.
If we understood the real weight of that, our world would be a very different place. There is a passage in the Bible, written by Paul – a murderer, heretic, terrorist and liar—that says, (I paraphrase) win them first to you and then to God. Are we as Christians losing the battle because we do not understand what winning someone means? Are we forcing ourselves into the closet because we’re so busy telling the world how they should live instead of loving the world there? Would the word Christian illicit so much pain if the mission for God were bigger than our want to be seen as better? When we do not know how to win, how can we count how many we've lost?
People who are won do not give up on God. They do not quit their faith and walk away from what they believe. They wrestle, they hurt, they heal, they grow, and they love. They are imperfect, and their imperfections make them compassionate. Fear of hell fire has never won anyone. It may have converted a few, even kept a few, but, in the end only the won remain. It is not with flippancy that I write this. It is with the sincere longing for what separates us to be so much less significant than what connects us. I believe it is a distortion of our faith –those called Christians—to be used as an agent of anything other than empowerment of humanity. What power does anyone find in hearing they are going to burn in hell?
While I’m at it, what if homosexuality is genetic? What if like Down syndrome or eye color it is a product of how genes combine? Would we treat a blue eyed child differently because of their genetic fortune, or misfortune, dependent on your perspective? Sadly, the answer is yes, we would treat that child differently. We need not look further than a junior high classroom to see exactly how differently we treat each other because of phenotypic expression, genetic gifting or deficit. What if it is not genetic, what if it is spiritual? If it were spiritual, does that not further justify looking down on each other? To see someone as consumed by demons, or, as less mature, less committed, less loving of God, less than human...
The trick bag is more accurately described as a trap rather than trick. One where we get caught up in all the unimportant details and create our own gospels to satisfy what we believe God intended. Are we not all works in progress, guilty of a myriad of sins, many of which the Bible refers to as abominations. Yes, many, as in the Bible has a list of more than 20 references to abomination, only 2 on that list reference homosexuality. Four speak to heterosexual couples. But, the most popular reference-- to the tune of 11, speak to financial impropriety (cheating people out of money). So, the next time you lie about how much you donated to charity on your taxes, or you say something was more expensive than it was, or you make money off of the exploitation of other people in any way— sorry ardent unregulated capitalists, you too are abominable. Would we be so quick to condemn people to hell if we knew that most of us would qualify?
That is the thing about salvation. The whole purpose is that none of us qualifies. What if we stuck to that message? A perfect savior perfecting us from our imperfections, loving us beyond our actions and, guiding us toward what we are both purposed for and fulfilled by, would there be any we could not win? Did we learn nothing from Eve? Adding to God’s word that which is not His Word, ALWAYS lands you on the wrong end of winning. It also lands us in the closet. Where light cannot penetrate, and darkness abounds. The exact opposite of everything that we as Christians are called to be. It is why Jason Collins was celebrated for coming out and Tim Tebow was chastised for not keeping his religion to himself.
Christians (Believers), it is time for a coming out party. It is time to stop shaming our faith by enslaving the world to religion and setting people free with the LOVE of God. It is a tall order to stop looking for how we are better than and, start remembering that we personally are better because of one that was better than us. It was His willingness to do for us what we are prohibiting Him from doing for others that saves, sets free and is worth celebrating. Remembering that we are no better because of the sins we do not commit, instead that we are grateful for the ones from which He has freed us. It is said that people ignorant of their history are doomed to repeat it. Maybe it’s time to stop pretending that, in our own history, there aren’t skeletons in the closet. Maybe it is time we stopped focusing on who is coming out of the closet and instead cleaned our closets out.
