The L Word
January 22, 2010
My apologies, yet again, for the two week drought between posts caused by a major time commitment to family along with my highly developed artistry at procrastination.
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.
Posted in Love and Grace
Sweet Hope Cookies
January 22nd, 2010 at 5:45 pm
So – we’re ‘Coming back to the heart of worship, where it’s all about You Jesus”?
“Forgive me Lord for thing that I’ve made it – it’s all about You”
(and forgive me please if I have some lyrics not quite right!)
Thank-you Anita – again again and again.
January 22nd, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Shar–> You got it close enough
Love that song myself.
January 22nd, 2010 at 6:04 pm
YES!! Amen Anita. Very nice. Beautifully and powerfully written. Thank you.
January 22nd, 2010 at 8:40 pm
Totally. I believed for years that it was Paul who said, “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”. But it wasn’t. It was Jesus. He knows how hard it is to live in a fleshly body and a Fallen world. He still chose to die for us 2,000 years ago before we had even begun our lives of sin! His response to our sin (no matter what that may be, cos sin is sin) is exactly that – HIS response. And yes, he loves each and every one of us more than we could ever comprehend.
Blessed beyond belief..
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:47 pm
I came across this post during the process of asking myself questions I hadn’t realized I was asking (if that makes any sense at all).
Namely, I wondered if God did, in fact, love me. Still. Now. Even now?
God is love. Why is this always so hard to believe???
Thank you for this post. It really is a beautiful thing!
January 23rd, 2010 at 3:05 pm
This is a wonderful post, and one I will think about on hard days.
Regarding Lisa’s comment above –> I find it interesting that your response/comment focused on the “flesh being weak” and humans “beginning our lives of sin.” While I certainly agree that as humans we sometimes (perhaps often) behave in ways that separate us from God (i.e. “sin”), I must say I am disturbed at how much some people and some segments of Christianity focus so much on “sin” as though that’s all humans do, as though we’re some sort of leftover garbage God one day took pity on. Well, I do believe God created us and I do not believe God creates junk. I also think it’s a mistake to put such emphasis on human “sinning” as the main event of our everyday activities. If we were to put more effort into seeing the GOOD in ourselves and in our brothers and sisters, we would much more easily be able to see GOD in us and in each other, thus focusing more on the Love that is God. Remember: what we focus on grows. And finally, I think it is very important to understand that God created us all with our own unique characteristics. So, for those of us who are gay, to be able to accept and delight in our God-given sexual orientation, and live and love responsibly with love in our hearts requires us to focus solely on God and not on the fears, misunderstandings and willful ignorance so often directed our way – from others and/or from our own conditioning.
Hopefully, working to focus on God and only God will help all of us find peace with the uniqueness in ourselves and with the diversity in this world.
January 23rd, 2010 at 5:42 pm
Hey Anita,
God is Love. Yes, and as the hymn goes… “and where true love is, God himself is there.”
For me this statement is golden:
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.
So, so true, sister-friend! I guess for me as a lesbian, the question hasn’t been so much about whether God will love me. I came to accept that God didn’t hate me when I choose life over death as a teenager.
I think what kept me from fully experiencing the depth of God’s love was the “church people” who would say that God didn’t accept my kind and would quote the same Bible passages over and over to prove their point. I believed that God accepted me: it was the church that I couldn’t count on. But as Paul notes in 1 Corinthians, we are many members and we are all members in one body of Christ. This includes all colors, genders, and sexual orientations. The more the church reflects the faces that exist in ‘the world’, the more the church starts to reflect the face of God. Just my opinion.
January 23rd, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Susan–> Ah, so true. I think one of the many benefits of being a gay Christian is coming to understand the painful reality that “the heart of God” and “the attitudes of the church” are often at odds rather than in harmony. In fact, history has shown us all too well that much has been said and done in God’s name by the church over the centuries that would seem diametrically opposed to the God of Jesus. As I said, it’s a painful lesson for each of us to learn, and yet it’s an important truth to learn as we grow into spiritual maturity. And just your opinion, is also my opinion
January 23rd, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Laura –> Beautifully said. I especially love “what we focus on grows.” Amen on that one and all the rest!
January 24th, 2010 at 7:15 am
Anita, yes, I understand that God is love and that no matter what I do His love stays. But what is my responsibility in this whole relationship? The child spilling the milk must surely after 100 spillages have learnt how to be more careful no matter how patient her parents had been? I also understand that you all have come to the conclusion that being gay is not sin and thats wonderful…but what if some of us still have that 1% of doubt…doesn’t even that 1% put us in the category of sinning, not because of the act, but the doubt thereof? Sorry, I am not trying to be a wet blanket, but trying to understand. Its only been 2 months since I was honest enough to myself to accept that I was gay and as much as I want to take everything you say and run with it, I need to ask these questions.
January 28th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Anut–> I don’t consider your comment to be a “wet blanket” at all. Yes, we do have responsibility in our relationship with God but again, I would argue that the deeper we understand and dwell on the love of God for us that the more our “responsibility” becomes our “desire and delight” and obedience becomes less painful sacrifice than an eager willingness on our part. I’ve spent many posts focused on our sexual orientation, the Bible and homosexuality, and being gay and a Christian, but for this time, my intention is simply to dwell on the love of God, because I honestly believe that when we center our lives in that love that the answers will come to whatever questions we have, and even if the questions remain we can live with them from a place of the peace and comfort that comes in knowing God’s love and grace endures and holds us. There is no divine ax held at our neck and no time limit on how much God will endure while we strive from a place of love, not fear, to earnestly follow God’s will as best we can understand it.
January 29th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Hi Sisters – thanks for your words Anita and Aunt thanks for your honesty – as you said it has only been 2 months for you. It has only been two years for me since I came out and I still struggle with my faith. My current faith struggle is that I believe in God and I know he is very big and I am very small and I am not really sure that humans can have a personal relationship with God. I think it’s crazy when I think this way because for so many years I have believed that we/I can have a personal relationship with the almighty but now I am not so sure.
Peace and Love to All.
February 8th, 2010 at 12:50 pm
This touched me so deeply.
Thank you.