One of the posts I've been meaning to make a regular is "Wisdom for the Week" based on things I'm reading and learning. I think it rather appropriate to start this with one of the early Christian fathers, Thomas a Kempis. His writings have long inspired and challenged me and recently I was able to get my hands on his "The Imitation of Christ" which is a fantastic read. So as not to pollute the impact of his words, I will merely share with you some selections from what I've read over the past several days and weeks. I hope it serves to bless and encourage you as it has for me.
"Don't lay your heart open to everyone; rather, take your affairs to the wise, to those who respect God....You ought to spend time with the humble, the honest-hearted, the devout, the pure-minded."
"We associate with persons on our own wave-length easily. But following God sometimes means keeping peace by surrendering our own opinion. Besides, who's wise enough to know everything? Don't get cocky; get another opinion. Even if you think well, give up your own ideas once in awhile for God's sake, and accept another's opinion. This will turn to your good. I hear this often: Safety comes more by hearing and taking counsel than by giving it. I also hear this: Your opinion may sound good, but to refuse to yield to others when reason or circumstance require it - that's pride and rigidity....The right time to talk? When you can speak constructively....Yet discussion about spiritual concerns stimulates growth, especially in a thoroughgoing Christian fellowship."
"Stand squarely in the battle: There you will experience God's help! With His help you can fight to victory if you trust His grace."
"What you cannot change in yourself or others you must put up with patiently until God makes changes possible....Try to exercise patience when bearing with the defects and weaknesses in others, no matter what their shortcomings....How easy to want others perfect! How hard to take care of our own faults!"
May our Savior and Father burn His truth into your heart today, this week, this coming year, and forevermore.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
My Stance (and why I will or won't share it)
What is your stance?
That’s the question I keep hearing these days, from friends, from family, from perfect strangers. And it’s a fair question, one I have expected. I think people ask this question for one or more of the following reasons:
#1 – If someone truly cares about me and is already a good friend of mine, he/she probably already knows where I stand on things. I don’t hide it in personal relationships. So generally, these people won’t feel the need to ask me. However, if this is not the case, or if they’re starting to wonder where I stand (based on what they read from my posts), all they have to do is ask me personally. I don’t hide this information from people who know and trust my heart on things. I just don’t think it is helpful to share with the public at large. It actually could have the tendency to hinder building relationships of love and trust with both communities of people (LGBT and conservative Christians).
#2 – If someone knows me personally and is growing in relationship with me, eventually it will come up and I will share with you my take on things. But not right away. Sharing these things requires some amount of intimacy and vulnerability that we may not achieve upon our first meeting. We both need to feel we can trust each other before we delve into controversial discussions.
#3 – This is the hardest one to respond to. While I appreciate the need for people who support me to feel as if they can really get behind what I’m doing, I still feel I cannot bend to this wish and make a public statement. I feel doing that would automatically cause certain people to write off the message I am trying to get across – that our viewpoints are to be shared in loving relationships. It would be a poor example of what I’m trying to teach others. Also, it would inevitably make it about the issue again, and I’m not about the issue! I’m about loving, respecting, and serving each other, despite the issue and despite our tendency to disagree over it. The whole purpose of what I’m doing would be thwarted if I took a public stance because those who agree with me would flock to me, and those who don’t would seek to destroy what I’m doing. I know some of this will still occur by me not taking a stance – but I really believe it will be more avoidable if I remain silent. Lastly, to those that feel conflicted about whether to support me or not, I would say, don’t. Seriously. Honestly. If you don’t feel you can get behind me, that is totally okay. Not all of us are called to do what I’m doing. Not all of us will feel comfortable with it. If you cannot feel comfortable supporting me in the vagueness, I respect that. I would never hold it against you. But for those of you that do feel okay about it, awesome! Let’s get going! Let’s do this!
#4 – Okay, it’s kind of obvious. Why would I feed a flame that doesn’t need feeding? I’m not going to give people ammunition to hurl back at me.
Lastly, I ask of you all just one thing. Don’t mistake my unwillingness to speak publicly about this as being afraid to be honest. I’m not. I know what I believe and why. Afterall, as I’ve said before, I have spent years agonizing over this question. And I am not afraid to share my personal convictions with people, but only within loving and trusting relationships with them, once I have earned the right to share my perspective, and when they know that I will love them and care for them, whether we end up believing the same thing or not. Like Jesus did. (If you don’t know what I’m referring to, check my last post: My Approach).
