Repost: Loving and Loathing

A time to love, and a time to hate…

                        Ecclesiastes 3.8

The Time Is Now

As we wrap up our study of Solomon’s “Seasons of Life,” we’re dealt a doozy—loving and loathing--and immediately we ask, “Is there ever a time or a reason to hate anyone?” Just as quickly the answer comes back, unequivocally: “No!” Love’s time is now. It can’t wait, because the longer it’s withheld, the less of it there is. And if there’s one thing we need, it’s more love for one another. When Jesus declared His First and Great Commandment to love God with all of our heart, mind, and soul, He instantly attached another: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” stating it was equal to the First. Not loving people as they are—as beings made in God’s likeness, regardless how they’ve corrupted His image—is tantamount to not loving their Creator. “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen,” 1 John 4.20 says. We can try all day and night to justify animosity toward people (or groups of people) who, quite frankly, have worked overtime to earn it. Yet it’s dangerously deceptive to believe it’s possible to hold hatred for others and love for God in our hearts simultaneously. They can’t occupy the same space.

Love for Sale

Genesis 3.1 tells us, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals,” making it the perfect guise for the Tempter. It’s incumbent on us to stay alert to his wiles, because he’s a superlative trickster. His ploys go beyond luring us into disobedience. He also dilutes truth’s importance and power. Since love is central to all we do, he seduces us into mistaking it for a feeling instead of a fact. He cheapens it as a commodity we buy into, rather than a reality we express. Love stories filling our heads, love songs hanging mid-air, and love clichés littering our language aren’t about love at all. They’re about emotions tied to love. Love doesn’t grow. It doesn’t mean never having to say you’re sorry. It can’t be fallen in or out of. Love just is, because God is and God is love. Feelings wax and wane, but love remains constant. It’s inextricably rooted in our beings to reflect of our Maker. As Romans 5.5 tells us, “God has poured out his love into our hearts.” Therefore, love isn’t ours to give or take. It’s God’s and He placed it in us so wherever we are, His reality is manifested by love. Feeling love instead of being love mucks everything up by hiding God’s presence from others and us.

Sinners, Sin, and Side Effects

Those of us old enough to remember Anita Bryant—the former Miss America, modestly talented singing star, and pitch-person for orange juice and rental cars—recall her trying to smooth over her uncharitable opposition to a Florida gay rights initiative with this: “As a born-again Christian, I love the sinner, but I hate the sin.” How cleverly convenient is that? Her lopsided argument caught fire and spread across intolerant pulpits everywhere. Had someone paused to square it against Christ’s teaching of love, though, two things would have made ashes of the wildfire straightaway. First, not once did Jesus expand His commandment we love to entitle us to separate the person from his/her behavior. Indeed, He never referred to those we must love as sinners, only as neighbors and enemies. But second, Jesus explicitly denied us any right to condemn another or his/her sin. “If you judge,” He said, “you’ll be judged by the same standards.” Look no further than Ms. Bryant for proof. Her loving fans found her bigotry so hateful they vanished. She crashed while those she claimed to love (conditionally) soared ahead.

Getting back to Solomon, when if ever does the “time to hate” arrive? After taking the right to hate anyone or his/her sin off the table, we’re left with sin’s enormous damages—poverty, inequality, grief, fear, disease, and innumerable other harms. Whether globally or individually, time to hate comes when we identify side effects of iniquity. Caution becomes necessary. Loving people despite their behavior while hating its consequences calls for tolerance without indulgence, acceptance without approval. We make it clear we love our neighbors and enemies no matter what they think or do, but we loathe what results of their actions. Times to hate demand delicate demonstrations of love. It’s sounds ironic. But it’s not.

We hold the power to love and hate in our hands. 

(Tomorrow: Conflict and Consensus. Sunday: 1-Year Anniversary)

Personal Postscript: Our Pride Parade

The weekend is upon us. I thought Straight-Friendly should host its own pride parade. We all know what “pride” looks like. Here’s what love is. Enjoy!

What have you done today?

Heavenly Places

God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.

                        Ephesians 2.6

A Closer Look

Welcome to Gay Pride Month, a 30-day celebration that creeps in like a kitten and thunders out like a gorilla. Around the world, gay people and their allies spend the first three weeks at symposia, reading hours, and panel discussions the media conveniently ignore. When June ends with parades commemorating the ’69 Stonewall Riots that spawned the gay movement, though, cameras will take interest because pride celebrations make great TV. Who can resist sitting out a commercial break for a closer look at, say, burly jocks got up like Susan Boyle (my bet as this year’s new icon), nearly naked kids bouncing on floats, or a cadre of lesbian bikers? Mark my word: June 30’s coverage will tease these sorts of images for all they’re worth simply to glue viewers to their sets.

