Love is What Counts

I'll continue to share some more insights from Pastor Chellew-Hodge's excellent book Bulletproof Faith:

"[W]hen the Bible speaks of relationships on all levels, the most blessed relationship is one of love...Love is the measure of all relationships...Not one word in the Bible condemns loving, committed relationships. God calls us all, not just heterosexuals, to be moral in our sexuality - keeping our covenants and refusing to use or abuse anyone sexually. This is the only role religion plays in sexuality. It is a guide to responsible sexuality regardless of orientation" (xii).

I really think this says it all right here. The Bible's vision of sexual relationships and morality is founded on love - which, in turn, is modeled on the revelation of the covenant of God's love. In other words, we are to love as God first loved us - remaining true to our partners or spouses, in the case of those in committed relationships, as God has been with us. As Chellew-Hodge puts it, this is the heart of the Bible's message and one which transcends limits of gender or sexual orientation.

Peace,
Padre Chuck

Bulletproof Faith

An excellent book that I recently finished is by United Church of Christ pastor and LGBT activist Candace Chellew-Hodge (Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008). I'll post a few reflections on the book but in this first one I'd like to first include an important point that the author makes about the "debate" about LGBT rights:

"For years, the media have attempted to 'balance' the 'homosexual issue' with voices from the 'other side.' That 'other side' has traditionally been voices from religion, specifically the Christian religion...[However,] [r]eligion is not the 'other side' of the 'homosexual issue' any more than people who believe in a flat earth are the 'other side' of the global warming issue or any more than the Ku Klux Klan is the 'other side' of the black civil rights movement. Despite the media's relentless search for the 'other side,' for some issues, there simply isn't a viable 'other side.' This issue is one of them" (x).

I think this is an especially important point as sometimes the media's coverage of LGBT issues makes it seem like both "sides" of the issue are equally sincere and have just as much potential truth on their respective sides. However, as in other struggles for justice such as the civil rights movement and others, eventually there comes a time where the other "side" simply has to be abandoned as incorrect. As in the 1960s when Americans finally drew toward a consensus that discriminatory laws were simply no longer acceptable I believe that we're moving toward a time when it will just no longer be tenable to keep standing in the way of full civil equality for LGBT people

Peace,
Padre Chuck

Learning to Love Our Neighbors

Returning to Barbara Brown Taylor's book, another insight that has stayed with me involves the centrality of learning to love others as ourselves - really loving them as they are and not as someone we might seek to change or even help. Here's how she puts it:

"The wisdom of the Desert Fathers includes the wisdom that the hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self - to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it...[This] may be the only real spiritual discipline there is" (93).

I think there's some profound truth to be found in these words. It can be so easy to get caught up in our own agendas, priorities or worries that learning to love our neighbor as ourselves means engaging in the challenging work of loving other people as they are and perhaps also learning to love ourselves that way, too. Maybe, in a way, it means gaining an ever so faint experience of what God's love is really like.

Peace,
Padre Chuck

What Love in Action Looks Like

This is a trailer for a new documentary which exposes the fear and prejudice underlying "ministries" that seek to change individuals' sexual orientations. The testimonies of Zach Stark and others like him give the lie to the idea that such change is possible and, indeed, that it's in any way necessary. In truth, ultimately what God asks of us is not that we "change" in order to pretend to be something or someone we're not but simply that we be who we really are, letting God's light shine through us as we do so.

Peace,
Padre Chuck