Now, do I have all the answers? Absolutely not! Am I convinced that my viewpoint will never change? Nope, not at all! I am in a constant pursuit of God’s truth on these issues, and completely open to being utterly and totally wrong (although I sincerely hope and pray that 3 years of agonizing and searching haven’t led me totally wrong!). I know I don’t have it figured all out. But I do think I have a grasp on the most important things, and though I know some of you will disagree, I don’t think my “stance” is the most important thing. I don’t think me ascerting my stance is necessary, or even helpful, to achieve the goals I’m working towards (if you want to know what those goals are, read “My Story and My Goals”). The call I feel has little to do with my personal convictions on the topic. It has much more to do with helping people realize theirs, showing God’s love to people who haven’t felt it before, righting some wrongs, and encouraging one another in pursuit of God’s truth. Lastly, I have two important things to say:
First, I do not know everything. In fact, I hardly know anything. So I’m just trying to stick to the basics: loving like Jesus loves.
Second, Conservative Christians – you probably think I’m being too “non-committal” LGBTQ – you might think I’m not driving a hard enough stance for your full acceptance into society, the church, etc. To both of you, I say, I’m sorry if I have offended you. I had anticipated it, but I don’t revel in it. I’m just a person and I will fail you. But I hope that you know that when I do, I’m sorry. I will just keep trying to do the right thing the best I know how. And trying to love the way Jesus did. I hope I get at least some of it right. I’ll keep on working on it. Just keep coming back!
Keep the faith! Much love!
That’s the question I keep hearing these days, from friends, from family, from perfect strangers. And it’s a fair question, one I have expected. I think people ask this question for one or more of the following reasons:
- They are acquainted with me personally, have genuine care for me, and are fearful that I might be heading down the wrong path with how I interpret Scripture or how I am approaching the LGBT or traditional Christian community.
- They genuinely desire to get to know me better and this is one thing (among others) that they are interested in knowing.
- They are considering supporting this vision in some way and want to make sure their money or efforts will not benefit a cause they don’t believe in.
- They want to know if they disagree with me so they can work against what I’m doing.
#1 – If someone truly cares about me and is already a good friend of mine, he/she probably already knows where I stand on things. I don’t hide it in personal relationships. So generally, these people won’t feel the need to ask me. However, if this is not the case, or if they’re starting to wonder where I stand (based on what they read from my posts), all they have to do is ask me personally. I don’t hide this information from people who know and trust my heart on things. I just don’t think it is helpful to share with the public at large. It actually could have the tendency to hinder building relationships of love and trust with both communities of people (LGBT and conservative Christians).
#2 – If someone knows me personally and is growing in relationship with me, eventually it will come up and I will share with you my take on things. But not right away. Sharing these things requires some amount of intimacy and vulnerability that we may not achieve upon our first meeting. We both need to feel we can trust each other before we delve into controversial discussions.
#3 – This is the hardest one to respond to. While I appreciate the need for people who support me to feel as if they can really get behind what I’m doing, I still feel I cannot bend to this wish and make a public statement. I feel doing that would automatically cause certain people to write off the message I am trying to get across – that our viewpoints are to be shared in loving relationships. It would be a poor example of what I’m trying to teach others. Also, it would inevitably make it about the issue again, and I’m not about the issue! I’m about loving, respecting, and serving each other, despite the issue and despite our tendency to disagree over it. The whole purpose of what I’m doing would be thwarted if I took a public stance because those who agree with me would flock to me, and those who don’t would seek to destroy what I’m doing. I know some of this will still occur by me not taking a stance – but I really believe it will be more avoidable if I remain silent. Lastly, to those that feel conflicted about whether to support me or not, I would say, don’t. Seriously. Honestly. If you don’t feel you can get behind me, that is totally okay. Not all of us are called to do what I’m doing. Not all of us will feel comfortable with it. If you cannot feel comfortable supporting me in the vagueness, I respect that. I would never hold it against you. But for those of you that do feel okay about it, awesome! Let’s get going! Let’s do this!
