Last night I started, or restarted, a discipline I have done before and had let slide - the prayerful reading of Scripture (aka lectio divina).
I chose as my starting point the book of Hebrews. I'm not entirely sure why I chose Hebrews, but choose it I did and over the course of the last 24 hours or so, I've found myself wrestling with one verse in the second chapter:
"In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered." (Heb. 2:10)
Those two bold words are the ones that leapt off the page and lodged themselves in my brain, the ones I can't seem to dislodge. Fitting and suffered. What this verse is saying is that Jesus' suffering - the mocking, the beating, the scourging, the cross, the dying - was all appropriate, that it was the way it should be.
It is fitting that Jesus suffered? Really?
I have always had a bit of a hard time with the idea that Jesus "had" to die on a cross. Maybe it's just me, but I suspect I'm not the only Christian to be troubled in such a way. "Couldn't the God who is all-powerful have come up with another way?" That's the question that comes to mind.
If I'm honest, I've never been able to answer that question adequately. I have always had to resort to my confidence that God is greater than anything I can ever comprehend and that I am simply not meant to comprehend the necessity of the cross.
Until last night. As I prayed over this verse, God granted to me the beginnings of an insight into the cross and why it is indeed "fitting" that Jesus "suffered."
Suffering is, you see, the ultimate equalizer. It respects no one's power and no one's money. The powerful and wealthy can suffer just as much as the weak and the poor. That is why we have to say that Jesus's suffering was fitting. Because any other way would have left the old divides and structures still standing.
Sure, Jesus theoretically could have come to reign in a political way and overthrown Rome as so many of his disciples expected. In doing so, though, Jesus would have demonstrated a path to God available only to the powerful or those with influence. Surely the poor have no recourse or resource to overthrow governments.
But again, the poor can suffer. That they can do, it is often a daily occurrence in the life of the poor, of the oppressed, of the weak. Left without any ability to look out for themselves, they are forced to ride the wave of the strong and hope and pray for the best, for a break from their suffering.
By pioneering, by demonstrating a path to God through suffering, Jesus opens the path to all and flips the usual way of doing things on its head. Whereas in the everyday world of Rome strength and money and power prevail, in the Kingdom of God weakness and poverty prevail. Everything is upside down.
Instead of being at a loss, the poor lead the way. It is the rich and powerful who must face difficulty on the path to God described by the Jesus whose sufferings were "fitting" - difficulties raised by the very things that set them "above" the poor and the weak.
It has never made sense to me before and it still doesn't completely make sense, but I am beginning to see that the God who transcends everything I know and am is, shockingly, better at laying out the path of salvation than we are.
Jesus' sufferings may make us uncomfortable, and rightfully so - but there is no longer any doubt in my mind that they are indeed "fitting."
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
The Power of Confession
For a long time now I have been fascinated with the practice of confession - specifically the practice of confessing one's shortcomings and failures to a trusted friend or pastor. Some denominations consider confession to be a sacrament (such as Roman Catholics), while others ignore it altogether (such as Nazarenes, Wesleyans, and others). And of course, there is a spectrum of views in between.
Growing up in a non-confession church, I have always been told that confession to another person is unnecessary because I only need to confess to God. Since God is the one who forgives, the argument goes, God should be the one to whom I confess. If I desire to do so, I may confess to another friend, but it is by no means considered a sacramental act and is often not even encouraged.
As I've been reading about spiritual direction and guidance over the last several days, though, one particular thing has stood out to me. In more than one religious tradition, confession is seen as an integral part of spiritual direction. Sharing with a spiritual director the struggles that one has is seen as crucial to experiencing full awareness of God's presence in one's life.
Initially, that idea made me uncomfortable. After I thought about it, though, I began to wonder if my discomfort is rooted in a misunderstanding of the power and purpose of confession.
For many Christians, confession is seen as a punitive and preventative act. The shame associated with telling another person our sin becomes a driving force to keep us from doing it again and can even be used as a deterrent for others.
