Why I Might Punch the Next Christian Who Sends Me An Invitation to Sign a Petition Against Gay Marriage

I have received 8 emails to date inviting me to sign this petition, many from people I have not heard from in years. I cannot remember a time when so many Christians I know have been so united and so active about something. This makes me want to weep.

Is this really the most gospel-furthering, Christ-honouring, lost-loving thing we can think of to do with our energy? It’s not that I need educating about the reasons why people feel the way that they do about it – I’m fully aware of that, and this post is not about the rightness or wrongness of it. It’s about the proportion of energy that is going into it. It’s the fact that it is so very high on the agenda, it’s almost as if two gay people getting married would cause all the Bibles in the world to spontaneously combust and the entire church to dissolve.

I am saddened that it wasn’t Christians who forwarded the petition to try to prevent the passing of a law in Uganda which would lead to the death penalty for practicing homosexual people there. Is it really more important that gay people should be prevented from being married, than preventing them from being killed?

I am saddened that I have not received 8 emails from Christians about any other matter of injustice or opportunity to show love, compassion or mercy. I recently saw results of a survey conducted to find out gay people’s perception of Christians. Part of the survey involved giving them various words which they could tick if they associated them with various Christian categories. 5.8% of the respondents ticked the word ‘loving’ in response to the Evangelical box, compared to 84.6% ticking the word ‘homophobic’. There is something seriously wrong if less than 6% of a certain demographic sees Christians (who are supposed to be ambassadors for the personification of love), as demonstrating that.

I wonder what these Christians who sent me these emails think will be achieved if they prevent this law from being passed. Do they think it will stop gay people being gay? Do they think that gay people in partnerships will stop being in partnerships? Do they think that it’s possible to legislate for morality? That people who do not believe in Jesus make decisions based on whether or not things are lawful as opposed to whether or not they submit to the teachings of a God they do not believe in? Do they think that gay people are more likely to become Christians if they are discriminated against by law?

I wish that the media caricature of evangelicals was not so accurate. I wish that the caricature was of a group of people who are famous for doing radical counter-cultural things to help the marginalised, the poor, the struggling, the addicted and the weak in society. I wish evangelicals were famous as people who give second chances to people who have been given up on by everyone else. I wish the word evangelical was synonymous with words like peace, justice and love.

I started to imagine what it would be like if the latter was the norm and it was multiplied into every Christian community everywhere. There would be an evangelical stereotype: they are those people who meet needs; they are those people who love without judging; they are those people who make a positive difference in communities; they are those people who, when someone starts to say that they met a person who changed their life, the listener already knows it’s going to be a Christian they’re talking about.

This is not reality though. The real evangelical stereotype? They are the people who shout about abortion and homosexuality; they are the people who fight over things and split further and further into more and more pedantic factions. They spend all their energy pointing fingers, building barriers and painting pictures of themselves as right and everyone else as wrong. They are the people who protest about books they have never read or musicals they have never seen because they are offended by their content, while campaigning for freedom of speech so that they can continue to share the most offensive message there is: that people need a saviour.

OddBabble: Is aware that punching people is not very Christlike, but is also aware that her fist is smaller than that of her 6 year old niece, so is not too bothered.

Some Lessons I’ve Learned Lately about Love

A friend told me this story about himself.

He had just started at Bible college and after the first lecture he went up to his professor and said “This book tells me I’m going to hell because I’m gay. Tell me why.”

There are 101 things his professor could have said to him. A professor of theology might have turned to several passages in the Bible, and begun some kind of exegesis. What he said was this:

“This book tells you that God loves you.”

That was all that he said. He didn’t add anything to that, or explain it, or give a caveat or a reference or anything else. He didn’t need to because his sermon was completely self-contained and accurate. My friend was blown away by this and completely transformed – it hit him right between the eyes that he would always have this bottom line: God loved him. No ifs, no buts, no ands. God loves him.

So my friend’s professor taught me a wonderful, simple lesson about love.

The Bible college was a residential one and my friend had to share a room, like many other students. He was sharing with a young man who thought he knew a lot about a lot of things. Reader, you may have met one or two young men like him. The room mate shared a lot of opinions about homosexuality that hurt my friend, for example that it he would never let a child of his go to a Sunday school class that my friend was teaching, because my friend was not safe to be in contact with children.

When I hear people say things like this, my reaction is to first get very angry and then to write them off. I define that person as ignorant and hateful and resolve to no longer be in contact with them. But my friend is different to me because he had learned a very simple lesson about love that had changed his life. My friend was angry with him and told me that often it was very hard for him not to punch his room mate in the face. I empathised. But, he said, but he also knew that he was loved. And that made it difficult for him to hate. He was so convinced and changed by this heart knowledge of his status as an unconditionally loved person, that his instinct to love this person was stronger than his instinct to hate him. Not because he thought he ought to love him as ‘the right thing to do’ but because his knowledge that he was loved compelled him to love this guy, and to keep coming back to this point again and again, even though he was hurt by him again and again.

I was bowled over by this.