#4 – Okay, it’s kind of obvious. Why would I feed a flame that doesn’t need feeding? I’m not going to give people ammunition to hurl back at me.
Lastly, I ask of you all just one thing. Don’t mistake my unwillingness to speak publicly about this as being afraid to be honest. I’m not. I know what I believe and why. Afterall, as I’ve said before, I have spent years agonizing over this question. And I am not afraid to share my personal convictions with people, but only within loving and trusting relationships with them, once I have earned the right to share my perspective, and when they know that I will love them and care for them, whether we end up believing the same thing or not. Like Jesus did. (If you don’t know what I’m referring to, check my last post: My Approach).
Now, do I have all the answers? Absolutely not! Am I convinced that my viewpoint will never change? Nope, not at all! I am in a constant pursuit of God’s truth on these issues, and completely open to being utterly and totally wrong (although I sincerely hope and pray that 3 years of agonizing and searching haven’t led me totally wrong!). I know I don’t have it figured all out. But I do think I have a grasp on the most important things, and though I know some of you will disagree, I don’t think my “stance” is the most important thing. I don’t think me ascerting my stance is necessary, or even helpful, to achieve the goals I’m working towards (if you want to know what those goals are, read “My Story and My Goals”). The call I feel has little to do with my personal convictions on the topic. It has much more to do with helping people realize theirs, showing God’s love to people who haven’t felt it before, righting some wrongs, and encouraging one another in pursuit of God’s truth. Lastly, I have two important things to say:
First, I do not know everything. In fact, I hardly know anything. So I’m just trying to stick to the basics: loving like Jesus loves.
Second, Conservative Christians – you probably think I’m being too “non-committal” LGBTQ – you might think I’m not driving a hard enough stance for your full acceptance into society, the church, etc. To both of you, I say, I’m sorry if I have offended you. I had anticipated it, but I don’t revel in it. I’m just a person and I will fail you. But I hope that you know that when I do, I’m sorry. I will just keep trying to do the right thing the best I know how. And trying to love the way Jesus did. I hope I get at least some of it right. I’ll keep on working on it. Just keep coming back!
Keep the faith! Much love!
Monday, December 6, 2010
My Approach
If you read my post last week, you know that I’m working to respond to some concerns I’ve heard expressed over the past several weeks. The first concern, which I responded to last week, is that I have not really clearly shared my goals for all of this (although, I’ve attempted to allude to them through the posts). If you want to read my response to that, as well as my own personal story and why I’m doing what I’m doing, check it out here: My Story and My Goals.
The second concern people have expressed to me is that I have not really clearly shared my approach and strategy for how to achieve these goals (although I’ve attempted to do this somewhat vaguely through my posts as well). As I’ve said before, part of the reason for that is that I am still forming some of this, so I’ve been reluctant to share too much detail about my goals and my strategies up to this point. I hope this post sheds some more light on how I think we should go about reaching the goals I mentioned in my last post. I think there are a couple concrete steps we should take, and in a particular order, but I’m still working through how to verbalize that exactly. But I do want to speak, generally, about what those steps entail.
To start off, let’s review. Here are the goals I mentioned I have in my last post. Again, they will be tweaked a bit as I go, but generally, you will get the point:
My goal is to continue within the LGBT community to:
One of the ideas the authors present is that if we could learn to see people (in our case, the LGBT community) as individuals loved by God, as fellow travelers, rather than as projects, everything would change between us. Instead of approaching people with the goal of changing or fixing them, the authors of “Friendship at the Margins” encourage approaching people in friendship, with a desire to understand one another, and to show God’s love to each other through our interactions. Jesus said that the world will know we are his disciples if we love one another. Unfortunately, as Christians, we are instead known to be (1) hypocritical, (2) only caring about making converts rather than truly caring about people, (3) antihomosexual, (4) sheltered, (5) too political, (6) and judgemental. (This was found as a result of some fascinating research done by David Kinnaman and in cahoots with the Barna Group which he published in his book "UnChristian". I highly recommend it.)
