So to sum it up I’ve gone on record that I’ve come to a place in my life of faith, my relationship with God, and my deepening understanding of grace that I no longer am able to believe that anyone will ever be consigned to the suffering of eternal punishment and banishment from the presence of God. While it seems reasonable to me that there would be a time and place for divine purification and correction there must in my heart and mind ultimately come a time when the soul of every man, woman, and child will be re-united with their Creator.

I’m more than aware of the kind of objections and emotions that taking that position can bring up for those of us who are Christian and even more specifically for those of us grounded in a conservative or evangelical tradition. No one knows this more than I do because the Anita of ten years ago would have been horrified to know that one day she’d be believing what I believe today. But then, come to think about it the Anita of twenty years ago would still be rolling around on the floor and foaming at the mouth over the ever-so gay Anita of 2010 so what say we leave those girls in the past to resolve their issues while we continue to move forward, shall we?

Split personalities aside, I understand some will take issue with the conclusions I’ve come to but honestly, I’m come to a place in my life where I simply can’t believe any different. The grace of God as I understand it and have experienced it compels me in this direction. It presses me to reject a God of infinite love who could bear to be separated from even one of His children for the span of eternity. I’m unable to come up with any argument strong enough to be at peace with the idea that the will and desire of God that all would come to Him will ever be less than fully realized. I’ve tried. I didn’t leap over to this side of my beliefs. Grace dragged me here kicking and screaming the whole way and when new glimpses of human cruelty have filled me with a longing for a wrathful God to exact revenge on those who harm the innocent, grace has blocked my way to running back to the safety and certainty of my former beliefs where the fires of hell and an angry God settle the score. Even if everyone else thinks I’m pushing the envelope or standing on shaky theological ground. And if in the end I’m wrong about this or about being gay or anything else that I hold as true at the core of my being then being wrong is a risk I’m willing to make. I’m willing to put everything on the line because at this point in my life I refuse to put any limit on the reach of God’s love or the extent of God’s grace. To do so would be to live and speak in a way that denies the very essence of all that I have encountered and understood God to be. I would be lying to say any different…or to say nothing at all.

In case it hasn’t yet dawned on you, you just witnessed an unparalleled digression from where I was originally headed. That happens when I’m passionate about something and when it comes to these things I have enough passion to light a fire from a pile of soggy wood and used matchsticks.

Which is good because it’s now dinner time and I need to get the chops on the grill and the salad in the bowl before my wonderwife returns from a day in the trenches, which means my thoughts on “Sin, Salvation, and The Savior” will need to wait until tomorrow.

No, I’m not kidding. You just read what was meant to be an introductory paragraph that ended up turning into a lengthy post that never even got us to where we were headed in the first place. Dang, you sure put up with a lot from me. Personally speaking, I wouldn’t tolerate it, so how do you do it?!

Okay. For real. I promise. Tomorrow.

If there is no consequence or judgment then what is the purpose of right and wrong? Why defend the helpless and vulnerable? Why do good?

The answer seems so obvious to me that I wonder if I’m missing something. Is the question more complicated than I’m understanding it to be? I doubt it would be the first time.

We do good because God has been good to us. We forgive because we have been forgiven. We show mercy because mercy has been granted us. We clothe and feed the poor because as God has fed the birds of the air and clothed the flowers of the field, God has provided for us. Hell slips out of the equation when our actions flow from a place of awareness and gratitude for the good we have received from God.

If fear of hell is what motivates good action, if the only purpose of right behavior is to avoid hell, then the good being done would be tainted and cheap, done less for the sake of good and more as a means of self-preservation. Doing good would be nothing less than the most selfish of actions.

But no. We defend the helpless, feed the hungry, care for the orphan and the widow, stand up for the oppressed, and forgive our enemies because God has made it known to us that everyone who lives is a beloved child of God and deserves nothing less than to be treated with respect, compassion, and dignity. We feed the hungry because they are hungry. We feed the hungry because it lessens their suffering. We feed the hungry because given other circumstances in our own lives, we would be the ones with empty hands and stomach.  We feed the hungry because God told us to feed them and because Jesus modeled it for us. We feed the hungry because we are so grateful for the love of God poured out in our lives that we need to release it into the world by giving of what we have received. If there is no reward for goodness at the end of our lives then isn’t the reward we receive in the moment in easing another’s suffering and adding to the goodness in this life, enough? Oh, I hope so.

And if there’s no punishment for wrongdoing what’s to prevent us from going and getting what we want no matter who it hurts or what the cost? If someone is driven by self-centeredness or lacks any magnetic integrity in their moral compass then I suppose there’s nothing to prevent it. In fact, the threat of hell and damnation has done nothing to hold sin in check, even in Christian communities where there’s a strong belief system centered around a final judgment and eternal consequences for sin. Look around. Examples abound. Priests sexually molest children. Religious leaders engage in infidelity and financial corruption. Churches build elaborate edifices to worship God in while the homeless and hungry are all around them. Denominations spend vast resources attempting to keep certain people out of their churches while doing far less to reach out and gather more people in. Scripture repeatedly makes it all too clear that it’s sin to not clothe the poor, shelter the homeless, or feed the hungry. It’s sinful for Christians to marginalize the oppressed and refuse the outcast when everything about Jesus life witnessed to the opposite, and adultery and child sexual abuse would seem to be no-brainers in the sin department. Final judgment. Consequences for sin. Existence of hell. And still, Christians do wrong.

So does removing the threat of eternal consequences change anything? Probably not and it shouldn’t because there would seem to be far more valuable reasons for avoiding wrong doing. How about these for an example?

• You want to be and be known as an honorable person of good character.
• You want to follow the wisdom and instruction of God and the example of God’s Son out of love for God.
• You want to honor the One who loves you by doing good and avoiding wrong.
• You wish to avoid doing anything that would bring harm and pain to another human being.
• You want to avoid the consequences in this life that come from wrong doing, whether those consequences are played out for the world to see or known only in the secret place of your own heart.