As a case in point, let me share a story. There is a young couple I am friends with who, before they got married, found themselves expecting their first child. The man attended a large baptist church and was quite involved in ministry. When the couple confessed their "sin" to the pastor of this large baptist church, the pastor insisted that the man needed to confess his sin in front of the entire 3000 person congregation. Without going into how wrong and offensive the pastor's actions were, it is clear that in this situation confession used as a tool for punishment.
No wonder so many Christians fail to practice the discipline of confession.
What if, though, confession was not a punitive thing? What if instead it should be seen as an act of healing? This is the view of confession that I ran across in my reading. In Gary Moon & David Benner's Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls, Father Gregory Rogers describes it like this:
Confession is seen as an indispensable means for making new the grace of forgiveness, providing an opportunity for the penitent to find direction in order to overcome the passions and sins that easily beset the believer. The emphasis is not on the legal aspects of sin but on the healing of the heart that has been damaged by sin.
We have all experienced the relief that comes from "getting something off our chest." There is something powerful about baring our souls to another that is apparent to all of us. It is why we seek out close friends and confidants when we are going through a tough period in our lives. We know - deep in the recesses of our soul - the value of talking to another.
Yet for too many of us there is a line in those conversations that we seem unwilling to cross even with our closest of friends. We would rather struggle alone with our sins and shortcomings than allow another to come alongside and offer us assistance on the road to healing.
I am absolutely convinced that the church needs to recapture the discipline, the sacrament of confession if it is to be effective in living out God's Kingdom in the world today. That will only happen, though, when we begin to recognize that the purpose and power of confession lie not in punishment but in healing.
Growing up in a non-confession church, I have always been told that confession to another person is unnecessary because I only need to confess to God. Since God is the one who forgives, the argument goes, God should be the one to whom I confess. If I desire to do so, I may confess to another friend, but it is by no means considered a sacramental act and is often not even encouraged.
As I've been reading about spiritual direction and guidance over the last several days, though, one particular thing has stood out to me. In more than one religious tradition, confession is seen as an integral part of spiritual direction. Sharing with a spiritual director the struggles that one has is seen as crucial to experiencing full awareness of God's presence in one's life.
Initially, that idea made me uncomfortable. After I thought about it, though, I began to wonder if my discomfort is rooted in a misunderstanding of the power and purpose of confession.
For many Christians, confession is seen as a punitive and preventative act. The shame associated with telling another person our sin becomes a driving force to keep us from doing it again and can even be used as a deterrent for others.
As a case in point, let me share a story. There is a young couple I am friends with who, before they got married, found themselves expecting their first child. The man attended a large baptist church and was quite involved in ministry. When the couple confessed their "sin" to the pastor of this large baptist church, the pastor insisted that the man needed to confess his sin in front of the entire 3000 person congregation. Without going into how wrong and offensive the pastor's actions were, it is clear that in this situation confession used as a tool for punishment.
No wonder so many Christians fail to practice the discipline of confession.
What if, though, confession was not a punitive thing? What if instead it should be seen as an act of healing? This is the view of confession that I ran across in my reading. In Gary Moon & David Benner's Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls, Father Gregory Rogers describes it like this:
Confession is seen as an indispensable means for making new the grace of forgiveness, providing an opportunity for the penitent to find direction in order to overcome the passions and sins that easily beset the believer. The emphasis is not on the legal aspects of sin but on the healing of the heart that has been damaged by sin.
We have all experienced the relief that comes from "getting something off our chest." There is something powerful about baring our souls to another that is apparent to all of us. It is why we seek out close friends and confidants when we are going through a tough period in our lives. We know - deep in the recesses of our soul - the value of talking to another.
Yet for too many of us there is a line in those conversations that we seem unwilling to cross even with our closest of friends. We would rather struggle alone with our sins and shortcomings than allow another to come alongside and offer us assistance on the road to healing.