I know that there are many opinions about what the Christian’s response should be to homosexuality. But my goal is to make our first response love. When it all shakes out, we may disagree theologically or morally, but I believe we could love each other through that painful process of disagreement, and sharpen each other as a result. I believe that if we can live in the spot where we learn from each other through our disagreements, that we will be pushed closer to Truth (capital T, meaning God's truth), and thus, closer to God in the midst of that, even in the issue of homosexuality! I believe we could learn to stand in support of one another, as people, even if we don’t stand in support of each other’s beliefs. I believe that loving someone well does not mean you have to support and agree with everything that person does.
It is my firm belief that (1) we lose our voice of influence with a person when we make their moral decisions the first or the only point of conversation with them and (2) that Jesus didn’t operate in the “condemn people first and only love and serve them if they get in line” model that we so often do. Instead, Jesus stood up for and defended the woman caught in adultery, saving her life, in an act of a radical service and mercy. He spoke to and offered the Samaritan woman at the well his gift of everlasting life, when others would never have acknowledged her. He ate dinner with the ones the rest of his society scorned and looked down upon.
Some would argue that part of loving someone is calling them to deny sin (or however you want to phrase it). But do you know what stands out to me? Jesus did all those acts of service and love, towards people who had been marginalized, mistreated and condemned, before he brought morality into the conversation. Jesus earned the right to be heard by people, by first showing them culture-bending, mind-blowing, unfathomable love in the time of their need. If we could only emulate this to our fellow person in the LGBT community, can you imagine that transformation that would take place, in both communities? I can. Oh, I can! Hearts and lives would be forever changed! We would see reconciliation and discipleship happening that is mind blowing! Young men and women who are struggling to come to terms with their orientations would stop taking their lives. They would feel safe asking questions, seeking spiritual guidance, and being truthful in our churches. Oh, that I might see just a glimmer of it happen in my lifetime!
We have to stop treating people as if their ideas, their thoughts, their struggles, and their lives are not worthy of our care and consideration. I think Chris and Christine hit the nail on the head in “Friendship at the Margins” when they said, “We are better able to resist tendencies to reductionism when we are in relationships that affirm each person’s dignity and identity and when we come into those relationships confident that God is already at work in the other person.” Unfortunately, this is not always the stance of humility that Christians, me included, have taken with people. Instead, we define people based on our presuppositions and automatically group them into categories. Before a word ever leaves their mouth, we’ve determined to doubt it’s sincerity, question it’s authenticity, and discount it’s truthfulness. Sad, but true. I know because I’ve been guilty of it.
It’s time to start treating each other with dignity and respect, despite our differences. How else will we ever inspire a community who has been mistreated to trust Christians (and ultimately, God) again? How do we get them to believe that we actually care about them, that we are not in the business of making a project of them? How do we break down the defenses for the past wrongs and inspire them to risk relationship with us once again? We apologize for the past wrongs. We care about what matters to them - their pain, their stories, their challenges. We love and serve them. We humble ourselves. And we pray to God for the opportunity to earn their trust again and to show them the love of God, as he first intended us to.
LGBT people have heard quite a lot about God. Some of them have even heard about his love, because there are some Christians and some churches that are getting it. But in my experience, few in the LGBT community have truly felt and experienced the love that God has for them. Instead, they have been dealt hatred in his name. Few have been told the truth that God loves them and desperately desires relationship with them, that their orientation has nothing to do with their ability to enter relationship with Him. In order to let people know and experience God’s love, we must break down the walls that we have erected to keep people out and instead show them that God's grace and love are not bound by conditions. And we must show that through our actions. As Chris and Christine put it, “In situations where persons have been brutalized or have suffered at the hands of others, words of comfort, hope and promise – unaccompanied by presence and action – are small comfort indeed.” We must be present. We must be vigilant. We must be full of care, and concern, and action. Our hearts must be open.
You know my goals for this project I am taking on. My approach? Humility. Service. Love. So that the LGBT community can feel safe with me, and hopefully, with you too. So that they can experience God’s love, some of them for the first time, even if they don’t want to “become a Christian”. So that they can get to know the God I serve, the Jesus I am in love with. So that they have room, and space, and grace, and encouragement to grow in relationship with God (if they so desire it). And so that we can tear down the walls that separate us from each other, build bridges of trust and reconciliation, and ultimately, acquaint this beautiful community of people with the God that desires a relationship with them.
