There Goes Our Conservative Street Cred

And now, faith, hope and love abide, these three;

And the greatest of these is love.

-1 Corinthians 13: 13

In the not so distant past, I dreaded this day.  I kind of knew it was coming, but I sort of hoped that it would take longer than it did.  I admit, I had great trepidation about what would happen if our particular part of the Body of Christ, the Presbyterian Church (USA), were to actually move towards being fully inclusive of homosexual people.  Well we crossed one line a couple of years ago, we said that LGBTQ people could be ordained as Elders, even if they didn't agree to keep their sex lives on ice.  Some folks got mad, and walked away, and they said on the way out the door: "You just watch!  The next thing is going to be marriage!  They're going to want to get married, then what you gonna do brother?"

Sure enough, yesterday, the amendment to our constitution that clears the way for our churches to sanction same-gender marriages passed the requisite number of Presbyteries, and will go into effect on June 21.  While this truly and honestly seems like a step in the right direction for Christian faith in the 21st century, I feel like the thing to do is not get too loud and boisterous about it.  There is just too much important stuff still going on for us to gloat and carry on.  For one thing, this is just a small step in breaking the stranglehold that conservative political positions have had on the minds of American Christians, and yes, I am talking about all of us, even those of us in "liberal" traditions like the PC(USA) or the Episcopalian Church.  For another, it is important not to repeat the process of marginalizing a group of people who disagree with us.  We should not trumpet our inclusion and acceptance of LGBTQ people in the face of people for whom this is a difficult reality to accept.

Every time we make a change or even a statement, no matter how carefully discussed and thought through, someone is going to get mad about it.  We're just dealing with things that are far too sensitive; things like sex, Israel, abortion (which is related to sex as well), economic justice, racism, these things are what you call, "hot buttons."  And when you press hot buttons, people get mad.  My sort of default position was to think that we would be better off to just leave well enough alone. Except for the fact that these issues are causing people real pain, and once I admitted that to myself, the status quo became less and less tolerable within a very short period of time..

Yes, it was because of a change in cultural values, and yes, the church is called to be counter-cultural in some ways, but it got to the point where we were challenging a point of culture that was actually moving towards justice and, dare I say, love.  Love is supposed to be our thing, we're supposed to love people, even our enemies, we're supposed to be the forgiveness people, not the morality police.  The whole mess put us in a very bad place as a church.  I'm not so naive as to think that this move resolves the tension that has been pulling at our denomination for over 40 years, in fact, this probably sets the stage for more disagreements and schisms at the local level, in congregations and presbyteries across the country.  That's really what I was dreading: the day when we couldn't just keep calm and carry on.  I admit, that was selfish of me, to want this all to just go away, just so I didn't have to deal with it. 

As for me, my own heart changed a while back.  Part of it was looking at the people who were getting married whenever States made it legal.  They were not deviants, they were not dangerous to the fabric of society, they were mostly middle aged men and women who just wanted to live with the people they loved (and in many cases had loved for a rather long time) and feel that it was somehow normal and maybe even blessed, both inside and out. Part of it was God working on me, and yes, I do mean the same God that the Bible talks about, there is only one.  There was this moment where I read through the story of the woman caught in adultery, and when Jesus said, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone," I knew he was talking to me.  That's Biblical faith as I understand it, letting the Living Word work on you and challenge what you think you know.  Once I put my stone down and walked away from all my fear and anxiety a lot of the arguments that had seemed so persuasive stopped holding water.

Reality got a hold of me using a mystical voice, and the combination of those two is just really hard to refute for the sake of a few verses.  Slippery slope arguments, talk of abominations, and "love the sinner, hate the sin," all seemed to dissolve like so much dust.  The facts didn't change, my heart did.

I had to learn to love a little bit more than I did, I had to expand the definition of who my neighbor was, and actually consider whether it was loving for me to deny the holiness of how they experienced love.

Now, it's not so much a matter of whether this is going to trouble my conscience, but whether or not I can help people in my congregation deal with this issue, when not if, this comes up. Even as I learned to love one group of people, I need to hold on to the love I have for people who are seriously troubled by this sort of change.  I can't just make the same mistake over again and ignore their convictions.  I do pray that God will change hearts and open us to be more loving towards all, but in the meantime I've got to try and love people where they are, that's why I need to restrain my urge to celebrate something I truly feel is right.

This following Jesus thing is really tough sometimes.