I am absolutely convinced that the church needs to recapture the discipline, the sacrament of confession if it is to be effective in living out God's Kingdom in the world today. That will only happen, though, when we begin to recognize that the purpose and power of confession lie not in punishment but in healing.
Friday, May 13, 2011
My Life Has Become a Poem
One of my favorite poems is Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken. There is something poignant about the image of standing at a fork in the path and having to choose which direction to take. That image is probably why The Road Not Taken has achieved the status as an iconic American poem.
These days, I feel as though my life has reached the point of mirroring the poem - or at least its first lines:
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood..."
Right at this moment I see myself standing in that yellow wood; listening to the breeze blow through the trees; considering the two paths that lay ahead of me and wondering what lies down each; wishing that I could see just a little bit farther down each, just around the next bend or over the next hill.
But alas, I can't. I have not the time to travel down one a ways and then return to take the other. I must choose one or the other.
Which is why I say that my life has become a poem.
The parallel is not exact, though, because the two roads I face do not mirror those described by Frost. He describes a road well traveled and a road not so well traveled. By contrast, I see two paths that appear equally worn.
On the left is a path that looks for all intents and purposes like it ends in a dead end about 100 yards down the road. But there might be a narrow path at the cul-de-sac at the end of the path. It's a little foggy and I think I see something, but can I risk choosing a path without knowing that it actually leads somewhere?
On the right, though, is a path that bends sharply at about 100 yards. It clearly goes somewhere, I just have no idea where.
And so here I stand.
The frustrating part is that this time I can't fall back on the "God wants one and not the other" position. Because of what I believe about God and the future and free will, I am forced to admit that both are viable options. To be sure, one path may be God's "best" for me, but that does not mean that God will not bless me on the other path. There is no "right" answer in terms of one path leading to happiness and one leading to destruction.
It would help if the two paths were a bit more like Frost's, if there were some obvious distinguishing characteristic that makes one clearly preferable over the other. But again, there is no such mark - they both look equally worn and equally attractive. There are pros and cons associated with each.
None of which helps make the decision easier.
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood..."
And I have have no idea which one I'm taking.
These days, I feel as though my life has reached the point of mirroring the poem - or at least its first lines:
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood..."
Right at this moment I see myself standing in that yellow wood; listening to the breeze blow through the trees; considering the two paths that lay ahead of me and wondering what lies down each; wishing that I could see just a little bit farther down each, just around the next bend or over the next hill.
But alas, I can't. I have not the time to travel down one a ways and then return to take the other. I must choose one or the other.
Which is why I say that my life has become a poem.
The parallel is not exact, though, because the two roads I face do not mirror those described by Frost. He describes a road well traveled and a road not so well traveled. By contrast, I see two paths that appear equally worn.
On the left is a path that looks for all intents and purposes like it ends in a dead end about 100 yards down the road. But there might be a narrow path at the cul-de-sac at the end of the path. It's a little foggy and I think I see something, but can I risk choosing a path without knowing that it actually leads somewhere?
On the right, though, is a path that bends sharply at about 100 yards. It clearly goes somewhere, I just have no idea where.
And so here I stand.
The frustrating part is that this time I can't fall back on the "God wants one and not the other" position. Because of what I believe about God and the future and free will, I am forced to admit that both are viable options. To be sure, one path may be God's "best" for me, but that does not mean that God will not bless me on the other path. There is no "right" answer in terms of one path leading to happiness and one leading to destruction.
It would help if the two paths were a bit more like Frost's, if there were some obvious distinguishing characteristic that makes one clearly preferable over the other. But again, there is no such mark - they both look equally worn and equally attractive. There are pros and cons associated with each.
None of which helps make the decision easier.
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood..."
And I have have no idea which one I'm taking.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Models of Love: A Tribute to the Mothers in My Life
I am privileged to have four significant mothers in my life: my wife, my mother, my grandmother and my mother-in-law.
Each of these wonderful women has been an example and an inspiration to me over the course of the 30 years of my life. And each of them has demonstrated many facets of love to me during that time.
