Love

I believe Christianity is about learning to love everyone, all the way up to and including our enemies. In most cases our real enemies are not people far off, or people we can push away, speak ill of or exclude, they are people we sometimes love and sometimes hate because of what they do, how they treat us, the options and positions they hold, whether they be idiosyncratic, religious or political. Our challenge is to love those we disagree with, those who are doing harm to us and to our world.

It is natural for us to wall ourselves off from people who say and do things we don’t like. Right now we as a society are coming to terms with our abusive history towards those who don’t want to or can’t conform with traditional sexual norms. That’s a difficult struggle. Sexuality touches deep things in our identity.

Boxes

The current conversation has created a divisive narrative that puts people into boxes, gay and straight, bigots and “good people”, withholders of rights and victims and sets them all against each other. People never fit easily into any box and all of our labels fall short. This conflict wants to put me in a box and tell me how to treat people in other boxes.

One way to approach it is to say “I’m just not going to talk about it.” Neither side wants that. It is abandonment.

One way is to say “I’ll just be nice to everyone and not take a position or not share with others what I think.” That’s polite, but again, does it really do justice to the history of abuse and discrimination?

I think what we need to do is study, and think and converse and read broadly.

I know too many people with all kinds of positions, lifestyles, etc. to make blanket judgment of “good people” and “bad people”.

Applying the Golden Rule

I’d ask that you afford me what it is that you want me to afford you. Don’t judge me by what I post or read. Don’t judge me by the positions I embrace today (positions change). Don’t judge me by the friends I keep.

If I post something that you think you want to read, read it. If you think I’m crazy or evil or pathetic, then have some compassion for me and perhaps some patience with me. My ignorance and wrong-headedness may be a function of my limited experience or the poor company I keep or the stupid things I read.

Being nice is really not what we want from each other. Being nice is really a way of polite dismissal. It’s better to talk.

Jesus wasn’t nice

Yesterday I read a blog post on remembering the unpopular Jesus. Part of me liked the post and part of me didn’t. The part of me that liked the post reflected on how the author was right about Jesus. Jesus was very unpopular, unpopular enough to get himself killed. I’m currently working through Acts and Paul was the same way.

What I didn’t like about the post was that we Christians are too often simply offensive because of our insensitivity and lack of love. I’ll have to include myself in this group. I can be a jerk sometimes. I can be very insensitive. I fear acknowledging this side of Jesus because I know that my twisted heart will use it as justification for my own poor behavior. I’m a mess.

Jesus loved messy people and he often wasn’t nice about it. Jesus wasn’t nice.

I need to learn to be more gentle, kind, loving, understanding, trusting, but not nice.