Really Listening

As we look forward to our synchroblog on June 24, I thought it would be particularly appropriate to share this clip of Brian Pengelly, our Youth Specialist at New Direction. Brian highlights an essential challenge to those who hope to engage in bridging conversations.



What do you think?

Betrayal

I remember in my early days with New Direction how easy it was for me to feel threatened and defensive when I encountered people who appeared to have moved from a traditional understanding of Scripture’s boundaries for same-gender sexual behaviour towards a more inclusive and affirming stance. I remember feeling quite justified in my judgments of them – because afterall, I felt they had distorted the truth. I lamented people’s lack of certainty, attributing it to being either deceived by the enemy or selfish and fleshly. At times, I concluded that the emotion I was experiencing in these situations was righteous anger.

I felt that I needed to be very guarded, that I needed to be very careful to not be tricked or fooled into deceptive thinking.

And if this was true for me, someone who was not personally wrestling with the experience of same-gender attraction and seeking to be obedient and faithful in holding to Scripture’s teaching, I can only imagine how intense these feelings can be for someone who experiences unwanted same-gender attraction.

And if I, straight & married, could feel so betrayed when a public person moved from a place of certainty in a traditional position to a place that seemed questionable …. How much more might a same-gender attracted person feel betrayed?

With the movement towards seeking to embody a generous spaciousness, a place where any and all can come to engage on matters of spirituality and faith, we are aware of the potential of triggering feelings of betrayal. It is a weight and burden of responsibility that we feel.

For those who are side B and walking a personal journey of commitment, obedience and faithfulness to not engage in gay relationships or same-gender sexual behaviour, we would want to encourage you in the Lord. Our prayer is that your convictions are motivated by a profound sense of how deeply God loves you. We pray that you have worked through any fear or shame or anger or denial that might masquerade as godly motivation. And we pray that you will know God’s provision and sufficiency and delight as you choose to own your convictions from a place of contentment and joy.

Our decision to be engaged relationally with diverse people across this spectrum of faith and sexuality, has come from a deep desire to embody the love and grace that we see in the person of Jesus Christ. We believe that God is at work in all sorts of surprising places and we want to have eyes to see what he is already doing. And we believe that the Holy Spirit really is more than able to be the energy and motivation behind any transformation or growth in any of us.

Regardless of where anyone lands on the continuum of belief and practice in relation to our sexual identity, we all need to be challenged to navigate conversations where faith and sexuality intersect with a growing maturity. This kind of maturity refrains from lashing out and accusing others as a cover for our own insecurities, hurts, emptiness or anxiety. This kind of maturity recalls that engaging with the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control) is just as important as a commitment to sexual purity and integrity. And this kind of maturity chooses to move from a victim, self-focused perspective to look beyond oneself to the ways we can serve, bless and encourage others.

We long to embody this maturity and to see it develop in others – even as we groan with all of creation in the incomplete experience of this kind of wholeness this side of heaven. We all fall short. We all can play the victim from time to time. We all point the finger and blame others while hiding from our own fear and anxiety. We’re all selfish at times and have next to no desire to serve others. There are gaps between who we are and who we want to be.

But in the midst of this mess, let us find grace. Let’s be gracious with one another, giving one another the benefit of the doubt, expecting the best of each other….. for we are all on a journey.

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.

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Happy Anniversary BTG

Okay – so I’m not very good with dates or directions (seriously, what is it with me getting lost for every party Mark throws?)….. anyway….
Apparently, last week was the one year anniversary of this blog and I totally missed it.

I have thoroughly enjoyed having such diverse readers engage this forum. I value the conversations that have emerged and the ways that we can all learn and grow from one another’s often thoughtful comments. And while this blog seeks to be unapologetically Christ-centered, I have particularly appreciated those who do not identify as Christian engaging our conversations ….. might you continue to find a safe place of respect and welcome. We need to hear your voices – especially given how easy it is for followers of Jesus to live in their own little bubble.

For those of you who like statistics:
We’ve had 4,603 folks from 83 countries visit 9,542 times.
Our 65+ posts have been commented on nearly 500 times.
The video clips we’ve been posting of the DVD have been viewed 4,726 times.

The two posts that drew the most attention this past year were:
Brian’s post addressing Word of Faith criticism of his journey.
Wendy’s post on whether we continue to Offer Hope.

It would seem that when we stand up and defend ourselves against our detractors we draw the most attention.

So what have we learned in the last year?

There are plenty of people who want answers. Clear answers. They don’t like feeling confused or unsure.

Our response? Join the club….. of living in some uncertainty that is.

What we’ve learned in the last year is to resist the request, or in some cases demand, for black and white answers. I hope we’re learning to ask more questions ….to be present in that generous spaciousness where it is ok to ask tough questions, where it is ok to have doubts, where it is ok to be frustrated with the complexities and seemingly unanswerable questions….. and where the focus is on relating to one another and relating to God.

This can be so threatening. For those of us who’ve grown up in a Christianity that told us we had absolute access to absolute truth with absolute certainty – any deconstruction of that is big-time anxiety producing. For those who have taken some risks to ask different questions …. the incredible discovery is that God is so much bigger than our limited absolutes. And for those who seek and ask and knock and search …. God is right there in the midst of it all.

