Deeply Rooted

The vast majority of Christians never have to think deeply about their faith or what it is based on. They are immediately accepted in any church they choose to wander into on any given Sunday. If they are heterosexual or from a respectable family or social class, our society ordinarily assumes them to be "good Christians." They easily accept the tenets of the faith, teach them to their Sunday school classes, listen to the preacher repeat them, and go about their lives believing them without question. They don't have to question any of these beliefs because nothing in their experience challenges those beliefs and everything outside of them affirms those beliefs.

The faith of GLBT people, by contrast, is constantly under assault. We are always questioning our beliefs and wondering whether we're being true to our experience of God or deluding ourselves. Our more conservative friends come down firmly on the side of delusion, but often their opinion is colored by their own unexamined faith - a faith that isn't used to being challenged. Instead of questioning their own faith, they question ours. They insist that their faith must be right and ours must be wrong - but this isn't necessarily true. An unexamined faith is not a bulletproof faith. A faith based on a "this is what we've always believed" mentality is not a faith that can withstand doubt. Instead, that kind of faith must insist on its own way - by discounting or demeaning any faith that disagrees.

Remember, if our faith is doubted or questioned by others, it has nothing to do with us or our faith. That's "their stuff." Our faith has challenged them in a way that is unfamiliar to them. They've never had to question their faith. They've never had to examine what they believe and why. The preacher said it's in the Bible, and they believe it. That settles it for them. The appearance of a GLBT person of faith presents a danger to their own faith, so they lash out at us, calling us names or condemning us to hell. Don't take it personally. It has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with their faith and the shock of having their faith challenged.

The difference between a bulletproof faith and one that cannot handle a challenge is that a bulletproof faith embraces the doubt. It welcomes it, makes it at home, and begins to explore what this fresh doubt means and how it may change, improve, enhance, or have no effect whatsoever on faith. When we embrace doubt as an opportunity for growth and not as an enemy to our faith, we have the ability - and the humility - to say, "If new evidence ariese, my faith can adapt without being destroyed."

-Candace Chellew-Hodge, Bulletproof Faith (pgs. 137-138)

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

It is an unfortunate reality that positive progress rarely occurs in a straight line; there are always setbacks along the way, as the vote yesterday in Maine demonstrated. At the same time, it's worth keeping sight of the fact that, on the whole, the cause of GLBT rights is gaining more ground than it's losing, as other votes taken yesterday demonstrated:

-In Washington State, the people appear to have voted to retain domestic partnerships. While the absence of the word "marriage" probably made the difference between victory and defeat, the fact that gay couples can win even that much recognition in a statewide referendum is proof of how far we've come in a short time.

-In Kalamazoo, MI, voters overwhelmingly approved a non-discrimination ordinance. This one wasn't even close.

-Openly gay candidates in Chapel Hill and Detroit won election to city office, and another in Houston moved forward to a December runoff election.

And meanwhile, the Matthew Shepard act is law and the District of Columbia appears poised to legalize same-sex marriage.

A sampling of reactions from around the blogosphere:

Kate Kendell (via Pam's House Blend):

It is a travesty of every principle that made this nation great that the rights of a minority group can be put up to a popular vote. There are many ignominious moments in the history of this country, moments of shame that were corrected by Courts or by legislative action. If those great strides, in Women's rights, in the rights of religious minorities or of African-Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans or American Indians had been put up to popular vote we all know how those votes would have turned out. The shame would have endured. And the taint on our Democracy would have continued.

Joe.My.God (stated a bit pointedly, but no less true for it):

They [Yes on 1 supporters] should also thank NOM for its illegal refusal to comply with Maine's financial disclosure laws. And they should thank Stand For Marriage for consistently lying about "teaching gay marriage." And they should thank the Archbishop of Maine for passing the collection plate during Ma$$.