Again, I might be over-simplifying the question. I’m open to correction, comments, and more questions. I still have at least one more post in this spontaneous series…maybe two. Depends on where your comments lead us.

And me at the computer with a cup of lukewarm coffee and a mishmash of questions on sin, judgment and hell swirling around in my head. I usually just have my caffeine with a splash of milk and a spoon of sweetener.

In my post on hell, I offered several key reasons for why I find the concept of eternal punishment or damnation unacceptable but rather I believe in the fullness of time all people will be reconciled back to God. This led to some challenging questions and while I’ll do my best to reply to them I do so knowing that anything I share will have little chance of satisfying the questions for anyone else, and I hope not! I hope not because as my faith is continually being shaped by an ongoing, internal conversation between the Scriptures, church teaching, the Spirit’s moving, and my personal experience of God, I would trust the same is happening in your own life as well.

So here I go.

Can heaven really include brutal tyrants who are directly responsible for the death of thousands if not millions of people and those who for their own greed have robbed the poor when Jesus represented a God who stood up for the poor and oppressed and defended the persecuted? How could it ever be right and just for those who have mocked God and caused immeasurable harm to God’s own, to stand side by side with those who have suffered at their hands?

Last week our Lutheran congregation met with the congregation of the nearby Jewish temple for a shared Seder. It seemed only fitting to share this special meal together since for the Jews the Passover commemorates their deliverance from the bondage of Egypt into freedom and for Christians we recognize that it was at the Passover meal 2000 years ago that the sacrament of the Last Supper began.

There’s a story in the Talmud that says when God caused the Red Sea to close down upon the pursuing armies of Pharoah so that they had all perished, the angels began to celebrate their destruction with song but God rebuked them saying “Will you chant hymns while the work of my hands is being drowned in the sea?” Even though the Eqyptians had been the torturous captors of His people and had made themselves into pursuing enemies, they were still counted among God’s creation and as such God suffered because they were suffering. Over bowls of sweet haroset and the story alive in us we wondered over the question, “Are we vengeful people because we’re made in the image of a vengeful God or do we worship a God of vengeance because we are vengeful people?” Among Jew and Christian we all came to the conclusion that it seemed more likely we have a vengeful God because as people we need to believe that there is divine vengeance for evil doing.

According to Scripture and ancient oral tradition, Pharoah and his armies committed hideous acts of cruelty and oppression against the people of Israel and though we lack black and white footage documenting the atrocities and there are no survivors to give first-hand account of the torture and human degradation meted out by Egyptian hands, we know of comparable crimes against humanity in more recent history. The Christian Crusades. Slavery. The witch hunts. The Holocaust. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Apartheid.

There’s no question God stands on the side of the oppressed for Scriptures abound, declaring that God will defend the poor, the  widowed, and the oppressed. In the Old Testament, God judges the oppressor and executes justice where there has been injustice and when God is shown as angry it’s injustice toward the poor and oppressed that serves as the kindling to God’s fury.

I believe God will avenge the oppressed. I believe God will judge the oppressor. I not only need that to be true but I believe it is true and right and just, but where I can find no compassion in my heart or soul for those who have brought such cruelty onto the human stage I worship a God who as judge holds justice in one hand and mercy in the other and is a judge who exercises both according to His good and perfect will. If I must see God in the black robes of a judge, then I must envision Him as one who looks down from His seat of judgment and recognizes in the face of both the abused and the abuser, the persecuted and the persecutor, the oppressed and the oppressor, the face of His very own, created by His hand, born out of His love. The suffering of either past, present, or future is suffering shared by God.

I didn’t say hell doesn’t exist or that there would be no divine judgment cast or no price to be paid for wrongdoing. What I said was  I don’t believe in eternal punishment and as much as it runs contrary to my desires to say this, neither do I believe there will be divine punishment for the sake of punishment alone but when God punishes it is for the purpose of bringing correction, repentance, reconciliation and restoration of all God’s creation. I will take it as far as Philip Gulley does in If God is Love:

I believe God will accomplish the salvation of every person, in this life or the next, no matter how long we resist. If Satan does exist, he will one day repent, be forgiven, and take his proper place in the divine order. If hell exists, it won’t be the final destination for anyone. It will merely be another tool in God’s work to purify and redeem.

Like I already said, I don’t think my answer will satisfy anyone who believes in heaven for the righteous and hell for the sinner. I just know that I can no longer believe any differently than this and coming to this understanding, even though it’s still evolving, has done nothing but enrich and increase my faith and relationship with God. Believing what I believe has changed me and the change has been for the better.

Though at first glance it might seem so, a post on hell isn’t so far off-topic for SisterFriends, not as long as there are GLBTQ Christians in the process of reconciling their faith and sexuality who continue to wonder “Will I go to hell because I’m gay?” Normally when someone poses this question in an email I avoid the topic of hell altogether realizing that the belief in hell and in retribution theology (punishment for bad, reward for good) runs deep through many raised in conservative Christianity. Instead I tend to address the fear that underlays such questioning and center my response on those passages that dispel the idea that God would ever be at the heart of such anguished fear.

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. — 2 Timothy 1: 7

Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. — John 14: 27

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. — 1 John 4: 18

But as long as people believe there’s a chance at the end of their lives that they will have messed things up so bad or fallen so short of where God would have them to be that they risk damnation there will always be fear and so it seemed as good a time as any to expose the ledge I’m standing on and to give a more complete and honest response to the question for the next one who would ask it of me.

So here we go.

I’m not about to say that hell doesn’t exist, neither am I saying I believe it does. The fact is that hell, as a locale, can no more be denied than it can be proven since despite all the theological arguments made for or against such a place, certitude on the matter is outside the grasp of all of us until the moment of our death. Until then  all we can do is abandon ourselves to our faith and in what we believe…whether it’s traditional church teaching on the matter or personal belief.