So, there’s my approach, in all of it’s non-succinctness. My goal is to, within the next few months, narrow it down and make it a little more bullet pointed for you. But thanks (and kuddos!) to those of you who have taken time to read that which burns in my heart in the meantime. One thing I plan to do (hopefully in the near future) is to write up some general “Here’s What We Believe” type of information for those of you who are curious. But again, wording is of utmost importance so bear with me as I build this framework. Lastly, I have two very important things to say.
First, I do not know everything. In fact, I hardly know anything. So I’m just trying to stick to the basics: loving like Jesus loves.
Second, Conservative Christians – you probably think I’m being too “non-committal” LGBTQ – you might think I’m not driving a hard enough stance for your full acceptance into society, the church, etc. To both of you, I say, I’m sorry if I have offended you. I had anticipated it, but I don’t revel in it. I’m just a person and I will fail you. But I hope that you know that when I do, I’m sorry. I will just keep trying to do the right thing the best I know how. And trying to love the way Jesus did. I hope I get at least some of it right. I’ll keep on working on it. Just keep coming back!
Keep the faith! Much love!
The second concern people have expressed to me is that I have not really clearly shared my approach and strategy for how to achieve these goals (although I’ve attempted to do this somewhat vaguely through my posts as well). As I’ve said before, part of the reason for that is that I am still forming some of this, so I’ve been reluctant to share too much detail about my goals and my strategies up to this point. I hope this post sheds some more light on how I think we should go about reaching the goals I mentioned in my last post. I think there are a couple concrete steps we should take, and in a particular order, but I’m still working through how to verbalize that exactly. But I do want to speak, generally, about what those steps entail.
To start off, let’s review. Here are the goals I mentioned I have in my last post. Again, they will be tweaked a bit as I go, but generally, you will get the point:
My goal is to continue within the LGBT community to:
- Love and serve them in such a way that they sense God’s love, strongly, through our interactions.
- Love them in such a way that in personal relationships we can share our opinions, beliefs, and convictions with one another freely, without fear, and commit to continuing the journey towards truth together.
- Engage in relationships with them where I can challenge, and be challenged, by people (even people I may disagree with) to pursue God and truth more passionately, more consistently, and more fervently.
- Help Christians and churches to do all of the above with the LGBTQ community as well.
- Help the LGBTQ community come to a place where they trust Christians enough to be able to do #1-#3 with the Christian community.
One of the ideas the authors present is that if we could learn to see people (in our case, the LGBT community) as individuals loved by God, as fellow travelers, rather than as projects, everything would change between us. Instead of approaching people with the goal of changing or fixing them, the authors of “Friendship at the Margins” encourage approaching people in friendship, with a desire to understand one another, and to show God’s love to each other through our interactions. Jesus said that the world will know we are his disciples if we love one another. Unfortunately, as Christians, we are instead known to be (1) hypocritical, (2) only caring about making converts rather than truly caring about people, (3) antihomosexual, (4) sheltered, (5) too political, (6) and judgemental. (This was found as a result of some fascinating research done by David Kinnaman and in cahoots with the Barna Group which he published in his book "UnChristian". I highly recommend it.)
I know that there are many opinions about what the Christian’s response should be to homosexuality. But my goal is to make our first response love. When it all shakes out, we may disagree theologically or morally, but I believe we could love each other through that painful process of disagreement, and sharpen each other as a result. I believe that if we can live in the spot where we learn from each other through our disagreements, that we will be pushed closer to Truth (capital T, meaning God's truth), and thus, closer to God in the midst of that, even in the issue of homosexuality! I believe we could learn to stand in support of one another, as people, even if we don’t stand in support of each other’s beliefs. I believe that loving someone well does not mean you have to support and agree with everything that person does.
It is my firm belief that (1) we lose our voice of influence with a person when we make their moral decisions the first or the only point of conversation with them and (2) that Jesus didn’t operate in the “condemn people first and only love and serve them if they get in line” model that we so often do. Instead, Jesus stood up for and defended the woman caught in adultery, saving her life, in an act of a radical service and mercy. He spoke to and offered the Samaritan woman at the well his gift of everlasting life, when others would never have acknowledged her. He ate dinner with the ones the rest of his society scorned and looked down upon.