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

Conservatives pride themselves on their skepticism, and generally dismiss liberals as soft-headed Utopians. But in so many ways, political conservatism is Utopianism for the powerful. It isn't broadly skeptical of human nature, so much as it's broadly skeptical of people its agents don't particularly like. Hence the sense that Americans are intrinsically "good people," that this country "is the best nation that ever existed in history," that the South is home to "the greatest people that have ever trod the earth," and that the murder of four little girls in Birmingham was the work of a "Communist" or "crazed Negro," which had "set back the cause of white people."

Hence the notion that those voting against gay marriage, are not actually, in the main, motivated by bigotry, but a belief in tradition and family. But very few people would actually ever describe themselves as bigots. We think we know so much about ourselves. This is a country--like many countries--which is deeply riven by ethnic bias, gender discrimination. And yet we don't seem to know any of the agents of that discrimination.

Alvin McEwen:

But the landscape is changing. The more America sees lgbt couples, the more America sees lgbt families, and the more open and out we are, the more opportunistic charlatans like Maggie Gallagher, Brian Brown, and the rest of the "we need to protect marriage" crowd will be seen for what they are - silly clowns repeating silly catchphrases rooted in scare tactics and phony victimology of being called a "bigot."

Justin Lee (via Box Turtle Bulletin):

To be sure, legislation is an important part of changing the future for the better. But no bill or ballot initiative can eliminate homophobia, hate, or prejudice. Increasing the penalties for hate crimes won’t stop them if churches are preaching hate. And federal marriage rights won’t stop a gay kid from being pressured into a loveless straight marriage by his parents or church.

If we want to make the world a safe place for the next generation, we must do more than change the laws. We must change the culture. So instead of thinking of people of faith as just another voting pool, we need to think about all the ways that faith impacts culture, and how supportive people of faith can help make those changes. Because even if your goals are exclusively political, it’s worth noting that culture shapes the political landscape in big ways.

Andrew Sullivan:

But I do want to point out that, from the perspective of just a decade ago, to have an even split on this question in a voter referendum is a huge shift in the culture. In Maine, where the Catholic church did all it could to prevent gays from having civil rights in a very Catholic and rural state, gays do have equality but may now merely be denied the name. The process itself has helped educate and enlighten and deepen the debate about gay people in ways that never happened before the marriage issue came up.

Life Soundtrack 18

Liquid, by Jars of Clay

Christianity at its core. What would the world look like if we could only let go of all of our buts and our oughts, our 'biblical' agendas and our efforts to control others, and truly focus our attention on Jesus' invitation to follow him...

Avoidance

Throughout the Gospel accounts, Jesus teaches through parables. While Jesus taught this way to obscure the meanings of his stories from those who weren't among his followers, they can be equally hard to decipher for those who strive to follow him today, as evidenced by the numerous debates one can find over the interpretation of nearly every one of his parables.

The Parable of the Talents (Matt. 25:14-30) is no exception; many different ideas exist as to what Jesus' point really was. And it is a curious tale; a master entrusts a portion of his wealth to three servants (five talents to one, two to another and one to a third - a "talent" being a measure of weight that would have represented a significant amount of money no matter what the actual commodity was) and then leaves on a long trip. The first two servants put his assets to work and double what was given to them, while the third buries it in the ground and is harshly punished for not investing it.

In many churches, the "talents" are seen as an allegory for a believer's spiritual gifts, which are to be used for the advancement of the church. Too often, however, what constitutes an acceptable use of one's gifts ends up reflecting the agenda of whoever happens to be doing the teaching, and the Parable of the Talents becomes a guilt trip to club over the heads of members who fail to properly conform. Even when personal agendas are not present, insufficiently active churchgoers may be threatened with the fires of hell if they don't do enough to exercise their gifts in certain preapproved ways.

But is that necessarily what this parable was meant to convey? Jesus wasn't in the habit of motivating his disciples through threats and guilt trips. Indeed, he always saved his harshest words for those religious leaders who burdened their followers with legalistic regulations and who valued outward conformity more than mercy and compassion.

And a closer look at the parable reveals that the third servant was driven by a specific emotion: fear. He was afraid of his master, whom he described as "harsh" and implied was somewhat unscrupulous as well. He buried the talent entrusted to him because he was afraid of what the master would do to him if he lost it. And investment entails risk; the third servant's reaction confirms that the other two servants could have ended up losing their master's money had their business ventures not gone well.