There were far too many years when I believed that while God loved me God could and would condemn me to hell if I had sinned too much or strayed too far outside God’s will. Should I die “in sin” my parting glimpse of God wouldn’t be of his love but of his wrath, but fortunately, as it happened, I believed the right truth and was living the right life (Self-Righteous, party of one, your table is waiting!) so I didn’t fear hell but looked ahead confidently to heaven.

But in recent years I’ve had a change of heart and mind and I no longer believe God would or will ever condemn anyone to a permanent state of punishment and torment. The change has come about not because I’ve spent years locked in academic research and study on the Christian doctrine of hell. The change has come simply, though not easily, through my changing understanding and experiences with the love of God. I’ve reflected on what it really means when we say the love of God is unconditional and infinite, and that God is the giver of undeserved mercy and extravagant grace. After 53 years of being in love with God I’m only now beginning to understand what it means when we declare with assurance that “nothing will ever separate us from the love of God.”

I don’t believe in eternal punishment because I believe in the unconditional, infinite love of God.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails (I Corinthians 13:4-8).

At this point in my faith journey, to believe in the unconditional eternal love of God and to believe in eternal punishment as the will of God is, in my opinion, irrational. It simply makes no sense to propose that these two teachings stand harmoniously beside one another when the truth is that no two beliefs could be more oppositional to one another than these. I’m all for a God who works in mysteriously ways but I reject the idea of a God who acts irrationally and contradictory to his own nature. God may be full of surprises but when it comes to His steadfast love and unwavering grace, God is more predictable than that the earth will keep spinning.

I’m baffled that we’ve somehow managed to justify in Christian theology a Heavenly Father/Mother/Parent who behaves in a way that would appall us were we to witness the same behavior in an earthly parent directed toward their child and I said as much in my last post. God’s love is unconditional, immeasurable, limitless and forever. God loves you. God loves me. God loves them. For that reason if so much as one single person in all God’s creation falls outside the covering of God’s love, even the most vile and depraved among us, then God’s love is diminished for all, even for the most righteous and pure among us.

I don’t believe in eternal punishment because I believe that the perfect will and desire of God will be fulfilled.

In other words I believe God will ultimately get what God wants, and what God wants is that through Jesus He would be able to “reconcile to Himself all things” (Colossians 1:19-20); what God desires is that “all will be saved and come to the knowledge of truth” (I Timothy 2:3-4); what God wills is to bring “all things in heaven and earth together under one head, even Christ” (Ephesians 1:9-10), and what God does not want is that “any should perish but that everyone would come to repentance” (2 Peter 2:9). God wants, desires, and wills that all would be brought back to him and so the question is whether God will get what God wills or if for all eternity God’s will be left unfulfilled. If God wills that all would be returned onto him then it is impossible that even one person will be cast out of God’s presence. Even one soul separated from God would leave God discontent, like the Good Shepherd who wouldn’t rest until his entire flock was restored (Matthew 18:10-14) and like the poor woman who wouldn’t stop searching until she found her lost coin. (Luke 15:8-10). Neither the good shepherd or the poor woman were able or willing to celebrate until all that had been lost were found. And so it is with God. God is not willing that any would be lost and so, if we believe the perfect will of God will be fulfilled then we also believe that all will be found.

I don’t believe in eternal punishment because I believe Jesus is the Son of God and Savior of the World.

Jesus was God revealed in human flesh. In his life and his words Jesus was the greatest manifestation of God’s love that we have ever witnessed and there’s nothing I can see in the witness of his life or in the content of his teaching that would lead me to accept that Jesus’ ultimate purpose was to be the determining factor in who would go to heaven and who would be cast into hell based on individual acceptance or rejection of his identity. Instead I believe that the love, forgiveness, compassion, and full welcome Jesus showered on everyone he encountered will be the very love, forgiveness, compassion, and welcome that God extends to all.

I also believe that had Jesus not come, had he not preached and lived out the Good News of the Gospel, had he not died on the cross and been brought forth into newness of life, this world would be different in a way we can’t begin to imagine, for in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection salvation came into the world and through him the world was saved. “I did not come to judge the world, but to save it” (John 12:47) and that’s what Jesus did. Through Jesus the world and all of creation was redeemed by the glory of God that spilled upon the earth through the work of Christ and salvation was given to all.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came through Christ Jesus. (Romans 3:23).

God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on all men (Romans 11:32).

For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive (I Corinthians 15:22).

We put our hope in a living God, who is the Savior of all men, and especially of those who believe (I Timothy 4:9-10).

I know what I believe on paper echoes a theology of universal salvation but for me it’s not about labeling my beliefs or aligning them with what others profes. I only know that I can’t reconcile the idea that some will go to heaven and some will go to hell when I keep bumping into “all” and “every” in the Scriptures. Receiving the grace of God isn’t dependent on whether I believe the right things, attend the right church, pray the right prayers, or do the right things. Grace doesn’t depend on me being right. As Philip Gulley said in “If Grace Is True” grace is a gift, not a trophy. Grace gives no thought to whether I’m Protestant or Jewish or Agnostic. Grace isn’t determined by my sexual orientation. Grace depends fully on God. The grace I’ve been given. The grace you’ve been given. The grace they’ve been given. We’re all under God’s grace because the love of God would have it no other way.

Of course, coming to this place has meant I’ve done a whole lot of soul-searching and spiritual reflection on a wider circle of  Christian doctrines. Redemption, salvation, the cross, sin, and atonement are all concepts of the Christian faith (my faith) that I continue to grapple with as my understanding of God’s love and grace for all evolves. But given my upbringing within a conservative Christian tradition do you know what the hardest part has been for me in moving from hell for some to hell for none?

It was overcoming my need for eternal punishment to exist.

