Politics and religion. You aren’t supposed to talk about things like that in polite company. But I broke the rules. That’s what I do. I’m a rule breaker. At a continuing education event with some former co-workers, we were asked to answer the “ice breaker” question: Are you a rule breaker or a rule keeper? The minute the question was asked, my friends pointed at me, laughed, and said, “We know what Tina is!” Not quite sure what that says about me, but I guess I march to the beat of my own proverbial drum. As one (of many) consequences of that independent marching, I often have discussions that most people avoid. Today was no exception.
Walking with a younger family member through a bookstore, we passed a book by Bill O’ Reilly; Suddenly “politics” became the discussion du jour. If I had to label myself, I would say I’m a conservative democrat (probably an oxymoron). My companion said he is a moderate republican. So I asked what made him “moderate” (other than disliking Bill O’Reilly). The vague answer: “I just have some more moderate views on things”. I prodded further: “What things?”
Turns out, one of the “moderate” opinions had to do with gay marriage: believing it’s a viable lifestyle choice for homosexuals to marry. (Maybe I just crawled out from beneath a rock, but that sounds more like a "liberal" opinion than a “moderate” one, but what do labels really tells us?) Here is the reason I’m blogging about this: My young relative prefaced his comments about homosexual marriage with the statement, “Well, you’re not gonna like this”.
As I’ve reflected on this encounter, it has made me realize how much I wish—desperately wish—that I could agree with him, that I didn’t hold beliefs that might alienate me from family members. I wish the world were all puppies and kittens and rainbows and doing whatever you want without any consequences. There are so many things I wish I could believe, because it would make life and relationships so much easier. I wish I could believe that:
--the act of homosexuality is acceptable to God as a way of living
--there is no hell and everyone ends up in heaven, happy and free for eternity
--happiness—instead of holiness—is the ultimate focus of our being
--sincerity of belief, not content of belief, is what really matters in the long run
--“all roads lead to God”
Here’s the problem, in my worldview, I don’t get to pick what I believe about those things. I have chosen to follow Jesus Christ and His standards for life and godliness. I also believe that the Bible is the Word of God, given to us so that we might know God and know how to live in this world. I didn’t come to my beliefs because I want to exclude people or because I like to be judgmental. I don’t want to come across that way, or be anything less than radically Christ-like in the way I love and accept people. I feel that, most times, I live at odds with the rest of the world…and appear “close-minded” because of my beliefs. I fear being grouped together with a lot of Christians who come across as hateful and un-Christlike in the expression of their beliefs and their coldness to the very real wounds of the world. My beliefs—beliefs that I believe are God’s standards for life and not ideas I invented for fun on a Friday night—produce tension in some of my closest relationships. For example, there are people I love DEEPLY who are practicing homosexuals; I would give anything to be able to accept that lifestyle—to be free to say, “that’s so great that you are living together and in love”. It is the same tension I feel about heterosexual people who are having sex outside of marriage or living together. And, in all honesty, I encounter that a lot more than I do issues of homosexuality. I’ve done about 30 weddings in my past six years of ministry. I’d say, of those couples: 75% were living together beforehand and 95% were having sex before marriage. Yet, I loved them and wanted to accept them as people, while not accepting what they were doing. The tension of deeply loving another person yet not agreeing with some things that they do is VERY difficult to live through, especially in our world that screams: “You don’t really love me unless you like every little thing about me”. I blame the self-esteem movement for that!!! I think REAL love means that you see the good and the bad in a person and still choose to love them and be in relationship with them, no matter how bad some of the bad may be. That is the kind of love God has for me. I am a deeply flawed, sinful person. Yet I know I am loved beyond limitation by the Lord. That doesn’t meant the bad stuff in my life pleases Him. The beauty of the Gospel is that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Before we could ever do anything good or right, God died for us and for our sins. God’s love is not dependent on our goodness. In fact, he loves in the face of our brokenness and sin. Martin Luther said, “We carry His very nails in our pocket”. That means my sin led to His death, my sin caused Him pain…and still He loves me.
The more I read God’s Word and the more I experience of His Presence in my life, I see that God is very concerned with holiness. Does that mean we have to be perfect people? No! It means that our sin gets in the way of our relationship with God—and with others. It also means that God has more in store for us than just being happy or doing what we feel is right. God intends for us to be absolutely transformed, from the inside out, so that we are more like Christ, every day. The Scriptures say we are to be “conformed to the image of Christ”. There are two paths set before us each day: the one is marked by our own wants, desires, fears, and need for happiness. The other is marked by surrender, sacrifice, pleasing God, and the desire for holiness. The latter is the better choice, but most often the more difficult choice. I would wager that, in the end, the more difficult path is the one that leads to the greatest happiness. Happiness seems like one of those elusive things—the kind of thing that you will never find if you are seeking happiness for its own sake. Happiness—true happiness--is a byproduct of something else; it is something that happens along the way. If we were made by God for His pleasure, then true, full life (and happiness) can only come through a relationship with God that is our first and ultimate priority.
