If you where in worship on August 18th you heard me say
without hesitation or qualification that God doesn’t punish or destroy. I said:
This
story [Noah and the rainbow] of God’s grace and love winning over God’s bent to
punish and destroy is the foundation of the Gospel. It is a critical step in the story of
salvation that runs through Jesus and beyond.
What God called good in creation, now God promises to maintain and not
destroy and in Jesus what God has promised not to destroy is shown the power of
love and the means of grace. God is all about
grace and love. It’s not that we aren’t
loved or accepted or that God is so angry at us for what we have done. God doesn’t care about all that. All God cares about is that we sincerely
desire to transform ourselves and that we want to help God transform the
world. God loves us as we are; period! Grace really is true! God is love!
So it should come as no surprise that I don’t think God hates gays or
lesbians or bi-sexual or transgendered people.
If God loves everyone as they are no matter sexual orientation, skin
color, economic status or religious affiliation then so should I and so should
the Church.
Christianity has been of two minds at the beginning of change on almost
every issue of equal rights and social justice through the centuries. Often times Christianity has had to go
through tremendous upheaval and hostility, even war before it has found its way
into the world that God envisions. You
see Christianity hasn’t dealt well with change.
We haven’t liked getting over or moving beyond our basic human instinct
of “us” and “them” as a needed world view in order for me to feel safe and
empowered. Christianity is always slow
to broaden our definition of who is acceptable and why. You can trace this hesitancy from the early
Christian community’s division over the need for circumcision to issues of
women’s rights to slavery and up to the inclusion of LBGT folks in the life of
the church. Always there have been
voices on both sides and many in the middle seeking to claim that they have
God/the Bible/Christian tradition/ the natural order on their side. Always after much debate, hand wringing, schisms,
torment and soul searching the majority of Christians get it figured out and
justice prevails. It happened with
circumcision, with slavery, with women’s rights, with race and it is happening
with the inclusion of LBGT’s.
There is song out right now that is powerfully related to what I am
saying here. “Same Love” carries the
point as Brain Macklemore raps:
Gay is synonymous with the lesser
It's the same hate that's caused wars from religion
Gender to skin color, the complexion of your pigment
The same fight that led people to walk outs and sit ins
It's human rights for everybody, there is no difference!
Live on and be yourself
When I was at church they taught me something else
If you preach hate at the service
those words aren't anointed
That holy water that you soak in has been poisoned
When everyone else is more comfortable
remaining voiceless
Rather than fighting for humans
that have had their rights stolen
I might not be the same, but that's not important
No freedom till we're equal, damn right I support it
I am not trying to say that Christianity hasn’t done great harm in its
slow and terrible path to change. I’m
not implying that all Christians have come to the same place concerning these
and other issues. I am not trying to
imply that the work on any of these issues is completed. I just want to make it clear that
Christianity does find its way into the place God calls us, the place of
acceptance and love; the place of justice and reconciliation; the place of
transformation of ourselves and our world.
And for those that want to throw the Bible at this issue I have to
remind you of what I said about the Bible on August 11th:
The
Bible is the story of God’s encounter with a people, of God’s interaction with
a people, of God’s revelation of self to the world, of God seeking to know
human existence, and of the clash of human and divine wills...It isn’t the
complete story… We know that the Bible can help us, inspire us, and reveal God to
us but it isn’t infallible or inerrant and it doesn’t have all the answers…
Humans are hopefully
evolving, changing, learning and growing.
Our understandings of people and cultures, of races and religions, of
what is healthy and normal, of what is true and acceptable are all hopefully
evolving and changing too. God has a
dream for this universe and for humanity’s role in it. I believe that we don’t fully comprehend that
role yet. That over the millennia as
humans have evolved from hunter/gatherers to early farmers to urban dwellers,
from superstitious fearers of the workings of nature to inquisitive explores of
the universe, from empiral governments that rule by fear and violence to
democracies run by and for the people; as we have evolved in all aspects of our
ways of living and understanding this universe we have moved slowly into the
world God wishes for us. As partners of
God we have freedom of choice and because we can choose freely change can take
a lot of time and effort. But change
does happen and we can learn to love and include others fully and completely as
they are without placing restrictions or obligations upon them.
In the past the church
often had to be the leader, helping society find its way but now Christianity finds
itself behind. Society is moving
ahead with the full acceptance of LGBT folks.
What stands in the way of achieving full acceptance in our culture is
Christianity but not all Christians. We who
have heard God’s voice and understand that all people are loved by God – that all people are God’s people, LGBTs
included – we must witness to our faith and our God by working to ensure the full
inclusion of LGBT folk in society and in the church. God doesn’t hate
anyone. All are accepted and loved by
God. Faithful Christians need to find
ways to combat the social perception that we hate gays because we do not and
God doesn’t either.
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