The more I found my theology defaulting to the love and grace of God, the more troubled I was that there was a chance that those I thought deserved an eternity in hell for all the hurt they had brought into the world, the more I had to deal with the possibility that in eternity they’d be standing in the same brilliant light of God’s glory as would I. As a human being, I have an innate need for good to be rewarded and evil to be punished. I want those who have damaged or taken the lives of others to be held accountable and made to pay for it, whether the life of one child was harmed or it was the murder of six million. This is why I haven’t fully given up the idea that hell exists since a consequence for wrongdoing doesn’t seem completely contradictory to a God of grace; not if the punishment leads in time to them being restored to wholeness and reconciled back into the presence of God. Even though in my flesh I want those who cause suffering to suffer, given what I know to be true about the grace of God that’s been extended to me, I’m working to come to terms with the idea that even the most vile and depraved along with the most righteous and pure will all return to God. Shoulder to shoulder we will stand. Equal. Made clean.

So this is my excessively long answer to “Will I go to hell because I’m gay?”

No. You won’t go to hell for being gay because being gay isn’t a sin.

No. You won’t got to hell because God’s love and grace would never allow it. God’s love will never fail you even when you wonder if you’ve failed God.

And for any who need this disclaimer I want you to understand that what I’ve written here is what I believe, not what I think you should believe. I’m just one Christian expressing my beliefs and in stating them I’m not saying this is the only way to believe. I’m only being honest to what rings most true for me as I continue to work out my own faith which in the end rests firmly in Christ and in the God who sent Him.

Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet. We shall see that there never was any problem. And more than once, that impression which I can’t describe except by saying it’s like the sound of a chuckle in the darkness. The sense that some shattering and disarming simplicity is the real answer. C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

The problem is that waiting for the real answer until the sweet by and by comes at the cost of needless suffering in this life for far too many. To wake up each morning and fear  you’re going to hell unless you expend all your emotional and spiritual energy denying who you fully are sounds like hell without a need for dying. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200.00. Go directly to hell. Do not die. Do not fully live.

And from where I sit it sounds like nothing short of hot flames and sulfur-tainted air to face the death of a child and be “comforted” with the well-meaning assurance that God has allowed it to happen for a greater purpose, or to be told God must have a reason after being given the diagnosis that a debilitating terminal disease has invaded your body. Spare the purpose and give me my child back! Keep the disease and the reason and let me live!

The pain behind all these very true to life human experiences of suffering comes down to, as C.S. Lewis experienced through the dying and death of his beloved wife, our contradictory notions. We know what we are experiencing in the moment. We’re living it, breathing it, feeling it; and we know what we believe about who God is and what God can do and at times the two smash head-long into one another and leave us either doubting what’s right before our eyes or doubting in the existence of a God who truly loves us and has our best interest at heart.

I don’t know what the chuckle in the darkness came to be for C.S. Lewis but I can tell you what it is for me, and I’m so convinced that I have this one right that I’m willing to tether my entire life on it even before having it confirmed before being measured for my form fitting white robe with matching feathered wings.  The chuckle in the darkness, the real answer that will shatter all our questions is….oh come on….say it with me….the love of God.

What do we continue to muck up the most one true thing? What is this human need we have to complicate it, burying such a priceless radiant treasure under the murky mire of Christian beliefs and notions that repeatedly weigh the scales on the side of human agency rather than on the side where Divine Love and Grace reside? Honestly, there are days I just don’t get it and this is one of those days.

Everything we believe, however long we’ve believed it, however strongly we believe it, however sure we are that we have it right must, absolutely must be held up to the lens of God’s love if we have any chance of knowing anything at all in this life and experiencing any deep sense of peace. How I understand the stories and teaching of the Scriptures, how I view suffering in this life, what I believe of the life that follows this one, what I think God requires of me, how I comprehend who God is in character and in relationship with me, how God sees me, how God values me, how God judges me and everything else.  Every speck of an idea I have of what it means to faithfully walk the path of Jesus must be held up to close examination through the lens of God’s love and should any belief I value or idea I hold as true to the Christian faith conflict with or tarnish by a single shade the perfect love of God then the other thing must change but never never the unconditional love and extravagant grace of God.

For far too long and for far too many when a conflict has arisen between traditional Christian teaching and the love of God, it’s been the love of God that’s been compromised and cheapened, if it was ever considered at all. When that happens we run the risk of ending up with a God who would make a lousy parent. I mean seriously, we call God our Heavenly Father and yet if my earthly father had ever reflected the kind of parent that God is often made out to be, I would have either run away from home or been removed by Family and Social Services. Think about it. What kind of parent would permanently disown their child for breaking the rules of the household whether they were broken in ignorance or in willful disobedience? For crying out loud, there are serial murderers on death row whose parents visit them in prison and yet we live with the idea that we’ve given our lives over to a God who should we error will cast us into eternal torment before returning to the party in heaven surrounded by his good children. And what would any of us think of a father who stands in a corner while his child is being tortured at the hands of others without doing everything in his power to intervene? What would we have to say about a mother who provides ample food and protection for her daughter while allowing her son to live out in the cold starving to death? Both of these would appall us, and yet some Christians espouse a concept of God that’s even more negligent and cruel.

Please hear me on this. I’m not saying throwing out everything you believe and hold dear to your faith. What I am suggesting is that you hold each belief up to the lens of God’s love and ask, “How does what I believe about this reflect upon the love of God?” and “How is God’s love seen here?” I’m saying that before we respond to someone elses painful questioning of why me? or why now? we ask ourselves how the words we would speak to them would exude the infinite, matchless love of God rather than offering a familiar answer that rings empty in the soul of the one who is suffering more than we might ever know.

I don’t know what doing such a thing will do in your own life but in mine, it brought about a monumental shift in my theology that’s taken place over a number of years. Some beliefs remained the same, others shifted to encompass a wider understanding and a few were abandoned altogether. And still, it’s a work in progress. It always will be because I’m a slower learner who has a lot of questions remaining.

Re-evaluating faith is for some a scary proposition. When faith has always been central to your life, there’s a fear of looking too closely and questioning too much, but if I can, let me offer you this bit of comfort if you can take it as such. When the love of God is the litmus test for what you believe, all that you’re risking is failing on the side of love. The worst you can do is give the love of God more credit than it deserves, conclude than it reaches farther than it really does or fail to take into account some pre-existing conditions to the unconditional love of God.