Specifically, though, I find as I reflect on them and the impact that they have had on my life, that each of them - though providing a full-orbed love - has demonstrated quite strongly a particular facet of love. This is not to say that particular facet of love took the place of the others or that other facets were not there in all of them - only that each of them has taught me a great deal about a particular type of love.
Patient Love - My Wife
I know this will come as a shock to anyone who knows me, but I am not the easiest person to get along with or to live with. I am moody, tense, irritable and forgetful. I like to have things my own way and am often far too quick to resort to whining and pouting like a 2 year old if I don't get them that way. Moreover, though I am improving, I am lousy at housework - just plain lousy.
Yet through all of this, my wife has shown a patient love that never seems to get tired of my stupidity and idiotic behavior. I know that I must annoy the crap out of her sometimes, but she is always patient and kind with me, whether I deserve it or not.
She is also a patient mother (for the most part) - dealing with the stressors of kids yelling and playing far better than I do in most cases. She patiently works with Ike and Hannah to teach them words and games, not throwing up her hands in frustration when they don't "get it" right away.
She is my model of God's patient love.
Steadfast Love - My Mother
The one thing I value most about my mother is her constancy. She is rock steady and steadfast. At times when everything else seems to be going to hell around me, I know that I can call my mother and she will be there with words that I need to hear.
They may be words of encouragement and they may be words of admonishment, but my mother has never been afraid to speak to me the words I need to hear whether I like them or not.
Even when, as a teenager, I said hurtful and evil things to her and treated her cruelly, she did not waver in her love for me. Looking back now on the times when I thought she "hated" me, I realize that many of her actions were done out of steadfast love for me - even if they were excruciatingly painful to her.
In my eyes (though I know that no person is truly like this), her faith has not wavered since I was a child, and I draw strength from knowing that she is steadfastly there.
She is my model of God's steadfast love.
Limitless Love - My Grandmother
While I have lived a relatively easy life in comparison to many others, there have been moments and seasons of that life that were difficult to endure. In each of those cases, my grandmother showed me the meaning of limitless love.
During my first weeks at military school, when I was unsure whether I could survive, I would call her on a regular basis and beg her, crying, to come and get me and bring me home. She never scolded me or told me to "man up" or said "I can't take this anymore." She encouraged constantly and never stopped being there to answer the phone.
I have lived - my whole family has lived - with my grandmother on two separate occasions. When the need arose, she was willing to allow us to do so without reservation. Though it was certainly less than ideal at times, she never complained and never said "enough is enough, you have to go."
She is my model of God's limitless love.
Self-Giving Love - My Mother-in-Law
Though I have only been married to her daughter for nine years this Wednesday, I have had the benefit of knowing my mother-in-law my entire life. As a child growing up, I watched her serve the church as the Missions president - teaching about missionaries and ministry around the world. Constantly. It seemed like the two constants in my young church life were that my mother would be the church treasurer and my (future) mother-in-law would be the Missions President. And even from a young age, it was easy to tell that she poured herself completely into the work of supporting the church's missionaries.
It wasn't until I got older and fell in love with her daughter, though, that I really began to understand how deeply my mother-in-law gives of herself in loving the church, her family and others. I have never known someone so willing to quietly do whatever needs to be done regardless of the sacrifice she might have to make.
Every time Melissa and I have moved, she (and my father-in-law) have taken vacation time to come and help us pack and load. She was there when both of our children were born, coaching Melissa far better than I could ever have hoped to. She has been there for her family and her children in ways too numerous to tell.
I deeply admire her, and she is my model of God's self-giving love.
Four amazing women - all of whom are mothers in my life. Each of them has taught me something about what it means to be loved and to love others. Each of them has shown all of the characteristics of love in one way or another, but from each I have learned specifically about the type of love mentioned.
I am who I am because of these four mothers. I am beholden to each of them for the gift(s) of love they have given me, and I hope that I will someday learn to live up to the model of each kind of love in my own life.
