God is -LOVE- wins

I am a Christian and I support the right of gay people to get married, however I have not been especially happy since the Supreme Court decision last week.  As pleased as I am that we are getting closer to our country’s promise of all people being created equal I feel like we are headed towards an even deeper division in our country and that neither side will be content to agree to disagree. As an individual that for the last decade or so has been spiritually very conservative while politically liberal I have grown skilled at smiling and nodding and keeping my opinion to myself, but the time for that has passed. I think it could become dangerous if we allow those with the most extreme views on either side speak for those of us whose thoughts and opinions fall somewhere in-between.

When I first made the decision to be an intentional Christ-Follower I was afraid to let my closest friends know. Though there were many complicated layers to that fear I think it boiled down that I didn’t want to them to think I was stupid or that I was no longer able to think for myself. In the years that followed as our family settled in Georgia and got more and more involved in the church I think it was more lack of energy for conflict that kept me from letting the good people that I worshipped with that my reading of our Lord Jesus’s words brought me to an exact opposite place politically than it brought them. I may have also been afraid they would question my love for Jesus, but mainly I just wanted church to be a peaceful place. I thought the best thing was to keep politics and current events in the secular world completely separate.  (The only consistent exception being issues of immigration. I have spoken my truth without fear on that issue as we are a family of mixed citzenship.) However in today’s world the issues of racism, sexuality and nationality cannot be ignored by the society or the church. The extremists on both sides will continue to be vocal, but they do not speak for all of us. The rest of us also need to have the courage to speak out and be honest about what we believe.

We need more than courage though. We need grace and discernment and of course love. If on one side we can say “Love wins,” and on the other read “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” it does not seem like we should end up so far apart. Love should unite, but here we are, divided, Christian/atheist, gay/straight, liberal/conservative, and so many other categories and names that serve to further separate.  Fear, resentment and self-righteousness have become our only common denominators. It hurts my heart for all of us. I fear what we will become.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about asking God to reveal the places within ourselves that need to be changed. I still think this is very needed. We all have blind spots, very large blind spots. I think this is especially true for Americans when it comes to the Bill of Rights and our freedom of expression. No matter what side we are on in an argument we all seem to think that our side should have freedom of expression but the other side needs to shut up. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say we are all hypocrites. We all think we are right and therefore our side is the side that needs to be heard. We all seem to think, as my grandfather likes to say, that the other side is ‘dumber than dirt’ for not seeing it the way we do. And very very few of us are willing to step out of the security of being surrounded by people who think just the way we do. We insulate ourselves. The channels and stations we listen to, the organizations and churches we belong to, the friends we hang out with, we pick them all because they tell us what we already believe. It is comforting to be told what you already know to be true. It is a natural human response to flock to those like us, but sometimes we need to fight against it. I think our country (and our world) desperately needs us to really make an effort to understand where our neighbors are coming from, especially our neighbors that are different from us.

I do not think I will be able to change anyone’s mind about the core issues. It is just as likely I am as wrong as you are, but I do think I might have a unique position to talk about how we view and interact the people we disagree with.  My immediate family and closest friends have very varied political, cultural, racial, economic and spiritual backgrounds.  Because of the fact that I am a politically liberal Evangelical Christian living in the South I have not been able to find a clear group of people that think like I do.  Maybe if I did I would be so pleased I would want us to just circle up so we could tell each other how right we are. But that has not been my reality. I have had the choice to sit by myself and pout or build relationships despite deep-seeded differences. Sometimes it is incredibly hard, issues like religion, sexuality, race and nationality are core to how we think of ourselves and invoke extreme and emotional reactions.  Finding a way to bridge all the gaps that divide us will not be easy, but it is imperative that we try. There are people I love and respect on all sorts of sides of all sorts of issues and I feel called to try and help them understand each other.

The world is not just black and white, and it is not just a bunch of muddy grey places between them. The world is full of color, vibrant brights, delicate pastels, clashing complementaries and muted variations. Just as our homes and wardrobes can be made more visually beautiful and interesting by adding different colors, so can our minds be enriched by opening ourselves up to different thoughts, opinions and beliefs. As I share my own I do so not to try and win you to my own point of view, but to entreat you to open yourself up to the possibility that it may not be a matter of right or wrong, but just varying perspectives and as crazy as this may sound, not everyone who disagrees with you is evil or out to get you. They are human, flawed and fragile, and even when it may not seem obvious, probably motivated by love.