The Gap Between God and Gays

On February 18, I was pleased to host the film premiere of our daughter's documentary entitled Testimony. The project represents the culmination of several years' work, and it features a number of gay men and women from San Francisco, Seattle, and Little Rock. They are from all religious denominations including Jews and Christians. They are African American, Anglo, and Hispanic. All conclude in their testimonies that it is possible to be both religious and gay. The primary impediment for their acceptance comes from their church doctrines which teach that being gay is a choice, not a reflection of genetics.

I often wonder how we can bridge this seeming gap between God and gays, or more implicitly between church doctrine and gays. I believe that a careful study of the context of both the Old Testament and the New Testament might shed light on the dilemma. If one looks into the original Greek translation of the Bible, he or she finds that references to homosexuals were always in the context of temple idolatry. These references were never made in the context of a committed relationship between two people. We also have to remember the point of view from which Christianity arose. The Bible tells the story of the history and religion of the Hebrews. In their culture, it was vital to increase their numbers through procreation. Today, however, such reasoning would not seem to apply.

Even from the teaching I have experienced in a very conservative Christian environment through the years, there is a strong emphasis on security of the believer; in other words, when one comes into the kingdom of God, he or she will never be lost again. If we believe that to be true in conservative churches, how hard is it to believe there should be no gap between God and gays. The gap comes from the application of church doctrine based upon its interpretation only of the Scripture. Jesus never spoke of the issue; He simply taught that we should all love God and love each other. Will we ever be able to apply His words to our world?

Dustin's Alpha and Omega

Some friends went out last night with my husband and me to see the latest Dustin Hoffman film entitled Last Chance Harvey. The plot centers around a man at the end of his career (he is about to be fired) and a lonely middle-aged woman who has never found love. Since it is a date movie, all turns out well. Throughout the movie I kept thinking about the circle of life as represented by Hoffman's career choices for the past forty years.

Hoffman first came to the world's attention most likely for his role as Benjamin in the late 1960's. The film was, of course, The Graduate. We all remember the famous scene around the pool when Benjamin is advised to go into plastics for his career. We remember his subsequent angst throughout the movie where he is doing is best to avoid the conformity of the previous generation.

In Last Chance Harvey, the main character, Harvey Shine, struggles with the lost relationship between his daughter and him, his feeling useless and irrelevant in the family after a divorce, his loneliness, his lack of creativity in the job he currently has (writing music for commercials), and his seemingly lost dream to become a jazz pianist.

Hoffman's roles in these movies seem to also reflect the same angst that my generation felt (and feels) so perfectly. My husband and I were in our Alpha 20's when The Graduate was released and students at the University of Mississippi. All the world seemed to lie before us, and we thought the degrees we would earn would serve as a panacea for all of life's problems. We were idealistic about our upcoming careers in public administration and education and believed we could truly make a difference.

Now in the Omega of our lives, we like the Hoffman character in Last Chance Harvey realize life can be full of disappointment. We have lived--as many fellow Americans--with financial struggles, career downsizing in recession, and the ups and downs of our children's lives. We have also lived with many joys--fairly extensive travel opportunities, the free time to be as creative as we choose to be, the birth of three wonderful grandchildren, and unlimited time to enjoy the beauty of nature. All in all life has been good, and we thank Hoffman for showing us in his work how to live.

Gun Toting Deacons

Say it ain't so, Arkansas! The state legislature has evidently decided to consider a Concealed-Carry law that would allow church members to take their guns to church. While there have been a small number of church shootings in the news in recent years, it seems wrong to me to allow concealed weapons in church. Why not go with a general warning that no guns are allowed on the premise? But--you might argue--people who have an intent to wound or kill others would not be dissuaded by a simple sign.

As Christians have been doing for a number of years, we need to ask ourselves once more, "What would Jesus do?" Jesus' life was one of pacifism, never violence. He is the one, you remember, who taught us to turn the other cheek, to go the extra mile, and most importantly, to "resist not evil." He is the one who did not choose to call ten thousands angels to His side before He was crucified in order to rescue Him from His fate. He did not ask His disciples to pick up swords, as Peter tried to do, to protect Him.

Fighting violence with violence is never a solution to a problem in my opinion. I do confess, however, that I have not always been consistent with this lofty view and have loaded our household gun whenever I have feared violence in the past. My stepfather bought the gun for me, a German Luger, when I was a young woman living in downtown Wichita a few years before the BTK killer would murder numerous people there.

That confession made, I still have great difficulty seeing how gun toting deacons will make me feel any safer as I attend my church in downtown Little Rock. The whole idea seems to be an oxymoron.

The Suffering Jesus

As I completed the novel Hannah Coulter this week by Wendell Berry, I read a paragraph that startled me with both its simple and profound meaning. It reads, "You can't give yourself over to love for somebody without giving yourself over to suffering . . . It is this body of our suffering that Christ was born into, to suffer it Himself and to fill it with light, so that beyond the suffering we can imagine Easter morning and the peace of God . . . . "

I know that for myself I sometimes forget that we don't have to suffer alone through our illnesses, natural tragedies, or financial problems. Christ's humanity, and humility, allows Him to suffer with us in order to imagine a new day where there will no more suffering. Just today I walked over two miles on one of the neighborhood paths in the crisp air and sunlight of a late January morning. Arkansas, our state, was hit by one of the worst ice storms in years early in the week, forcing thousands of people to lose their power (our house in Farmington was one of those). Many people had to flee to shelters for food and warmth; several people died because of the storm either while out in the elements or in their homes trying to keep warm with generators or fireplaces. Yet the promise of today is for sunshine and temperatures in the mid-sixties. It is almost as if Easter has arrived early with its promise of a resurrected spring soon to arrive.