As Stonewall’s 40^th anniversary opens the movement’s fifth decade, one expects the media will provide more substantial chronicles of its advances, setbacks, and struggles. The time required for such retrospectives, however, will result in preaching to the choir, as disengaged and disdainful audiences will pass them by for glimpses of sensational parade footage. The “closer look” they get will be the same clichés the media’s hyped for 40 years, bringing disengaged and disdainful audiences no closer at all. They won’t get closer looks at PFLAG marchers, same-sex couples and families, or welcoming churches valiantly obeying Luke 14.23: “Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full.” (More likely, they’ll see curbside clutches of misguided Christians waving “Go to Hell” placards like the cold, unlighted torches they are.)

Another Sunday

Once again, Tuesday reviews of Monday’s coverage will bring the same question: how can we raise our neighbors’ estimation of us if the media keep to the low road? The issues are too knotty to untangle. Freedom of expression twists around inaccurate, imbalanced representation. Defiance of rejection and drive for tolerance gnarl into crossed purposes. High-strung hijinks teasing homophobic clichés unravel into rope securing the very myths they taunt. While others continue picking apart the political and social strands lost in the jumble, gay believers are blessed with a better solution. Our witness of God’s love and acceptance lifts us above controversy, making every day a pride celebration. And while we embrace and honor the defiance displayed at Stonewall, we rejoice in another Sunday long before June 29, 1969. Our pride and confidence—our rights and victory—were established by the ultimate display of defiance, when Christ stepped out of His tomb to defeat sin and death forever.

God Pride

Believers challenged by minority status—not only orientation, ethnicity, gender, and class, but less discussed inhibitors like family, social, and professional standing—by all means should reverse the flow of prejudice by claiming its target as a source of pride. But we should also be cognizant our minority pride nests inside our majority status as one of billions created in our Maker’s likeness. Awareness we’re as we are and where we are because He willed it so entitles us to celebrate God pride. Realizing the enormous sacrifice He undertook to restore His pride in our making reframes our self-image in a fresh, powerful context. In Ephesians 2.6, Paul writes, “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” That’s an image that definitely merits a closer look. Christ’s triumph over sin and death seats us with God in heavenly places, high above minority strife, above downcast stereotypes, above the short reach of fear-inflamed hatred.

God pride protects us to present His love to others. David—possibly the most hated, misjudged man in the Bible—says in Psalm 3.3: “You are a shield around me, O LORD; you bestow glory on me and lift up my head.” I urge all of us—gay and straight, female and male, from every ethnicity, class, profession, and background—to march through Gay Pride Month and every other month with heads lifted in God pride. It’s important for us and even more important for others. In verse 7, Paul explains God raises us to sit with Him to “show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” Since the media can’t possibly capture God’s grace and kindness to us, our pride as His children is the only way others will ever get a close look at Him.

Annual celebrations of minority pride are nested inside God pride that all believers celebrate year-‘round.

(Tomorrow: Tireless)

Abandoned? Never!

I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.

                        Psalm 37.25

No Good Thing

Here’s the deal. If we live righteously before God and man, good things follow. Hang on a second. That’s not altogether correct. If we live righteously, every good thing God has for us follows. He ensures nothing gets overlooked. Psalm 84.11 insists, “No good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless.” Bad things happen to good people and good things to bad people. Only righteous people (not to be confused or categorized with self-righteous) receive every good thing, however. Bad things come their way, to be sure. Yet by virtue of their faith, the righteous can find goodness in the worst of their lot.

How is that? Romans 1.17 offers a succinct explanation: “For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’” Righteous people trust God’s word from first to last. They grapple with fears and emotions like everyone else. Yet they perceive them differently. Facts and feelings are immaterial; they prove nothing. As Hebrews 11.1 stresses, when we live righteously by faith, we find substance in hope and proof in unseen evidence. Ergo, no crisis is so severe it won’t yield benefits, no outcome so final it comes to naught. When we believe this, God rewards our faith, enabling us to discern every good thing concealed in what often looks and feels ineffably bad.

Never—Not Once

“I’ve been around a long time,” David writes in Psalm 37, “and never—not once—have I seen the righteous abandoned.” How ironic of him to say this, because his songs are riddled with “where’s God” moments. Psalm 22, for example, begins, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—the very words Jesus cries from the cross at his loneliest hour. Yet in the final analysis, David’s songs back up his claim. His feelings of dejection always give way to declarations of faith. So did Christ’s. His final utterance as a man is, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” (Luke 23.46) The situation is beyond His human ability to withstand and He places His entire trust in God. That’s why Paul says the gospel reveals righteousness by faith from first to last. And that’s why righteous people never find themselves truly abandoned: faith reaches God when no other options exist, when no mortal help can be found, when no one wants them around.