I thank God that I have mothers like these.
jB
Each of these wonderful women has been an example and an inspiration to me over the course of the 30 years of my life. And each of them has demonstrated many facets of love to me during that time.
Specifically, though, I find as I reflect on them and the impact that they have had on my life, that each of them - though providing a full-orbed love - has demonstrated quite strongly a particular facet of love. This is not to say that particular facet of love took the place of the others or that other facets were not there in all of them - only that each of them has taught me a great deal about a particular type of love.
Patient Love - My Wife
I know this will come as a shock to anyone who knows me, but I am not the easiest person to get along with or to live with. I am moody, tense, irritable and forgetful. I like to have things my own way and am often far too quick to resort to whining and pouting like a 2 year old if I don't get them that way. Moreover, though I am improving, I am lousy at housework - just plain lousy.
Yet through all of this, my wife has shown a patient love that never seems to get tired of my stupidity and idiotic behavior. I know that I must annoy the crap out of her sometimes, but she is always patient and kind with me, whether I deserve it or not.
She is also a patient mother (for the most part) - dealing with the stressors of kids yelling and playing far better than I do in most cases. She patiently works with Ike and Hannah to teach them words and games, not throwing up her hands in frustration when they don't "get it" right away.
She is my model of God's patient love.
Steadfast Love - My Mother
The one thing I value most about my mother is her constancy. She is rock steady and steadfast. At times when everything else seems to be going to hell around me, I know that I can call my mother and she will be there with words that I need to hear.
They may be words of encouragement and they may be words of admonishment, but my mother has never been afraid to speak to me the words I need to hear whether I like them or not.
Even when, as a teenager, I said hurtful and evil things to her and treated her cruelly, she did not waver in her love for me. Looking back now on the times when I thought she "hated" me, I realize that many of her actions were done out of steadfast love for me - even if they were excruciatingly painful to her.
In my eyes (though I know that no person is truly like this), her faith has not wavered since I was a child, and I draw strength from knowing that she is steadfastly there.
She is my model of God's steadfast love.
Limitless Love - My Grandmother
While I have lived a relatively easy life in comparison to many others, there have been moments and seasons of that life that were difficult to endure. In each of those cases, my grandmother showed me the meaning of limitless love.
During my first weeks at military school, when I was unsure whether I could survive, I would call her on a regular basis and beg her, crying, to come and get me and bring me home. She never scolded me or told me to "man up" or said "I can't take this anymore." She encouraged constantly and never stopped being there to answer the phone.
I have lived - my whole family has lived - with my grandmother on two separate occasions. When the need arose, she was willing to allow us to do so without reservation. Though it was certainly less than ideal at times, she never complained and never said "enough is enough, you have to go."
She is my model of God's limitless love.
Self-Giving Love - My Mother-in-Law
Though I have only been married to her daughter for nine years this Wednesday, I have had the benefit of knowing my mother-in-law my entire life. As a child growing up, I watched her serve the church as the Missions president - teaching about missionaries and ministry around the world. Constantly. It seemed like the two constants in my young church life were that my mother would be the church treasurer and my (future) mother-in-law would be the Missions President. And even from a young age, it was easy to tell that she poured herself completely into the work of supporting the church's missionaries.
It wasn't until I got older and fell in love with her daughter, though, that I really began to understand how deeply my mother-in-law gives of herself in loving the church, her family and others. I have never known someone so willing to quietly do whatever needs to be done regardless of the sacrifice she might have to make.
Every time Melissa and I have moved, she (and my father-in-law) have taken vacation time to come and help us pack and load. She was there when both of our children were born, coaching Melissa far better than I could ever have hoped to. She has been there for her family and her children in ways too numerous to tell.
I deeply admire her, and she is my model of God's self-giving love.
Four amazing women - all of whom are mothers in my life. Each of them has taught me something about what it means to be loved and to love others. Each of them has shown all of the characteristics of love in one way or another, but from each I have learned specifically about the type of love mentioned.