The third servant's fearful attitude is reminiscent of the legalist who lives in constant fear of eternal damnation. God has given each of us the gift of life and the opportunity to make an impact in the world, but in legalistic theology the cost of failure (or of being wrong) outweighs any possibility of success; it's far better to live life as restrictively as possible, for the sake of sin avoidance. Bury that gift of life in the ground, where it can be safely preserved and returned unused when the Master comes back for it.

While no devout Christian would ever describe God as unscrupulous, the fear that dominates the lives of legalistic believers belies the fact that they see God as a harsh and easily offended taskmaster who must be properly revered OR ELSE. Like the third servant, they understand that God will have his way anyway, so they conclude that it's better to lay low and stay far away from anything that might potentially get them into trouble.

Yet it's the first two servants who took risks who are rewarded by their master. What would have happened if they had lost their talents? It seems noteworthy that Jesus never addresses the possibility. Perhaps, in God's accounting, the greatest failure lies in doing nothing at all. That doesn't mean that all risks are equally worthwhile or that we can validate anything we do by attaching God's name to it, but it does suggest that this lifetime wasn't meant to be spent avoiding as many things as possible while we count the days until we can escape to the next life.

As for the punishment the third servant received, there's a tragic irony in an individual earning the very punishment he feared as a result of his efforts to avoid punishment. Whether or not the parable is meant to be taken literally, it's worth noting again that most of Jesus' pronunciations of judgment were aimed at those members of the religious establishment who valued the letter of the law above all else. And legalism becomes its own punishment as it slowly sucks the life out of its adherents, confining them to a fear-ridden prison of their own making.

One of the most frequent commands in the Bible is Do Not Fear. While the freedom of unconditional love is never a license to pursue one's own pleasure to the detriment of others, it is a liberation from the legalistic chains that would hold us to the ground that was meant to be our launching pad. It's an invitation to discover the wonders of God's creation and to play an active role in shaping what happens next.

So dare to live. Explore. Innovate. Befriend a Samaritan woman. Reach out to a leper. Heal the sick on the Sabbath. Color outside the lines if it improves the picture. Make the world a better place even if the religious right condemns you for it.

I don't presume to present this as the interpretation of Jesus' parable (if finding a single definitive interpretation is in fact possible or even desirable). Rather, I would hope to demonstrate how the Bible can speak to us and breathe its life into us when we stop treating it like an encyclopedia and give up our demands for a life that can be spelled out in simple black-and-white terms. Such an approach requires more from us than a life of fear and hiding, but the rewards are far greater as well.

From the Onion

If God Had Wanted Me To Be Accepting of Gays...

Like anything from the Onion it's over the top, but at the same time I've encountered people who are very much like the woman in this 'editorial.'

For those who might take offense at satire like this, take a moment to consider one point: this is how the rest of the world perceives conservative Christians. If you're still offended, ask yourself this question: would non-Christians (gay or otherwise) describe you as a kind and compassionate person, or do you have to explain to them why you really are compassionate even though they think the opposite is true? If the latter is the case, maybe they're not the ones with a perception problem...

Links

1. Donald Miller offers up some interesting thoughts on morality and how we formulate it. Quote to ponder:

Many people are moral for religious reasons, stating their morality comes from the Bible or a sacred text (which, while these books can influence morality, are not written with the intention of defining a moral code. If they are, they are terribly written and the authors couldn’t land their point.)

While I would word that slightly differently, the point to take away is that when treated as a code of laws the Bible largely fails us; there are too many situations it doesn't adequately address, and too many of the situations it does cover don't directly apply to us today. As the story of God's past interactions with humanity, however, the Bible is a storehouse of wisdom that can shape our moral development as we get better acquainted with it.

2. Good interview with Justin Lee and Nate Krogh of the Gay Christian Network over at the Burnside Writers Collective.

3. Another anecdote illustrating the fact that Stage Three thinking is hardly limited to the religious right - or even to the religious realm.

