Robert Kahne: We Must All Find Our Way

I love church.  As a 25 year old American, that’s a weird statement to type.  Many people in my generation either have a strongly negative to church.  To those who do not subscribe to Christianity, church is a place of intolerance and judgment—and who can blame them, as churches throughout history have slipped into those evils.  However, even those who do subscribe to Christianity still don’t like church—it seems like an antiquity to many in my generation, a relic of a former time whose importance has been transcended.

But I love church.  Church has been part of my life since before I was born.  I can’t think of a time when I missed church three Sundays in a row—church is something that I’ve always been expected to attend, and once I reached a certain age, it became something that I felt worthwhile to attend of my own volition.  I love church because it’s a place to come together as similarly valued people and work through each of our struggles with the holy, and discern how God wants us to work in the world in which we live.

Up until about 6 months ago, I’ve attended conservative to moderate Baptist churches who were certainly less fundamentalist than what “Baptist” currently connotes, but who were (and continue to be) considerably less liberal than me.  Six months ago I began attending Highland Baptist Church, and for the first time in my life, my faith has been challenged from the left.  I’ve been left wondering more than once “is this stance too liberal for me?”  That answer has not yet been ‘yes’; but I am glad to be in a place that necessitates the question.   Prior to Highland, I attended two fantastic churches which I love dearly.  They are the places where I found God and where I began my life-long struggle to comprehend my place in God’s world.  In infinite ways, those churches have helped me along to become the person that I am.  However, when I made the decision to go somewhere else six month ago, there was a specific reason

The issue of homosexuality, disappointingly, is one which continues to exist in American culture.  Perhaps the main reason gay issues remain in the cultural and political zeitgeist of America is because of certain passages in the Bible which condemn homosexual behavior.  Due to these passages, churches often condemn homosexual behavior and have wielded their considerable political power to both discriminate against homosexuals and to deny them the rights afforded to other people.

Before I started attending Highland, I’d never seen an openly gay person at church before.  There are several who came out after leaving the church, or folks who were closeted at church but out when away from the church, but as far as openly gay people coming to church and partaking in worship—I’d never seen this before.  Honestly, in most churches, neither the church nor the homosexual person really wants to be with the other.  Churches make overages towards being accepting of homosexuals, and even the most conservative of churches claim to be accepting of gays—but only conditionally.  Due to the passages of scripture opposing homosexuality, many churches say that we should “love the sinner and hate the sin,” implying that acting upon one’s innate feelings constitutes a separation from God—that due to no fault of a gay person, they are immediately at odds with God.  This thought, that homosexuals are somehow more separate from God than any of the rest of us, is the biggest failing of the church in my lifetime.

I once attended a retreat for college aged ministry leaders, when one attendee stated that she had learned to have a “heart for the gays.”  She talked about how God had given her the spirit to help them cope with their feelings and find Christ in the midst of their struggles with sin.  She stated that the gays really NEEDED God.  While I held my tongue at the time (thankfully), that is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard.  The idea that Christians need to guide homosexuals away from their orientation in order to find Christ is anathema to the work of Christ.  The grace of God is not given conditionally—it is ours for the taking whoever we are and whatever we do.  God loves everybody—and God loves everybody now.  We forget this often in our amiable quest to please God.  The reality of the situation is that pleasing God is an impossible task, and that God’s grace is given to us without umbrage.  Whether or not God wants ANY of us to change who we are is really immaterial.  It’s not necessary, and never has been.  Besides, asking gay people to change who they are is anathema.  I don’t know what it is like to be gay, but I’ve seen self-resentment and a beginning to a healthy self-identity come from the identification of one’s self as gay.  When Christians seek to change that identity, it is an affront to many who have struggled with who they are.

I do not mean here to disdain the importance of following God—I want only to emphasize that sometimes, that quest does not follow the same path for everyone.  It is a central belief of mine that hewing too closely to the literal words of the Bible can actually separate us from God.  Before the New Testament was compiled, there was the Pentecost and the Holy Spirit.  Listening for the guidance of the Spirit will lead us further down the path of God than the Bible ever could.  Though the Bible is the most important physical instrument for discerning God and its importance to Christian development cannot be overstated, it pales in comparison to the Holy Spirit—who is God among us.

If there has ever been a more obvious group of people who Jesus would spend time with if he had come to Earth now, instead of 2000 years ago, it is homosexuals.  Like the tax collectors and prostitutes of the gospels, these are people who religious leaders wrongfully disdain.  Building meaningful relationships with gays and lesbians would have served two of Christ’s main purposes if he were here now: it would give legitimacy to those folks as people whom God loves unconditionally, and it would show the church of today how to act.

Christ’s love is a beautiful thing.  For me personally, I need the love of Christ when I am confused and hurt.  I’ve read a lot about gay suicides lately, and from what I have gleaned, it is more than just bullying that is to blame—it is a deep, abiding discomfort with identity.  I believe that the intervention of Christ works in this space the most effectively.  Christians often speak of Christ “meeting us where we are.”  While I believe this is true, I think it is more accurate to say “Christ already is where we are.”  Extending this analogy, Christ is not further down the spiritual road, and Christ doesn’t need to leave the demarcated path to find us—wherever we find ourselves in this world, and no matter whom we are or what we do, Christ is there for us.  Like the woman from my earlier anecdote, I too believe that homosexuals need God.

Because we all need God.

It’s a fact that homosexuals feel abandoned by God because of the treatment of Christians.  While this is obvious in the case of the heinous folks who berate gays, women, and various others with hatred (go to any public campus in the South’s free speech area to see what I mean), the most insidious abandonment comes from the well-meaning Christians who want homosexuals to change who they are in order to find Christ.  The issues that many homosexuals feel when they first come to grips with their identities are a direct effect of Christians in the culture—this is our generation’s greatest failure as people of faith.  Not only is a group of people who faces serious problems en masse who could benefit from spirituality shut out of the Church due to our attitudes, the reason that they face serious problems is because of our actions.

I’m happy to attend Highland Baptist, because it’s a place where gay people can come and worship without being judged or asked to change who they are.  Part of Highland’s identity is as a “healing church.”  The most beautiful thing about that identity, to me, is that “healing” doesn’t signify that we help people reach a place where we “fix” their “broken” lifestyle—we seek to “heal” others by helping them get beyond all the clutter of our earthly existence and reach a place where they find God.  I believe this healing to be among the most important callings of all Christians, firstly because it is what Christ calls us to do.  But beyond that, this healing is of the utmost importance because we have created its need.

(Cross-posted, with permission of the author, from RobertKahne.com)