I am who I am because of these four mothers. I am beholden to each of them for the gift(s) of love they have given me, and I hope that I will someday learn to live up to the model of each kind of love in my own life.
I thank God that I have mothers like these.
jB
Friday, May 6, 2011
God and GLEE
My wife and I love the show GLEE. Love it. I'm not even sure the word "Gleek" is strong enough to describe it. We look forward to every episode, we buy the songs, we discuss the plot lines. Really, it's rather pathetic, isn't it?
There's a reason, though, that I love GLEE. I love it because it is a tremendously hopeful and joyful show. No matter the dramatic circumstances the characters face, virtually every episode ends on an uplifting note. Take the most recent episode: the club discovers that one of their members is living in a hotel because his dad lost his job. A devastating - and all too common - reality. The response of the GLEE club is to sing - with this member and his little siblings - Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop," an anthem of hope about looking forward to a better future.
Cheesy? Yes. But also joyful and hopeful.
Like I said, every episode seems to have an uplifting note. I was mystified, then, when some time ago a pastor friend of mine made a comment on Facebook about how terrible GLEE is as a show. When I questioned him as to why, his response was something along the lines of "It promotes homosexual relationships." I didn't know how to respond at the time.
I think I might now.
Here's the thing - my pastor friend is wrong. GLEE - as I see it, at least - does not promote homosexual relationships so much as it refuses to exclude homosexuals and refuses to participate in the stereotypes that many people want to hold up about homosexuals and other outcasts.
A lot of people, many of whom would call themselves Christians, are bound and determined to exclude members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities - and this desired exclusion goes beyond wanting to keep them out of the church. This is not enough for them - LGBT individuals must be excluded from society as a whole. They must not be allowed to adopt children, or share benefits like heterosexual couples. They must be kept away from children so that their "perversion" won't rub off. It is sad but true that a group of people that think this way still exists.
And as much as I respect my pastor friend, I believe he falls into that category. Moreover, I believe that is why he has such a problem with GLEE.
Because in order to exclude an entire group of people, you first have to set them apart as needing to be excluded. You cannot treat a person you want to exclude as a person. You have to symbolically exclude them - in language and in thought - in order to proceed to physical exclusion. So homosexuals become "fags," lesbians become "dykes," and so on. All LGBT individuals are portrayed as freaks and deviants who are promiscuous, diseased and who prey on children. In this way it becomes permissible - even admirable - to deny such people the rights and privileges associated with "normal" people.
The only problem is that if this kind of exclusion is to succeed, it must be complete. The symbolic and stereotypical caricatures cannot be challenged. If the "other" - in this case, members of the LGBT community, is humanized it becomes more difficult to convince people to hate them, to exclude them, to deny their humanity.
So when a show like GLEE comes on - with characters like the flamboyant and self-assured Kurt and the conflicted, tormented Dave and Santana who struggles with denial and Brittany who simply doesn't know - and paints such people in normal terms as just like other students, such a show must be resisted. Gays cannot be kind or loving or compassionate because if they are then what grounds are left for exclusion. Hence the outcry among certain segments of the so-called "Christian" community against a show that consistently sends a message of hope.
It is for this reason - the steadfast message of hope and love and acceptance - that I think GLEE sometimes preaches the message of God better than I have ever done, even in the best of my sermons. The message of God is a message of embrace and inclusion, not of exclusion. It is a message of love, not hate. It is a message of hope that doesn't dehumanize any individual or group.
In short, what I'm saying is that Jesus might well be a "Gleek" - or at least Jesus would be more interested in its message of inclusion than too many Christians' message of exclusion.
There's a reason, though, that I love GLEE. I love it because it is a tremendously hopeful and joyful show. No matter the dramatic circumstances the characters face, virtually every episode ends on an uplifting note. Take the most recent episode: the club discovers that one of their members is living in a hotel because his dad lost his job. A devastating - and all too common - reality. The response of the GLEE club is to sing - with this member and his little siblings - Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop," an anthem of hope about looking forward to a better future.