If I’m going to be wrong then I’d rather be wrong in thinking too much of the love and grace of God than too little of it.

But then, that’s me.

And by the way, the title of this post expresses the God that’s sometimes communicated through our contradictory notions but not the God who really is; and certainly not the God I worship and adore.

That’s how I think we should begin 2010; by letting go of investing all our time, energy, and attention toward reconciling our sexuality or opposing the churches condemnation of homosexuality or fighting a world that seems set at odds against equality for all people, and that we instead lose ourselves to the bigger spiritual questions of God that in the end will be what leads us each to places of peace and assurance in all the other matters of life that concern us. – Anita Cadonau-Huseby in Turning Our Questions to Questions of God

I know. There’s something a little weird about someone who quotes themselves but then again that’s only slightly weirder than someone referring to themselves as someone as though they’re talking about someone other than themselves. Did you follow that? Me either. I say we give up on making a seamless transition from the last post to this one and just jump in with both feet and hopefully the rest will follow.

As Christians first and then as queer second, we spend a whole lot of our time and energy tied up in knots about God’s opinion of us. What does God think of me? Is God disappointed in me? Am I pleasing to God? Is God irked at me? Am I in big trouble? Is God grinning or grimacing in my direction? Am I doing enough, giving enough, serving enough, sacrificing enough? The church is full of folks caught up in a mindset that they need to be doing more of one thing or less of another thing to be holy and righteous enough to earn God’s favor. You don’t have to be queer to struggle with those questions. We just have a whole other scope of questions to wonder about. Is being queer and accepting that truth about my life an offense to God? Does God delight in the love I share with my partner or is God sickened by it? Does God hate me? If God disapproves of me being gay will God send me to hell? Has God allowed me to have cancer because I’m a lesbian?

I’m not making up those questions off the top of my head for dramatic effect. These questions are just a sampling of questions that have been sent to me over the years from GLBTQ men, women, and youth who are in spiritual and emotional agony, trying so hard to do the right thing and to be the right people to please the God they so deeply love. And fear. Not with our God is an awesome God reverential fear but fear as in scared to death and shaking in their boots fear. Waiting, just waiting for God to strike them down, punish them, cast them aside, wipe God’s holy hands of them, and turn God’s equally holy backside on them. And is it any wonder given how the church in God’s name has done it to them over and over again?

But returning to the questions people are struggling with, including the questions you carry in your own heart, there seems to me to be an implied assumption in all of them that lies just under the surface of the words, and that assumption is this; that the answer to every question hinges on the human side of things. In other words, the action of God is nothing more than a response to our actions or attractions. Whatever God will do is ordained by me. However God will respond is in my power to control. These questions that in content are primarily concerned with God’s potential response to us are questions that seem to rest entirely on the human action in the equation.  If I do this, will God hate me? If I am this, will God be disappointed? If I, if I, if I….will God, will God, will God? The outcome to every question is entirely dependent on God’s response to our behavior, our sexual orientation, our failings, our righteousness, and our sin but I’m here to argue that nothing could be farther from the truth.

A child wanting to surprise their parent by setting the breakfast table accidentally spills a bottle of milk on the kitchen floor. Their parent enters the room, sees the spilled milk on the floor and wipes up the milk with a paper towel while assuring the child that accidents happen. The parent enters the room, sees the spilled milk on the floor and slaps the child across the face and calls the child a clumsy fool. The parent enters the room, sees the spilled milk on the floor and laughs. Or screams. Or comforts. Or rages. Or hugs the child. Or hits the child. There could be a thousand different parental responses to spilled milk on the floor and all of them would hinge solely on the character and virtue, or the lack there of, of the parent. The child who spilled the milk has no say in the parent’s response. The parent will do as the parent will do independent of the child.

We are the child. God is the parent. Whether we drop the milk bottle or carry it to the table without spilling so much as a smidge matters little to how our heavenly parent will respond to us because God’s relationship to us and how God chooses to respond to us is held singularly within the character of who God is.

That’s all I’m saying and even as I say it I know it’s too simple for some to believe. For whatever reason we need things to be more complicated, and if I’m sounding too abstract then I offer as evidence what we’ve done with the Good News. We’ve spent 2000 years tangling it’s simple message of divine love (not to be confused with it’s easy message) in doctrines, dogma, theologies, and bullet point statements of belief suitable for framing in the church narthex.

Here’s what I can tell you after 53 years of walking, stumbling, and crawling along the path of Christian faith. God will be God. God will do as God will do. God will be who God will be. And to that end, God isn’t waiting on my next move to give or withhold love to me. God isn’t watching over my actions, words, and thoughts today to decide whether tomorrow God will bless or curse, reject or accept me. No. Today as it was yesterday and as it will be tomorrow God is acting out of the core of God’s being toward me and toward all people and at God’s core is Love. God is Love and that one truth alone determines everything. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. Every question, every answer, every decision, and every eternity are held up in this one thing; that God is many things but above it all and through it all, God is Love.

We’ve all probably said it a thousand times. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love.

We’ve committed scripture passages to memory that affirm it. We’ve sung hymns and songs about it. We might even adhere it on a bumper sticker to the back end of our car or default to it when we can think of nothing else to say to someone in need of comfort and hope, but now I think it’s time we really talk about what it means.

God is Love.

Chill on that for a couple days then swing back over this way.

This week I unveiled my personal blog,  The Passionate Plate: Savoring Life in Small Bites, which focuses on three areas of interest to me: Food and Health (Savoring), Spirituality and Faith (Saviouring), and Our Adventures at Home and on the Road (Savouring). I hope you stop by sometime. Oh, who am I kidding?! I want you come by all the time! Bookmark me. Tag me in your RSS feed. Plan your days around my posts. Add your comments. Pass the word to your friends. Come and see me. I need you. I’m co-dependent.

