Christian Comment Confusion

December 17, 2008

Every time a straight Christian blogger publishes a compassionate or affirming post on homosexuality their comment section goes whack with activity. Just ask Lindsey at [*!] Emphatic Asterisk, John at Suddenly Christian, Christian at Sharp Iron, or Adam at Pomomusings.

A recent example can be found over at Pomomusings where Adam Cleveland Walker posted this week on “The Bible and Homosexuality: Enough with the Bible Already!“  As I write this post Adam’s has already generated 136 comments. By the time I hit the publish button on this post that number is almost guaranteed to be higher. While I appreciate both the content and the honest reflection of what Adam shared in his post, what most intrigues me are the comments that followed that highlight the common patterns among comments that such a post will likely engender. Here are a few of the categories of comments I’ve noticed and a sample of each from the comment section of Adam’s recent post.

• Comments that express agreement and appreciation.

Thanks Adam, for your thoughts and for speaking such great wisdom into a field of land-mines and charred ground. The Church needs more people to make the case for homosexuality, the case for the radical inclusivity and never-ending merciful love of Jesus. – Wesley

• Comments that express disagreement in the conclusions of the writer but appreciation for their thoughtful reflection around the issue.

While I understand and fully appreciate your point, I guess I feel like there is a false dichotomy here. For much of this post, it feels like you’re asking people to have to choose either Scripture or our experience, but not both. Can we both study and follow the Bible AND see people as just that–people, not theoretical issues? Can we hold the two in tension, doing our best to live in a way that honors the person of Christ? I would like to think I’m trying to do that in my own life. I liked when you said that “Christians need to actually live out the love and compassion that Jesus exemplified in the scriptures.” That’s my thought exactly. – Joel

• Comments that offer further information and resources, sometimes in agreement and other times in opposition to the original blog.

Presbyterians Today has recently run a series of well written articles by a fellow who studied two different churches, one for and one against ordination. He argues that both groups have in fact based their argument on this issue not on scripture but on their experience…its just that the experience of one group is that they don’t have any experience. – Jim

• Comments that respectfully disagree with the blogger’s conclusion or their method for arriving there.

Adam, over the years, I have truly enjoyed your honest thinking, creative ideas and the talented ways that you express them. [...] Thank you for the continued thought that has led to further reading, deeper conversation, and soul-searching. Truly, I appreciate the post and the heart behind it and I feel that I understand the point that you are making. [...] That said, I do not agree with the conclusion. This grieves me because I know that hurts people, which in turn, hurts me. May the GLBT community (and everyone else) not consider me an enemy but a loving friend. You are in my prayers, conversations and conscience a great deal. On a side note and as previously mentioned by the many others, this is certainly one of my favorite parts of the emergent conversation – that we can disagree and still love.

• Comments that vehemently oppose the blogger’s conclusions.
  

  This post [...] is pure propaganda. The flaws are obvious in your argument. What is known of Jesus’ words are found only in the scripture. In fact Jesus and the scriptures are inseparable. Jesus and the apostles quoted the Tanakh (Law and the Prophets to the Hebrew impaired) profusely. Jesus emphatically asserted that He came to fulfill the Law not abolish it. The scriptures are clear; homosexuality is a sin, among other sins. Jesus never tolerated any sin. He told everyone He encountered “go and sin no more” The argument against the Bible is a fast-growing cancer in what calls itself the church. Without scripture you can make the Lord be anything you would like Him to be. – Chris P.

• Comments that reject both the blogger’s views along with their faith and Christian identity.
  

  Bottom line is that God discriminates. What you describe is not Christianity at all. It is a pagan moralism and a god made in your own image. – Jason

  Adam, I appreciate your candidness in this post. I would love for you to be this open in all your writings. It would make it much easier for people to recognize that you are not a Christian or a minister of the Gospel. As it is now, you likely deceive many people, most notably yourself. – Brandon

It’s this last group of Christians, those who feel comfortable and free to reject someone else’s faith based on a particular theological perspective that makes me spiritually woozy. I find it troubling on so many levels and I don’t think that will ever change no matter how many times I witness or experience it. I can’t get use to it even though I’ve met more than a few Christians in my life whose behavior reflected little of the life of Jesus as revealed in the Gospels and been acquainted with others online who exhibit incredible disrespect, rudeness, and arrogance with anyone they disagree with theologically. Among my archived emails are those from self-identified Christians who have called me a liar, a fool, a false prophet, and a pervert. Far beyond my amazement at those who hurl names are those who write to let me know that I obviously do not love, know, worship or follow Christ. Despite the audacity of such words it would never cross my mind to verbally reject the one saying them as a member of Christ’s body; not in person and not anonymously on their blog. If it sounds like I’m saying “I’m better than they are” that’s not at all where my heart is. It’s just that after years of being the target for such comments and watching the faith of others trashed like Adam and John I’m just no closer to understanding how it is that some Christians are able to be okay with lobing  such destructive and assumptive words at anyone else.

I don’t understand. I don’t understand how someone can encounter the grace of God in their own life and demonstrate so little for others. I don’t understand how certain individuals can hold gay people under the fire for the Levitical prohibition of “man shall not lie with man as with a woman” while seemingly ignoring or excusing away countless admonitions to “judge not least you be judged,” “call no man a fool,” and “love your enemies and do good to them.” I don’t understand how Paul’s teaching to not associate with sinners can trump the life of Jesus who repeatedly sat at table-fellowship with sinners as well as those judged unclean (by vocation or ethnicity) by the Pharisees.

Above all else, it makes no sense to me how anyone standing within conservative evangelical Christianity can reject the faith of another when the foundational premise of being a Christian from their perspective (and mine) is established in a personal relationship with God through Christ. The language we use to fill that all out theologically will be different from believer to believer but that Christian identity begins in a personal relationship has long been the understanding of Christians from the early church on. A Christian might argue with another individual’s theological conclusions but to pass judgment on their personal relationship with God, as well as their love, heart, desire, and devotion to God isn’t within their ability to do as an outsider to the relationship. Yes, I can observe the visible fruit of a life (Galatians 5) but I will never intimately know all there is to know about a personal relationship that I’m not a part of, including that of the Divine-Human relationship.

I don’t understand and maybe I never will. Maybe it’s not even important that I do. Maybe it’s enough that what I find reprehensable behavior in another Christian, I never do, even to that one. Rather than trying to make sense of how someone standing in the Christian faith can reject the faith experience of another, I’d do far better to tend to my relationship with God and how I’ll live out my days and engage in the world as someone who stands confidently and gratefully in my identity with Christ. And when others judge me, and they will just as they’ll just you, I need to remember that it’s of no consequence. All that matters is the One who shares in a personal relationship with you and I; the only One who knows our heart and love firsthand.

Oh and by the way, over at Adam’s post, the comments have reached 145. I told you so.

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Adam’s post drew the rejection of some because he not only dares to state an affirming position toward GLBTQ people but suggests that there are some within the Christian community who have elevated the Bible to a thing to be worshiped. By the way, while I wouldn’t agree with Adam that the Bible needs to be put on the shelf by anyone, I would argue that the Bible isn’t the beginning, middle and ending of God’s revelation to us (which I believe is what Adam is suggesting as well). Instead I uphold the Westleyan Quadrilateral that argues the Scriptures, the traditional history of the church, human reasoning, and personal experience are four sources that lead the believer to draw theological conclusions. This method of theological reflections stands in constrast to religious fundamentalism and conservatism which elevates the Scriptures above all else and more often than rejects personal experience and human reasoning entirely as being unreliable because of human desire, will, and sin.

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Posted in Christian Living and Faith, Christian Unity