Cheesy? Yes. But also joyful and hopeful.
Like I said, every episode seems to have an uplifting note. I was mystified, then, when some time ago a pastor friend of mine made a comment on Facebook about how terrible GLEE is as a show. When I questioned him as to why, his response was something along the lines of "It promotes homosexual relationships." I didn't know how to respond at the time.
I think I might now.
Here's the thing - my pastor friend is wrong. GLEE - as I see it, at least - does not promote homosexual relationships so much as it refuses to exclude homosexuals and refuses to participate in the stereotypes that many people want to hold up about homosexuals and other outcasts.
A lot of people, many of whom would call themselves Christians, are bound and determined to exclude members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities - and this desired exclusion goes beyond wanting to keep them out of the church. This is not enough for them - LGBT individuals must be excluded from society as a whole. They must not be allowed to adopt children, or share benefits like heterosexual couples. They must be kept away from children so that their "perversion" won't rub off. It is sad but true that a group of people that think this way still exists.
And as much as I respect my pastor friend, I believe he falls into that category. Moreover, I believe that is why he has such a problem with GLEE.
Because in order to exclude an entire group of people, you first have to set them apart as needing to be excluded. You cannot treat a person you want to exclude as a person. You have to symbolically exclude them - in language and in thought - in order to proceed to physical exclusion. So homosexuals become "fags," lesbians become "dykes," and so on. All LGBT individuals are portrayed as freaks and deviants who are promiscuous, diseased and who prey on children. In this way it becomes permissible - even admirable - to deny such people the rights and privileges associated with "normal" people.
The only problem is that if this kind of exclusion is to succeed, it must be complete. The symbolic and stereotypical caricatures cannot be challenged. If the "other" - in this case, members of the LGBT community, is humanized it becomes more difficult to convince people to hate them, to exclude them, to deny their humanity.
So when a show like GLEE comes on - with characters like the flamboyant and self-assured Kurt and the conflicted, tormented Dave and Santana who struggles with denial and Brittany who simply doesn't know - and paints such people in normal terms as just like other students, such a show must be resisted. Gays cannot be kind or loving or compassionate because if they are then what grounds are left for exclusion. Hence the outcry among certain segments of the so-called "Christian" community against a show that consistently sends a message of hope.
It is for this reason - the steadfast message of hope and love and acceptance - that I think GLEE sometimes preaches the message of God better than I have ever done, even in the best of my sermons. The message of God is a message of embrace and inclusion, not of exclusion. It is a message of love, not hate. It is a message of hope that doesn't dehumanize any individual or group.
In short, what I'm saying is that Jesus might well be a "Gleek" - or at least Jesus would be more interested in its message of inclusion than too many Christians' message of exclusion.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
An Important Realization
I am often amused at the times and places in which God reveals things to me about myself and calls me to greater levels of obedience.
This week I had one of those moments in the car on the way back from taking the kids to visit my grandmother.
Before I get to the insight itself, let me set the circumstances. Earlier this week I had been reading Randy Maddox's Responsible Grace - a book on the theology of John Wesley which emphasized the importance that love plays - or at least should play - in the life of Christians. Moreover, in my class we had been discussing the theology of love. Ultimately, I had been spending significant amounts of time contemplating love and what it means to be a loving person.
At this point I should confess that I have long considered myself to be, at my core, a loving person. This is not to say - not even a little bit - that my actions are consistently loving or that I have perfected love. But I believed that, in most of my interactions, I was motivated at the deepest level by concern for the other.
That is, until that car ride when, in a moment of clarity that could only have come from God, I realized that all this time I thought I was loving people, I wasn't. I was loving knowledge and information. More accurately, I was loving knowledge and information more than people. It wasn't that I didn't care about people. Rather, I cared more about knowledge and information and forcing that knowledge onto other people.