Children of Righteousness

David puts an intriguing addendum on his statement. Children of righteousness prosper. He strikes two chords in Psalm 37 that support his belief. The first immediately follows in verse 26: “They are always generous and lend freely; their children will be blessed.” Righteous people are givers. They know nothing they have came of their own doing and there’s always more where that came from. What they have may not be much, but as he says in verse 16, “Better the little that the righteous have than the wealth of many wicked.” Faith taps into the endless supply of God’s blessings and believes no good thing will be withheld. But second, though often isolated, the righteous enjoy God’s protection. “The wicked plot against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them; but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he knows their day is coming.” (v11-12) Children of righteousness grow up in a healthy, secure environment. They’re blessed materially and emotionally.

Whether or not we have biological children, as people of faith, we all assume parental roles. We bear and rear children of righteousness, who learn from our example and listen closely to what we say. If we model belief and generosity to those who look up to us, they will follow suit. This is especially crucial for those of us in the GLBT community, which all too often exalts role models that promote cynicism and selfishness. We’ve been given an extraordinary opportunity to live righteously, to offer a better alternative to self-gratification and fear of rejection. We have experienced the joy of never being abandoned. We have seen the benefits of giving. We can’t abandon our own or withhold every good thing we can offer. Our Father does this for us. We must do it for them.

PFLAG's current "Stay Close" campaign speaks volumes to GLBT families and friends. It also carries a message to people of faith, reminding us to stay close to our "children."

(Tomorrow: At Midnight)

Family Business

God sets the lonely in families.

                        Psalm 68.6

Our First Family

For me, the finest moment in each year’s Pride Parade arrives as PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) comes into view. My heart swells and my eyes cloud up. That these extraordinary people care so much profoundly moves me. But I also confess tinges of jealousy. I can’t rule out the possibility my family will join the PFLAG march one day; “nothing is impossible with God.” (Luke 1.37) If and until that happens, though, I try to be content embracing their unwillingness to embrace my sexuality as God’s will for me.

No gay relative is more loved than I. Yet, ironically, love is why my family doesn’t support my orientation. They fear for my soul; actually, they desire my eternal happiness. Their indifference, therefore, masks heartfelt charity. This has been a hard lesson for me. I accept it, but I’m often unsure why I need it.

Our Second Family

Knowing we’re loved and feeling loved aren’t always related. Risking broad generalization, this disconnection tears at the GLBT community especially. We look first to each other for unconditional acceptance. We find second families in addition to, or in place of, our first ones. Mostly, we surround ourselves with people we rely on for emotional validation. Others of us forge serial relationships—some lasting less than an hour—settling for illusory love at the expense of actually experiencing it.

The instinct to “family up” is one of our enduring strengths and why we continually withstand forces aligned to destroy us. At the same time, it often weakens us from within by encouraging conformity to self-destructive ideas and behaviors. We seek new families so we can be ourselves. Yet too often we sacrifice our individuality and beliefs to the group. This is problematic for the community at large. It’s particularly dangerous for GLBT Christians.

Our Third Family

Let’s be frank. While GLBT believers uphold many of the same visions and values held high by the overall community, we’ll inevitably part company on others. When decisions narrow down to following Christ or conforming to culture, faith takes top priority. It’s never easy and seldom comes cheap, costing friends, popularity, reputation, and other things we treasure. Quite often, we feel isolated and lonely.

So God puts us in new families. Our third families are founded on obedience to Jesus’s commandments: love God and love your neighbor. We find them just like our second families, for the same reasons: acceptance, strength, stability, etc. We concentrate our search in their community of faith—congregations and Christian fellowships. It might require some doing, but we know our third family when we see it.

Our third family doesn’t require abandoning the other ones. In fact, its main purpose is building faith and confidence we can share with others. Its primary appeal is sparing us from unhealthy loneliness and fear of rejection. If you’ve not yet discovered who your third family is, I pray you will. God wants us to go the distance. He provides families so we won’t go it alone.

 

Personal Postscript: Extended Family

In the two months or so since launching “Straight-Friendly,” I’ve been blessed to hear from extended family I never knew before.  A number of kind ministers have written to give me much-appreciated inspiration and strength. All their notes undoubtedly came from their hearts, earning my full respect for them as worthy “family” leaders. I’m delighted to list their churches here and in the links section. If you’re searching for your third family and you're near one of them, I highly recommend starting there.

Body of Christ Church of God, Largo, FL

http://bodyofchristchurchofgod.org/default.aspx

First Presbyterian Church of Austin, Austin, TX

http://www.fpcaustin.org/index.html

Hope United Church of Christ, Naperville, IL

http://www.sharehope.org/

Immanuel United Church of Christ, Streamwood, IL

http://www.streamwoodiucc.org/

Mayfield Congregational Church, Sycamore, IL

http://www.mayfieldchurchucc.org/

New Hope Metropolitan Community Church, Santa Rosa, CA

http://www.newhopemcc.org/

Resurrection and Hope Ministries, Oak Forest, IL

http://www.resandhope.org/

United Christian Church, Austin, TX

http://www.uccaustin.org/

United Church of the Valley, Murrieta, CA

http://www.unitedchurchofthevalley.org/