But seriously, one of the reasons I’ve gone ahead and created a personal blog where I can yammer away is because I’ve been concerned that I’ve muddied the original purpose of SisterFriends with posting a few too many things from my life that have little to nothing to do with being gay and Christian. The intention of SisterFriends-Together is to provide a place where queer folks can be encouraged in their faith and where those who are struggling with their sexuality can find a place of safety to ask the questions, share their fears or hopes, and have the chance to consider a different voice in the conversation on the Bible and homosexuality than what’s often held up as the only true Christian understanding. SisterFriends is here to witness through the lives of countless gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people (I’m only one of them) that yes, you can be GLBTQ and a Christian and you can be assured that God’s love for you is unchanging and unending no matter what your race, gender, sexual orientation, past mistakes,  present circumstances, or whatever. On the day you were born God entered into a full-blown love relationship with you and that relationship will continue on beyond your final breath on this earth. Please take seriously the Word that, “Nothing will ever separate you from the love of God.” Take it seriously and take it to heart. Own it.

Whew. Okay. As I was saying….

Rather than jumping around on SisterFriends between the message of God’s love and reporting on the best bowl of pasta I’ve ever had in my life, my aim is to keep SisterFriends for those conversations that pertain specifically to being queer and being Christian and when I say “queer” I’m not limiting that word to folks of the rainbow persuasion but to anyone, whatever their orientation, who feels in some way different, outcast or on the edges of mainstream Christianity. Those who have been wounded by the church, judged harshly by other Christians, or had their personal faith development move them to reflect on God and what it means to be Christian in the world that doesn’t always square with the status quo.

This doesn’t mean I’m not going to be sharing stories from my life. I’ll continue to do so because just as I suspect it is for you, what happens in my day to day life and all that I encounter among people and experience in those moments when God shows up is what most informs my faith, my hope, and my convictions. I also believe that the best thing, and in the end maybe the only thing that any of us have to give one another is our lives, in hardships and in glory. Please know that you teach, strengthen and encourage me through the simple act of living your life and I only wish to return the same to you. So I’ll share my life as openly as ever but I just want to stay focused on why we’re here instead of holding you a captive audience to my vacation photos. You can come over to The Passionate Plate for that and I hope you will. I hope you will not only because of my desperate need for attention but because I want those of you who have lost so much in coming out or fear losing so much when you do come out, to see through the simple act of living my life that as life has gone on for me, life will go on for you.

You can survive the rough spots of coming out with all the losses and rejection and find incredible joy again. There are churches that will welcome you and your ministry. There are life-long friends who will return to you and new friendships that will come to you. A day may come when you and your family will forge a new relationship made possible by a God who specializes in reconciling hearts to one another. There’s every chance in the world for you to share your life and love with another human being who will cherish you as much as you cherish them. And if you open your heart and your eyes you will see God show up day in and day out in acts of such grace and goodness that your knees will go weak. You might not believe any of this now but let what God has done and is doing in my life and the lives of others witness to you that there is hope for you who are hopeless and joy for you whose joy has been lost or taken captive.

There I go again.

So SisterFriends will always be here and a-n-y-o-n-e looking for a place to explore their faith and how God is calling them to embody that faith in the world is welcome here and it is to their longing to embrace themselves in their wholeness, to experience God’s love in the center of their being, and to learn and grow into a Christian life of faith that is most true for them that SisterFriends is here and will continue to be here until Grace in it’s full glory is revealed and then some.

[My intention for the time being is to add one new post here per week though in time I hope to be posting twice a week once I get a rhythm back to my writing which was shattered this summer.]

Anyway, here’s something I’ve been wanting to share with you . . .

During the week that followed my surgery I had the alarm clock on my iPhone set to ring every three hours, day and night, as a reminder to take my pain medication. It was annoying to have it go off during the night but when given the choice to be awakened from sleep by a ringing alarm or throbbing pain in my stomach, groin, arms, and legs, I’m going to consistently opt for the alarm. That’s just how clever of a girl I am.

Even after following the same routine for an entire week, when the alarm would go off during the middle of the night, I’d wake up with a start and momentarily be disoriented about where I was and what was going on. I normally don’t wake up all that clear headed to begin with but add in a hearty dose of pain medication and I turn into a drooling semi-comatose cotton head.

But after a few “deer in headlights” seconds I’d remember. I was in our living room in a rented hospital bed. I’d just had surgery to remove excess skin that remained following my ten year journey to lose nearly 170 pounds.

I’d remember all that but rather than having those memories clear up my confusion, I’d end up feeling all the more unhinged and anxious because I couldn’t believe that any of it had really happened. The evidence was all there in the creaking hospital bed and my aching body but still, I doubted reality.

I’d longed for all this so much of my life and had given up hope so many times that it would ever be more than an unfulfilled fantasy of mine that now that it had come to pass I simply couldn’t take it in. There I would be, in the middle of the night, covered in suture tape and gauze, my hands passing back and forth over my now flat belly (don’t even get me started on my adorable new belly button!), and in a whisper I’d be chanting to myself, “This is real, this is real, this is real.” I’d lay there saying it over and over again until at last the truth would sink into me and when it did, each and every time, without exception, I’d begin weeping and my chanting would turn to a prayer, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

I’ve found myself doubting reality at other times besides the middle of the night when doubting seems to come more readily. When I see my reflection in a store window I do a double-take to be certain it’s my reflection. When I hold up a pair of new jeans fresh from the dryer I genuinely can’t believe they’re mine or that I could ever fit inside them even though I wore them them just the day before. When I step on the bathroom scales and see a number that hasn’t been there since I was in grade school I question the accuracy of the scales until I step off and back on again and the same number appears. And often during the day, I say to myself, to my wife, or my God, “I can’t believe this is my life and I get to live it,” and when I say that I’m not just referring to the size of my jeans but all the gifts of life that fill my days.