This is why I struggled so much with one of the things my district board said when I was pastoring in Oklahoma City - namely, they said that I wasn't coming across to the congregation as someone who loved them. I fought that, thinking the problem was in the way I was trying to communicate my obvious love for them or in their perception. Never did it occur to me that I genuinely wasn't loving them!
Far from being interested in them - and indeed others in my life - for their own sake; far from allowing them space to be themselves; far from listening to their stories and allowing them to invade my own - far from all of that, I was more interested in convincing them to change their views or their behaviors or something else. I approached relationships from the perspective that I had knowledge that they needed and that if I could just impart that knowledge to them, we would all be better off.
The remarkable thing is that it never occurred to me that this was supreme arrogance on my part. Moreover, it was an attitude that stands in direct conflict with one of the core things I believe - that in order to be in a real relationship, one has to allow the other to be on equal footing.
Now, I'm not writing this blog merely as a cathartic experience, though there is an element of that to it. Rather, I decided to share this for two reasons:
1. To apologize to the people who I have loved inadequately. I'm truly sorry that I have not loved as I should and that I have placed knowledge and information ahead of my relationship with you.
2. To begin the exploration of what it means for me to change and how I can go about that. Certainly, I cannot simply forgo knowledge and information - reading is core to who I am. But I must take the time to figure out how to place people in priority over pages.
Because one thing is absolutely certain: now that I know, I can't stay the same. I can't leave it that way. I have been given an insight into myself that disappoints me and frustrates me...but that insight comes with an opportunity to change.
This week I had one of those moments in the car on the way back from taking the kids to visit my grandmother.
Before I get to the insight itself, let me set the circumstances. Earlier this week I had been reading Randy Maddox's Responsible Grace - a book on the theology of John Wesley which emphasized the importance that love plays - or at least should play - in the life of Christians. Moreover, in my class we had been discussing the theology of love. Ultimately, I had been spending significant amounts of time contemplating love and what it means to be a loving person.
At this point I should confess that I have long considered myself to be, at my core, a loving person. This is not to say - not even a little bit - that my actions are consistently loving or that I have perfected love. But I believed that, in most of my interactions, I was motivated at the deepest level by concern for the other.
That is, until that car ride when, in a moment of clarity that could only have come from God, I realized that all this time I thought I was loving people, I wasn't. I was loving knowledge and information. More accurately, I was loving knowledge and information more than people. It wasn't that I didn't care about people. Rather, I cared more about knowledge and information and forcing that knowledge onto other people.
This is why I struggled so much with one of the things my district board said when I was pastoring in Oklahoma City - namely, they said that I wasn't coming across to the congregation as someone who loved them. I fought that, thinking the problem was in the way I was trying to communicate my obvious love for them or in their perception. Never did it occur to me that I genuinely wasn't loving them!
Far from being interested in them - and indeed others in my life - for their own sake; far from allowing them space to be themselves; far from listening to their stories and allowing them to invade my own - far from all of that, I was more interested in convincing them to change their views or their behaviors or something else. I approached relationships from the perspective that I had knowledge that they needed and that if I could just impart that knowledge to them, we would all be better off.
The remarkable thing is that it never occurred to me that this was supreme arrogance on my part. Moreover, it was an attitude that stands in direct conflict with one of the core things I believe - that in order to be in a real relationship, one has to allow the other to be on equal footing.
Now, I'm not writing this blog merely as a cathartic experience, though there is an element of that to it. Rather, I decided to share this for two reasons:
1. To apologize to the people who I have loved inadequately. I'm truly sorry that I have not loved as I should and that I have placed knowledge and information ahead of my relationship with you.
2. To begin the exploration of what it means for me to change and how I can go about that. Certainly, I cannot simply forgo knowledge and information - reading is core to who I am. But I must take the time to figure out how to place people in priority over pages.
Because one thing is absolutely certain: now that I know, I can't stay the same. I can't leave it that way. I have been given an insight into myself that disappoints me and frustrates me...but that insight comes with an opportunity to change.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)