{"id":266,"date":"2011-08-27T18:01:37","date_gmt":"2011-08-27T22:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=266"},"modified":"2011-08-27T18:56:25","modified_gmt":"2011-08-27T22:56:25","slug":"working-from-hope-not-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=266","title":{"rendered":"Working from hope, not fear"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote this piece as an op-ed over the summer, but it wasn’t quite right for a general-audience newspaper, and then I never came back to it. \u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

From my own home state (North Carolina), to the hub of all things cosmopolitan and progressive (New York), headlines beg for an answer to a basic question facing people who call themselves Christian.\u00a0\u00a0How should we struggle over the question of same-sex marriage?\u00a0\u00a0My suggestion is simple.\u00a0\u00a0I appeal to my brothers and sisters in the faith to work out of a place of hope, rather than fear.<\/p>\n

We live in fearful times. Will there be enough jobs to go around?\u00a0\u00a0Will there be enough food for every hungry mouth?\u00a0\u00a0Is there enough affection to shield each person from the misery of loneliness?\u00a0\u00a0Will my own precious children be able to find their next paycheck, much less fully engage their beautifully unique, God given gifts?\u00a0\u00a0In the mix of uncertain times, I recommend a basic, somewhat counter-intuitive stance of\u00a0trust<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Another helpful concept is\u00a0solidarity,\u00a0<\/em>which involves our working from the assumption that we are (as in the words of one popular teen movie song) \u201call in this together,\u201d working with some vital, embodied goods in common.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This working assumption may allow people to risk conversation with neighbors whose position on sexuality they find confusing, or even frightening.<\/p>\n

With two wars and a careening economy, many of us want a version of Christianity that functions as a splint.\u00a0\u00a0A splint holds together what is broken, and some people, feeling broken, wish for a stiff sense of moral purpose.\u00a0\u00a0Put slightly differently, many Christians want a form of faith that provides us with a steely resolve and clear, unchanging steps leading to a goal of definitive victory.\u00a0\u00a0We want clarity, not ambiguity.\u00a0\u00a0I suggest that true conversation about gay and lesbian marriage exists right in this crux of trust, even in the midst of what feels like grave, moral risk.\u00a0\u00a0True dialogue will involve not only a definitive text to which we appeal in common \u2013 that is, Holy Scripture \u2013 but also the sense that we may genuinely\u00a0attend to one another<\/em>\u00a0as we each interpret the words stitched together there.\u00a0\u00a0This concept of \u201cattention\u201d comes from moral philosopher Simone Weil, who suggests that reading texts closely involves a kind of love that risks being penetrated by a truth that isn\u2019t of our making.\u00a0\u00a0This kind of love may vivify Christian conversations about Scripture itself.\u00a0\u00a0While it may sound dangerous, or overly sentimental, the notion that my neighbor has something to share with me about God\u2019s Word is, well . . .\u00a0fundamental,\u00a0<\/em>not only to Protestants but to many Catholics in the United States who were catechized after Vatican II.<\/p>\n

In order to be honest to my own writing and teaching on sexuality in the South (which, \u201cNew\u201d or not, is still a unique yet also indicative region), I must say something about race.\u00a0\u00a0Some of my most beloved students have used a tragically loaded word regarding homosexuality: \u201cabomination.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0While I have had LGBTQ students who are African-American, the only students to have used this expression of moral disgust in my classes at Duke have been African-American.\u00a0\u00a0This issue is potent for many Christians, but, in my experience, some African-American Christians believe that homosexuality is a live threat to the very hard-won work of heterosexual monogamy. \u00a0 There is a historical context behind this, however. \u00a0To accept homosexuality as a fact of God\u2019s creation, rather than as a sign of humanity\u2019s fall, feels to some African-American Christians to capitulate a fact of Scripture:\u00a0\u00a0God ordained man and woman to be together.\u00a0\u00a0This fact gave lie to the unspeakable horror of the auction block, the shattering separations of families under slavery.\u00a0\u00a0In southern states, some politicians have seized on this potential fissure in the body politic.\u00a0\u00a0They are appealing to African-American Christians and other disenfranchised Christians (such as unemployed, rural, working class men) to react from fear rather than trust.\u00a0\u00a0Here in North Carolina, this has taken the form of suggesting that \u201cthose\u201d outsiders who have come in from outside the state are taking scarce resources we need to keep our families alive.\u00a0\u00a0By linking a fear of strangers and a fear of sexual chaos, some in the religious right seem to be gaining ground.<\/p>\n

I am a Christian of a very Jesus-centered sort.\u00a0\u00a0Jesus gives me courage during uncertain times, courage to believe that a few loaves and fishes can, with faith, feed multitudes.\u00a0\u00a0But that faith requires us to trust one another a bit more than we are generally inclined to do.\u00a0Rather than look from side to side, with envy and fear, we are called to look at one another in the face and hear, listen, discover the stories of those who are lesbian or gay in our neighborhoods, churches, schools.\u00a0\u00a0Are some forces in your own state trying to divide you up by way of fear, playing on your hearts with a message of hate and of scarcity?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Are their messages working on your best or your worst spiritual impulses?\u00a0\u00a0Please don’t let the voices of fear win.\u00a0\u00a0Brothers and sisters in the faith, choose love.<\/a> It is more powerful even than fear.\u00a0\u00a0Find a space of calm in which to trust that God does, indeed, have sufficient control over the beautiful universe to allow for a conversation with someone whose life you believe to be morally chaotic, even threatening to your own existence.\u00a0\u00a0Don’t let those selling fear on the cheap buy your hearts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote this piece as an op-ed over the summer, but it wasn’t quite right for a general-audience newspaper, and then I never came back to it. \u00a0 From my own home state (North Carolina), to the hub of all things cosmopolitan and progressive (New York), headlines beg for an answer to a basic question […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[16,15],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","tag-north-carolina","tag-sexual-ethics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7EotM-4i","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":297,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions\/297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}