There are exceptions to every rule and to every saying, like the one that goes, “If something is too good to be true, then it probably is.” My recent experience is an exception. I’m at a healthy weight in a body that at long last fits me. As hard as it is for me to believe my dream has come true.

This has all caused me wonder what other things there might be that I, that we, don’t believe that are just as real. What other facts in the here and now have we diminished by relegating them to being nothing more than dreams we wish could be true but might never be? What else falls under the category of being too good to be true but in truth really is?

• I am a beloved child of God in whom God delights.
• I am held in the presence of God every moment of my life.
• I am fully forgiven.
• I am worthy of being loved.
• My sexuality, along with every other aspect of my being, is a gift from God.
• My life is precious.
• I have God-given talents and gifts that can bring life and healing into the world.

In faith, all these are true and present realities. God’s love for you is as real as the chair on which you sit. God’s presence is as near to you as your own beating heart. That you are fully forgiven is as certain as the setting and rising of the sun each day. All this is what our faith has taught us. All this is part of the message that Jesus came to bring us. So why do we continue to struggle in believing what is true? How often do we question and doubt that it’s all too good to be true, that it can’t be true because we want it too much, or that it can’t be true because if it were we wouldn’t even know how to receive such a good and wonderful reality into our lives? Why is it that we can hold a thousand negative, condemning thoughts in our heads while we continue to struggle in holding onto a few life-giving overarching truths in our hearts?

I’m beginning to think that maybe we all might benefit by setting our alarm clocks a little more often so that when they go off we can consider whatever truth it is that keeps slipping through our fingers and chant in a whisper to ourselves “This is real, this is real, this is real, ” and that we would keep on chanting until the truth of God’s love and of our worth soaks through to the core of our being, so that our chanting and our lives would become a prayer of “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

What truth is the reason that has your alarm clock ringing?

Here’s the thing. I’m in one of those reflective contemplate my belly button moods. Where have I come from? What am I doing? Where am I going? At the end of my life what will have most mattered? What have I done today to live into my greatest passions?

Those questions, and a thousand and one others at last count, color the most private corners of my life lived alone in my heart with only the presence of God for company, in my relationship with my beautiful bride who never fails to woo me all over again every day, and in the life of ministry I could never escape even if I wanted to which I never will as long as God remains God and I remain me.

One of the things I’m thinking a lot these is this place and by this place I mean right here. SisterFriends Together. I don’t think anyone knows how much I care about SisterFriends and what a big a part it is of my every day life.  Even when I’m not blogging or replying to emails or participating in the forum my heart is here, and the more of you I come to know and the more of your stories I hear, the more I love this place because you make this place real and you make this place matter. One of the things in life I’m most passionate about is this online community because I understand it as nothing less than something created and woven together by the heart of God. I have a personal blog and this is not it. This is a place of ministry and a jumping off place for a very unique Christian community and I’m just privileged enough to be part of what God is doing here.

Having said all that I struggle at times with feelings that I let those of you down who spend much time here. I worry that I don’t blog enough. I worry that I don’t address gay issues enough. I worry that the focus is too often about me and too little about the concerns and cares of your life and the outrageous love and grace of our incredible God. I struggle with my humanity and the attached ego enough that I compare what I’m doing here with other blogs I personally follow and struggle with waves of paralyzing inadequacy. Not often but often enough to annoy me.

And so it’s in times like this I have to come back to center and ask myself what it is that really matters in my life and in what I’m trying to do here and in both areas the answer is the same. What matters most in my life is the love of God and what matters most here is that everyone of you who wanders by this place takes away the one message that God loves you. In your bones. Way deep. So deep you never need to wonder again. Never question. Never doubt. So deep you can move forward every day of your life with the absolute assurance that you are God’s beloved. No matter what others say. No matter how harshly others judge. No matter what you’ve done or how far you are from who you think you’re suppose to be. I hope you can take God’s love in so completely that it transforms your entire life and gives you a new vision of the world, of yourself, and of your enemies who God loves just as equally as God loves you. I want you to know what matters more to God than anything else in this world is you, that there is nothing more beautiful in all of creation to God than you, and that the very angels who stand before God’s presence have only one unfulfilled longing of their hearts; to experience the same intimacy in relationship with God that God has right now with you.

I want you to know the love of God because I know what it’s like to question whether it can really be true and I know what it’s like to have it written in indelible ink across my heart. Though I’ve heard about the love of God since I was a child and though I’ve felt that love embrace me on and off throughout the years I’m coming to a new season in my life where the love of God has been steadily sinking into the marrow of my bones. I’m in awe of the depth of such love; so much so that sometimes it leaves me speechless and yes, even blog-less at times.

So here I am, a Christian and a lesbian, living my life awed by the love and grace of God and the more I come to know that love in bits and pieces, the greater my desire and burden and joy it is to share it with you. So that’s what I’m doing here and that’s what matters. Does God love you as a gay, bisexual, transgendered or queer man or woman? Yes. Does God love you with a past filled with mistakes and a today filled with human failings and imperfections? Yes.

How can I be so sure the answer is yes when I don’t even know who you are or what you’ve done? I know without reservation the answer is Yes, God loves you because I know the answer is Yes, God loves me.

A rabbi gathered his students around him one day and asks, “How do you know when the night is almost past and day is about to break?”

“Rabbi, is it when you see a tree in the far distance and you can tell that it’s a tree?” ventured a young student.

“No,” answered the rabbi.

“Rabbi, is it when you see a dog coming just over the hill and can recognize that it’s a dog?” guessed another.

“No,” the rabbi said again. “It is when you look in the face of every man and every woman, and see that they are your brother and your sister. When you can do that then you know the night is nearly gone and a new day is about to dawn.”