4. Finally, in the "pot, meet kettle" category, Conservapedia sets out to rewrite the Bible in its own image.

What Have We Become?

Sex offender laws were birthed out of a perfectly understandable concern; if I had children, I'd want to know if one of my neighbors was a convicted rapist or pedophile. Unfortunately, these laws that were designed to protect us have morphed far beyond their original intent.

My first encounter with how the law has been abused came when I met a man in Utah who had been on the wrong end of another person's prejudice. "Matthew's" first mistake was that he happened to be gay in an extremely conservative state. His second was falling in love with a boy two years younger than him. His third mistake was getting caught in an intimate moment by his boyfriend's homophobic father when he (Matthew) was 18. The father had Matthew arrested, and a hostile judge threw the book at him for statutory rape.

"Matthew" spent the next twelve years in prison - years he might have spent graduating from college and becoming a productive citizen. Since then he's repeatedly tried to get on his feet and rebuild his life, only to be slapped back down every time. Whenever he finds a job or a new place to live, it's only a matter of time before somebody discovers that he's listed on the sex offender registry and raises hell until he's fired and/or evicted. Who wants a sex offender in the neighborhood, after all? And what difference could it make why he's on the registry?

Last time I talked to Matthew he was living in a homeless shelter and trying to save up money from the latest menial job he'd managed to find. Through it all he's never resorted to crime, despite the state of Utah's efforts to turn him into the hardened criminal it deems him.

It would be easy to chalk stories like this up to the famously repressive atmosphere of a state like Utah, and in fact I didn't realize just what a huge problem these abuses of our sex offender laws had become until I read this essay (and its follow up with corroborating links). No doubt some states are worse than others, but the list of activities that can get a person branded as a sex offender continues to grow - even streaking is now treated as a dangerous and predatory crime in the eyes of the law.

Read the stories in the linked articles. Does anyone seriously think that branding these kids as sex offenders for life will in any way improve anybody's safety? How many of them will ever be able to hold onto a good job or live in a decent neighborhood, thanks to their "criminal" record? Is there anyone this side of Sally Kern who can look at this long trail of ruined lives without being outraged?

This is what happens when people begin to view government as the solution to every problem and the provider of every need. Soon everyday life is so regimented by well-intended efforts to mitigate every risk and eliminate every ill that the law becomes a club that can be wielded by anyone with a grievance against anyone else whose behavior they happen to disapprove of. This is how free nations cease to be free, when safety becomes such an overriding priority that no sacrifice is too great to achieve it. In the end the world is just as perilous as it ever was, but the things that once made it a better place to live are gone.

Valuable

I've got a couple posts in the works that don't seem to be moving beyond the "in progress" stage, so in the meantime, here's a reply I gave recently to somebody who asked me what I would say to a young gay man or woman who's still in the closet. I suppose I'm really addressing this to a younger version of myself, but I know I'm not the only person who's ever been in that dark place...


God loves you more than you can imagine. You've no doubt heard that in church many times, but deep down you don't really believe it. You've bought into the lie that there's a catch, that you have to become someone else before God will really accept you.

But that's not God speaking - that comes from the voices of people who confuse their personal feelings for God's will and then pick out a few verses that seem to back them up. God was not surprised when you turned out gay; He knew long before you did, and He wouldn't have it any other way. When you cry yourself to sleep at night, God is crying with you - not because you're gay or because he's disappointed in you, but because somebody he loves very much is in pain.

*You* are more valuable than any *thing* could ever be. You are infinitely more important to God than any doctrine or "design" or abstract ideal, and anyone who tells you otherwise has their own agenda. Jesus did not die for a doctrinal statement, or for an institution, or for "traditional marriage" - he died for you.

Don't ever listen to the voices that tell you you're less valuable than other people, or somehow more "broken." You have something unique and important to contribute to the world, a gift you might not have had if you had turned out more "normal" (a human concept, not a divine one). And the world needs what you have to offer, whether the people around you realize it or not.