It highlighted a couple of important things for me. The first is that although I completely agree with my friend’s professor, I think I don’t really believe it for myself deep down. I understand that I am loved by God and that there is a full stop at the end of that sentence, and no other sentence is needed. But I always like to add my own but, or my own and. God loves me but he also hates me a bit and expects me to do more than I ever possibly can and when I don’t, he hates me a bit. But yes, he loves me. Or God loves me and it’s because I don’t do this thing. Or God loves me and it’s because I am so this and so that. I think the fact that my friend didn’t add his own but or and, is the reason why his life was changed by it and he was able to love his enemy. I think my buts and ands are what makes me withdraw from my enemies and write them off.

So the second thing I realised is that my dogged refusal to accept this unconditional love thing has meant that I’m very bad at loving. Because loving means staying and not running away. I am about to join a new church and I’ve realised that part of the reason I’ve taken so long to choose one is because I don’t want to take the painful risk of committing to love. I have been hurt by a lot of people similar to my friend’s room mate and I have seen a lot of friends hurt by his kind and my instinct is to think that Christians are often not very nice so I’ll withdraw. But I also know that being part of a church means that I am called to love people – that’s sort of the point of it. And some of those people will think they know a lot about a lot of things and will say things and they will hurt me and I want to be someone who stays and loves them. And the reason I want to do that is because it’s sinking in that I am loved and then there is a full stop. And that full stop is starting to make me want to be brave and love others with my own full stop. I think that’s probably a better attitude to join a church with than the one I’ve had of late.

Here is a link that has helped me to soak in the full stop: Everyone everywhere needs to know this.

Jesus: Gay Icon?

I was reading an article in the paper entitled ‘What Makes A Gay Icon?’ with the tag line “Talent? Non-conformity? A touch of angst? And do they even have to be gay…?”

Lord Alli (whoever he is) chose Diana, Princess of Wales as his gay icon, for the following reasons: “Princess Diana continues to live on as an icon in many different ways: fashion icon, charity icon, feminist icon, British icon. Her place as a gay icon however, was cemented by a single moment during a visit to a Chain of Hope centre in April 1987. Taking the hand of an Aids sufferer, she shattered the widely held belief that physical contact alone could lead to the contraction of Aids, and offered hope and comfort to those in the gay community infected with HIV.”

Does this remind you of anyone?

“A man with leprosy came and knelt before [Jesus] and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said.
Matthew 8:2-3

It strikes me that just as Jesus was prepared to touch the ‘untouchables’ then, he would be doing the same if he came today. He’d be openly touching and loving AIDS sufferers, which according to Lord Alli, would make him a gay icon.

I don’t think Jesus would spend much energy removing that label from himself, because he was well used to being associated with those whose names were used as swear words. “You Samaritan” was perhaps the equivalent of “you queer!” or “that is so gay”. I feel sure that if Jesus were around on earth today, he would be hanging around with homosexual people, not caring what it made people assume about him, and pissing off a lot of today’s ‘religious’ people, just as he pissed off the pharisees back then.

“While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”
Matthew 9:10-11

One reason why I’m writing on this topic today, is in solidarity with the Bridging the Gap blog (that I’ve mentioned before here). Today they are doing a thing called synchroblog, which I don’t really understand technically, but I’ve figured out enough to know that they want lots of people to link relevant posts to their blog today to get people reading and talking about it.

I think what they are doing at Bridging the Gap is really important for the church. They are Christians reaching out to gay people by genuinely listening and loving instead of condemning and ostracising. They hold a conservative view of what the Bible says about homosexual practice but they are committed to open, genuine and grace filled dialogue with those Christians who have reached a different theological conclusion.

The homosexuality debate is one that is tearing the church in two at the moment, and Bridging the Gap provide one voice that is attempting to bring back unity, without compromising their own convictions. This is a difficult and messy task which often leaves them in a kind of limbo land where they are criticised from every side by those who can only cope with reductionist, black & white views.

I passionately applaud their work and feel that their attitude could be transposed to so many other issues in the church today too. Do consider joining me in engaging with their dialogue which is often challenging and humbling. They’ve helped me re-think some of my own attitudes in a way that I think has been very healthy, both for me and for those I interact with.

Check them out here.

The Importance of Stories

Read this (if you like)

This is a link to a post on a blog I discovered recently that seeks to bridge the gap (hence the name) between Christians and gay people, and also does a very good job at showing grace to the spectrum of gay christians, christians with a view on gay people and gay people with a view on christians. It sums up the point I have reached recently on not just this issue, but many others.

I like the fact that it acknowledges that we don’t all have to agree with each other, but that we should listen to one another if we claim to love people. It’s been a journey for me to get to this point and I’m still on that journey, having started from a postion of being quite defensively scared to hear different views. I hope I’m learning, like the writer of this post, to show more grace to those whose views are different to mine.

I think it’s a viewpoint that would serve a lot of us well to keep in mind whoever we are, and whatever issue we are thinking through. It’s a messy and not clear-cut route, but it seems to me that’s what life is like anyway, so we might as well live in the reality of that.