Sometimes the differences between us are so great that instead of just finding ourselves traveling on different roads in different directions, we end up on the same road bound on a collision course with one another. At such times the impact jars us into  forgetting what we hold most fundamentally true at the center of our being and faith. We forget that as human beings living on the same planet we are all bound and connected to one another in ways both seen and unseen. We forget that every human life without exception is of incalculable worth. We forget that everyone we see, those we love as equally as those we despise are rooted in the same Spirit and born of the same God. We forget because sometimes remembering asks too much of us. When we’re fed up or worn down to the bone we don’t want to remember that every man and woman is our brother and sister because that would lead us to do everything in our power to treat one another with human dignity and to extend understanding, forgiveness, compassion and love, even in those times when the other does not want, will not receive, or will never return what we have extended ourselves to give.

I’ve seen much in recent years coming from the church and directed at the church that’s been heartbreaking at best. It’s not only on the issue of homosexuality that we find ourselves opposing one another as humans and as Christians but if we were ever forced to choose a single issue as the paradigm for how divisive our conflicts can become and how bloody the battlefields can flow, homosexuality would come in head and shoulders above all the others. In no other conversation we engage in should we be more committed to being mindful in our dealings with one another and yet all the symptoms of massive forgetfulness are glaringly present among us and the other. And when I say us, I mean we who are GLBTQ Christians and we who are straight Christians who believe homosexuality to be sin and when I say the other I mean we who are GLBTQ Christians and we who are Christians who believe homosexuality to be sin.

We are all us. We are all the other. We all forget.

• We know we’ve forgotten when we’re convinced we possess the whole truth so that we have nothing to learn from the other.

As GLBTQ Christians we have nothing to learn from the ex-gay or the conservative Christian or anyone who does anything but fully support, affirm and embrace the life, ministry, and relationships of gays and lesbians. As evangelical Christians we have nothing to learn from the gay or lesbian Christian and their witness of faith as long as they continue to practice what we know to be sin. We have the real truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and the other is nothing more than uninformed, misled, or deceived.

• We know we’ve forgotten when we stop listening.

Because we have the whole truth in our back pocket there’s no need to listen to the other. Oh sure. We make every appearance of listening to them. We posture ourselves into listen position. We become silent. We lean forward. We look intently at the other and even throw in the nod of a head to emphasis what a good listener we are, but all the while our external body is clothed in signs of listening, our mind is racing to construct an eloquent rebuttal that will begin at the first pause in the conversation, a rebuttal that often has nothing to do with responding to what was just spoken but everything to do with what we want to be heard by the other.

• We know we’ve forgotten when we presume to know the others motives and intentions better than they do.

When the other says or does something we don’t understand and that makes no sense to us; when certain actions they engage in don’t seem to mesh with the words they proclaim, we seldom pause to wonder what’s going on with them or to ask them directly why it is they believe what they believe and even if we asked and paused long enough to listen, when all is said and done we’d just as likely tell them they’re wrong, that their motive wasn’t the love they profess guiding them but lust or intolerance. What they have to say in their own defense is rendered invalid in our assumptions. They are filled with hate. They are justifying their sin. They are motivated by lust and self. They are driven by ignorance and fear. They are intolerant. They have an agenda. We presume and they presume and in all the presuming we come to believe the worst in each other without ever coming to know their heart and the joys and fears and faith of the one who stands on the other side.

• We know we’ve forgotten when we ignore the individual in preference to the generalizations and stereotypes.

It can require too much effort to deal with the other side as a collective of individuals and to invest ourselves in hearing their side of the story and what has led them as individuals to believe what they believe and stand for what they stand. In the ongoing conflict we fall into a rhetoric of the masses, referring to the other as though they were a monolithic entity without heart and soul and spirit. The gays. The church. Those gays. Those conservative Christians. We make blanket characterizations and sweeping generalizations of the other, even as we grimace under each slanderous stereotype that’s hurled in our direction. We are all the pot calling the kettle black. At time we are all the one walking through life pointing out the splinters in our neighbor’s eye while the log jammed in our own gets more deeply lodged with every foot fall.

• We have forgotten when we label and name-call.

Once the generalizations and stereotypes are in place the name-calling ensues. They are homophobes, bigots, and haters. They are perverts, sinners, and sodomites. I have many faults (the emphasis on many is mine) only name-calling is not one of them. Maybe because I was one of those kids on the elementary playground who suffered the brunt of name-calling. Fatso. Four-eyes. Slowpoke. Maybe because I went out of my way in high school to avoid the hallway where the mean kids puffed up their own egos by verbally demeaning anyone who wasn’t quite as hip, slick and cool as they saw themselves to be. For whatever reason, I have no tolerance for name-calling on any side of any issue. Name-calling ends any chance at understanding. It closes every door on dialogue. It never builds up. It only belittles and destroys. It wounds the soul and spirit both of the one who hurls the name and the one who gets smacks in the face by it. Even if they don’t flinch at its impact, something has been taken from them and from us.

I’m not saying I don’t understand the pain, anger, and frustration that leads those of us who are GLBTQ Christians to name-calling. Sometimes the onslaught is so unrelenting in our pursuit of equality, the rhetoric so brutal and it’s consequences so tragic that there seems no outlet big enough to release our pain and indignation and so rather than turning to fist we turn to words. I get it. I understand it. But it doesn’t make it right. Not on either side. Ever. Not if we’re talking about Fred Phelps or Carrie Prejean or judges who find in favor of marriage equality or whatever queer most offends the sensitivities of the most non-gay affirming conservative Christian or political pundit.

When you look in the face of every man and every woman, and see that they are your brother and your sister…then you know the night is nearly gone and a new day is about to dawn.

Isn’t that what we all want? Don’t we really just want a new day to dawn upon this earth when all people are treated with dignity and every human being knows beyond a shadow of a doubt they are loved and worth that love? A day when the church swings open the doors to welcome everyone as their brother and their sister, giving no regard to the differences between them because all they can see is the grace of God and the love of Christ that embraces them all?

The only chance we have for such a new day dawning is if we stop forgetting what we really know in the marrow of our bones; that every man and woman is our brother and sister and our spirits are woven together within the fabric of the Spirit of God. If we could only practice mindfulness, being attentive to the Truth of the Spirit over the truth we each think that we alone possess.