Some would argue that part of loving someone is calling them to deny sin (or however you want to phrase it). But do you know what stands out to me? Jesus did all those acts of service and love, towards people who had been marginalized, mistreated and condemned, before he brought morality into the conversation. Jesus earned the right to be heard by people, by first showing them culture-bending, mind-blowing, unfathomable love in the time of their need. If we could only emulate this to our fellow person in the LGBT community, can you imagine that transformation that would take place, in both communities? I can. Oh, I can! Hearts and lives would be forever changed! We would see reconciliation and discipleship happening that is mind blowing! Young men and women who are struggling to come to terms with their orientations would stop taking their lives. They would feel safe asking questions, seeking spiritual guidance, and being truthful in our churches. Oh, that I might see just a glimmer of it happen in my lifetime!
We have to stop treating people as if their ideas, their thoughts, their struggles, and their lives are not worthy of our care and consideration. I think Chris and Christine hit the nail on the head in “Friendship at the Margins” when they said, “We are better able to resist tendencies to reductionism when we are in relationships that affirm each person’s dignity and identity and when we come into those relationships confident that God is already at work in the other person.” Unfortunately, this is not always the stance of humility that Christians, me included, have taken with people. Instead, we define people based on our presuppositions and automatically group them into categories. Before a word ever leaves their mouth, we’ve determined to doubt it’s sincerity, question it’s authenticity, and discount it’s truthfulness. Sad, but true. I know because I’ve been guilty of it.
It’s time to start treating each other with dignity and respect, despite our differences. How else will we ever inspire a community who has been mistreated to trust Christians (and ultimately, God) again? How do we get them to believe that we actually care about them, that we are not in the business of making a project of them? How do we break down the defenses for the past wrongs and inspire them to risk relationship with us once again? We apologize for the past wrongs. We care about what matters to them - their pain, their stories, their challenges. We love and serve them. We humble ourselves. And we pray to God for the opportunity to earn their trust again and to show them the love of God, as he first intended us to.
LGBT people have heard quite a lot about God. Some of them have even heard about his love, because there are some Christians and some churches that are getting it. But in my experience, few in the LGBT community have truly felt and experienced the love that God has for them. Instead, they have been dealt hatred in his name. Few have been told the truth that God loves them and desperately desires relationship with them, that their orientation has nothing to do with their ability to enter relationship with Him. In order to let people know and experience God’s love, we must break down the walls that we have erected to keep people out and instead show them that God's grace and love are not bound by conditions. And we must show that through our actions. As Chris and Christine put it, “In situations where persons have been brutalized or have suffered at the hands of others, words of comfort, hope and promise – unaccompanied by presence and action – are small comfort indeed.” We must be present. We must be vigilant. We must be full of care, and concern, and action. Our hearts must be open.
You know my goals for this project I am taking on. My approach? Humility. Service. Love. So that the LGBT community can feel safe with me, and hopefully, with you too. So that they can experience God’s love, some of them for the first time, even if they don’t want to “become a Christian”. So that they can get to know the God I serve, the Jesus I am in love with. So that they have room, and space, and grace, and encouragement to grow in relationship with God (if they so desire it). And so that we can tear down the walls that separate us from each other, build bridges of trust and reconciliation, and ultimately, acquaint this beautiful community of people with the God that desires a relationship with them.
So, there’s my approach, in all of it’s non-succinctness. My goal is to, within the next few months, narrow it down and make it a little more bullet pointed for you. But thanks (and kuddos!) to those of you who have taken time to read that which burns in my heart in the meantime. One thing I plan to do (hopefully in the near future) is to write up some general “Here’s What We Believe” type of information for those of you who are curious. But again, wording is of utmost importance so bear with me as I build this framework. Lastly, I have two very important things to say.
First, I do not know everything. In fact, I hardly know anything. So I’m just trying to stick to the basics: loving like Jesus loves.
Second, Conservative Christians – you probably think I’m being too “non-committal” LGBTQ – you might think I’m not driving a hard enough stance for your full acceptance into society, the church, etc. To both of you, I say, I’m sorry if I have offended you. I had anticipated it, but I don’t revel in it. I’m just a person and I will fail you. But I hope that you know that when I do, I’m sorry. I will just keep trying to do the right thing the best I know how. And trying to love the way Jesus did. I hope I get at least some of it right. I’ll keep on working on it. Just keep coming back!
Keep the faith! Much love!
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