God tells us that our hearts are not to be troubled by the problems that beset the world. He will, after a long day's journey into night, bring light once again.

Falling Into the Future

My sister called me yesterday to explore our common memories of childhood. Evidently, she is reading a book by Beth Moore entitled Believing God, and she was working on a memory grid, dividing her memories into ten year periods. Since Judy is nearly to the biblical three score and ten year period of her life, she will have almost seven grids of memories. The whole experience of delving into memories reminds me again of the book Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry that I just completed reading. The narrator makes the following observation early on in the novel:

"When you are old you can look back and see yourself when you were young. It is almost like looking down from Heaven. And you see yourself as a young woman, just a big girl really, half awake to the world. You see yourself happy, holding in your arms a good decent, gentle, beloved young man with the blood keen in his veins, who before long is going to disappear, just disappear, into a storm of hate and flying metal and fire. And you don't know it."

I love the way this passage communicates a sense of time, both past and current. In the case of the narrator, her husband Virgil is to go missing in action in World War II shortly after they were married.

I guess we would all, if we are honest, like to have a view of the future when we are young. Judy related to me that one of her early memories was of our father who, one night for a joke on our mother, put on her pink nightgown to make everyone laugh. Judy reports that I laughed and laughed. I appreciated her memory because I have no memory of the incident myself. I often regret that all of my memories of my father are negative--including many drunken scenes throughout my teen and young adult years. As a small child, when I was laughing at him wearing mother's gown, I had no idea of what the future would hold for me: divorce of my parents, my mother dissolving more and more into clinical depression as the years went along, moving into my grandmother's home for five years as a teenager, and so on.

On the other hand, perhaps God has planned life best by not giving us a glimpse of the future, both good and bad. That way we can retain hope for a life beyond what we are currently living and fall into the future with more confidence.

Gracious Grandmothers

For the past few days, we have been hearing about Ty's new dolls that are called Marvelous Malia and Sweet Sasha. We understand that First Lady Michelle Obama is not too happy about these dolls capitalizing on her daughters' current popularity with the public. We have also been hearing, and seeing, that Mrs. Obama's mother will be living in the White House and helping to care and shape the girls' development. If we are going to have Malia and Sasha dolls, might I also suggest a new one called Gracious Grandmother. This suggestion is based upon my belief that grandparents can provide a wonderful influence upon the lives of young, growing children.

Currently, I am reading Wendell Berry's novel Hannah Coulter, which is the story of an older grandmother who is looking back at her life in the small town of Port William, Kentucky, and remembering the formative influences of her own grandmother, whom she called Grandmam. In an early passage, the narrator states, "And Grandmam, as I have seen in looking back, was the decider of my fate. She shaped my life, without of course knowing what my life would be. She taught me many things that I was going to need to know, without either of us knowing I would need to know them." I myself often am grateful for my grandmother who took my sister and me (ages 16 and 12) into her home when she was in her mid-sixties. I stayed with her through junior high school and high school. She, I believe, was happy to do it because of her own generous heart. I think she also realized that the two of us needed stability in our rather chaotic lives up to that point.

I haven't been around grandfathers very much since mine--maternal and paternal--died before I was born. I am certain, however, that there are also generous grandfathers who guide their grandchildren carefully toward adult responsibility. Sometimes I long for the days when the extended family all lived together--grandparents helping grandchildren, children helping aging parents, and so on. I regret that, due to job mobility, many miles often separate us. Our grandchildren change and grow into adulthood far too fast.

Building Happiness

One of my recent DVD selections from Netflix was a small film starring Chris Cooper entitled Married Life. It focused on a married couple who had seemingly settled into a life of dull routine after many years of being together. In actuality, both were having affairs with others. The dilemma of the film centers on the husband's decision to kill his wife because he simply cannot bear to hurt her emotionally. She, on the other hand, has decided she can never leave her husband because he would be lost without her to iron his shirts and perform other mundane, wifely duties. One of the themes, repeated quite frequently in the course of the movie, is that one cannot build happiness on the unhappiness of others. Perhaps this statement is true if one is speaking of marriage, but in the context of today's inauguration of the 44th President of the United States, I would think the opposite is true.

Yesterday the nation commemorated Martin Luther King Day. For those of my generation, and especially those raised in the South during the 1960's, today's events mark the culmination of the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr.--the content of one's character can indeed triumph over the color of one's skin. Yet that time period was obviously a costly one for so many actively involved in the civil rights struggle. It was a time of death, discouragement, and unhappiness as the goal of the dream seemed impossible. Today, however, happiness has indeed been built on the unhappiness and protests of others from our recent history.

Barack Obama was not my candidate in the recent election. It was a decision not based upon the color of his skin but on his inexperience. I hope to be shown I was wrong as the months go on, and we witness his leadership and decision-making ability. The unhappiness in America is strong with the worldwide economic near-collapse and wars on two fronts. After these events end, I would hope, and pray, that America obtains some happiness again.