I hope this blog will be a catalyst to cause people to think deeply, pray much, lead with a humble and listening posture. I hope we can continue to expose some of the ugly motivations that live in all of our hearts: our fear, our anger, our judgments, our assumptions and presumptions. I hope we can do our small part in addressing the systemic inequities that are inconsistent with God’s love for and image in each human being.

So thanks for joining us in these conversations. Thanks for the times you agreed and thanks for the times you’ve disagreed. Thanks for the encouragement many of you have shared. Thanks for your prayers. And thanks for risking to engage in the midst of the tensions of some uncertainty as we press forward together to see God and our common humanity past the divides that the intersection of faith and sexuality can inevitably create.

Refusing to be a Christianized Bully

I’ve been pondering lately the amount of bullying I see go on in the name of Christ.

Wikipedia suggests: “Bullying is an act of repeated aggressive behavior in order to intentionally hurt another person, physically or mentally. Bullying is characterized by an individual behaving in a certain way to gain power over another person.”

This is the kicker when it comes to “Christianized” bullying …. Good Christian people would never say they are trying to intentionally hurt the other person. None-the-less, aggressive, passive-aggressive, manipulative behaviour that seeks to gain power over another person happens all the time in the name of Christ.

And I’m afraid that at an individual level and at a systemic level, we Christians delude ourselves to the ways that we act like bullies. We justify our bullying in evangelistic language. Afterall, we can’t “love people into hell” you know. We fail to be willing to look at the ways our own needs and our own fears drive our ‘persuasive’ engagement with others.

But I think Philippians 2 can provide a wake-up call. In it we see a picture of Jesus that is the anti-thesis of a bully. The apostle Paul tells us that Jesus ‘made himself nothing, taking the nature of a servant’ and that he ‘humbled himself’. In this picture of Jesus we see someone who was always invitational – who did not force himself into people’s lives. In fact, we see in John 6 that after his teaching about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, many disciples left him. Jesus teaches that people can only come to him if the Father enables them and then asks the disciples if they want to leave too. Peter answers and says, “Lord, to whom would we go? You alone have the words that give eternal life.”

In Peter’s response we glimpse the kind of understanding that Jesus had engendered in his disciples. They were not afraid to go, they didn’t feel shamed to stay….. they had experienced that which was life-giving in their relationship with Jesus – and that is what caused them to want to remain connected with the spirit and life they encountered in Christ.

Would our friends who do not embrace a relationship with Christ, say the same of us, his followers? Would our friends who do know Christ, but who hold different beliefs and values than we do, say the same of us? Would they feel the freedom to experience that which they experience to be life-giving (ie. not our definition of life-giving)? And would it be that life-giving experience that causes them to want to remain, stay connected, take the next steps?

The question for followers of Jesus: Do we trust that it really is God the Father who draws people to himself?

“It is the Spirit who gives eternal life. Human effort accomplishes nothing. And the very words I have spoken to you are spirit and life…… That is what I meant when I said that people can’t come to me unless the Father brings them to me.” (John 6:63, 65)

If we believe this, truly believe it – ought it not free us up to be much more invitational, much more loving, much more relaxed with others?

One of the things that triggered my thinking about this post was a recent interview I gave for Gay Christian Network radio. At one point in the interview, I said something like, “It’s not like we’re calling people to repentance – unless they’re involved in destructive behaviours or something like that.”

And it’s the kind of statement that reminds me of the complexity of speaking to multiple audiences. Given that my primary audience was members of GCN, my intent with that statement was to express our deeply held value to be non-coercive in people’s lives. I wanted to embody the kind of humility that says, “I’m not going to arrogantly presume that I am right, you are wrong, and you better change and become like me.”

But if I am side B, that is, holding to a more traditional interpretation of Scripture on the appropriateness of homosexual behaviour, then surely I should be calling people to repentance shouldn’t I? Shouldn’t I be trying to convince people that they are wrong, need to rethink and change to become like me in accordance with my interpretation of Scripture?

If more conservative folks heard this interview on GCN, this could be a trigger ….. “Ah-ha…. We knew it. We knew Wendy Gritter has slid down the slippery slope of compromise! She isn't even calling people to repentance.”

But is that kind of black & white call to repentance my job, in my context, in the relationships that I invest in and nurture through this blog, facebook, my neighbourhood etc.? Is that really what God is asking me to do?

Or is God asking me to walk in humility, loving and serving, and seeking to embody the character of Jesus, the One who made himself nothing and took the role of servant? What if God is simply asking me to keep my eyes open to the ways he is already at work in another’s life – way ahead of me? And is, perhaps, my ‘job’ so-to-speak, to be alert to the prompting of the Holy Spirit to ask a question at the right time, to offer a point to ponder, to listen together to what God is up to?

Christianity, as an institutionalized religion, has a horrific history of violence, coercion, and addiction to power. We have been frightful bullies. And in the ways the Christian community often calls for gay people to ‘repent’ that same bullying spirit rears its ugly head.

And I will do everything I know to do, to live and relate in a manner that is subversive to this oppressive legacy.

Afterall, ‘people can’t come to Jesus unless the Father brings them to him’. I don’t have to be a bully on his behalf. In fact, his Spirit within me pleads for me to act in the ‘opposite spirit’ – the spirit of gentleness, of invitation, of humility, of welcome. My simple prayer is that in such a spirit of service and friendship, those who cross my path would encounter the life-giving Christ.