If your ultimate desire is to please God above all else, it means you have to view the world through His eyes. So many people want to see the world on their own terms…and “happiness” is the ultimate litmus test for what is right and wrong. The ultimate judge of right and wrong is God. Our interpretation of “right and wrong” should be based on what pleases God…what God requires…what brings the most glory to Him…not what makes us “happy” in the present moment.
I’ve read that the Cross is where God’s love and God’s holiness meet. It makes me think that living out our faith needs to be a balance of holiness and grace, as well. I see Christians err--on either side--way too often. Sometimes we talk about God’s love so much that we turn it into a gushy, feeling-based love that accepts everything and has no concept of anything ever being wrong: as long as it makes you happy, it must be good. We picture God as this cosmic grandfather who just laughs at our transgressions and offers us candy. Other times, we get so focused on the holiness of God that we forget to love. We fail to offer forgiveness and grace. We judge and exclude. We refuse to walk with and embrace the least, the lost, the flawed, and those different from us. Somehow, if we could find a way to balance the two, I think we’d be a lot closer to understanding what God is all about. God is about leading us closer into relationship with Him, transforming us and making us new, setting us free, and making us like Christ in every aspect of the way we love and live.
So, my beliefs about pretty much everything come out of a heart that wants people to experience nothing less than God’s best for them. I care more about a person’s soul than I do about present, circumstantial happiness. It is not about being good or bad, right or wrong. It’s not about a bunch of rules just for the sake of having rules. It’s about so much more than human opinions and emotions. It is about the radical, life-changing love of God in Jesus Christ. But then again, I’m a rule breaker…so I would see it all that way! I get the impression that Jesus was a bit of a rule breaker, too, so maybe that’s not such a bad thing to be.
Walking with a younger family member through a bookstore, we passed a book by Bill O’ Reilly; Suddenly “politics” became the discussion du jour. If I had to label myself, I would say I’m a conservative democrat (probably an oxymoron). My companion said he is a moderate republican. So I asked what made him “moderate” (other than disliking Bill O’Reilly). The vague answer: “I just have some more moderate views on things”. I prodded further: “What things?”
Turns out, one of the “moderate” opinions had to do with gay marriage: believing it’s a viable lifestyle choice for homosexuals to marry. (Maybe I just crawled out from beneath a rock, but that sounds more like a "liberal" opinion than a “moderate” one, but what do labels really tells us?) Here is the reason I’m blogging about this: My young relative prefaced his comments about homosexual marriage with the statement, “Well, you’re not gonna like this”.
As I’ve reflected on this encounter, it has made me realize how much I wish—desperately wish—that I could agree with him, that I didn’t hold beliefs that might alienate me from family members. I wish the world were all puppies and kittens and rainbows and doing whatever you want without any consequences. There are so many things I wish I could believe, because it would make life and relationships so much easier. I wish I could believe that:
--the act of homosexuality is acceptable to God as a way of living
--there is no hell and everyone ends up in heaven, happy and free for eternity
--happiness—instead of holiness—is the ultimate focus of our being
--sincerity of belief, not content of belief, is what really matters in the long run
--“all roads lead to God”
Here’s the problem, in my worldview, I don’t get to pick what I believe about those things. I have chosen to follow Jesus Christ and His standards for life and godliness. I also believe that the Bible is the Word of God, given to us so that we might know God and know how to live in this world. I didn’t come to my beliefs because I want to exclude people or because I like to be judgmental. I don’t want to come across that way, or be anything less than radically Christ-like in the way I love and accept people. I feel that, most times, I live at odds with the rest of the world…and appear “close-minded” because of my beliefs. I fear being grouped together with a lot of Christians who come across as hateful and un-Christlike in the expression of their beliefs and their coldness to the very real wounds of the world. My beliefs—beliefs that I believe are God’s standards for life and not ideas I invented for fun on a Friday night—produce tension in some of my closest relationships. For example, there are people I love DEEPLY who are practicing homosexuals; I would give anything to be able to accept that lifestyle—to be free to say, “that’s so great that you are living together and in love”. It is the same tension I feel about heterosexual people who are having sex outside of marriage or living together. And, in all honesty, I encounter that a lot more than I do issues of homosexuality. I’ve done about 30 weddings in my past six years of ministry. I’d say, of those couples: 75% were living together beforehand and 95% were having sex before marriage. Yet, I loved them and wanted to accept them as people, while not accepting what they were doing. The tension of deeply loving another person yet not agreeing with some things that they do is VERY difficult to live through, especially in our world that screams: “You don’t really love me unless you like every little thing about me”. I blame the self-esteem movement for that!!! I think REAL love means that you see the good and the bad in a person and still choose to love them and be in relationship with them, no matter how bad some of the bad may be. That is the kind of love God has for me. I am a deeply flawed, sinful person. Yet I know I am loved beyond limitation by the Lord. That doesn’t meant the bad stuff in my life pleases Him. The beauty of the Gospel is that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Before we could ever do anything good or right, God died for us and for our sins. God’s love is not dependent on our goodness. In fact, he loves in the face of our brokenness and sin. Martin Luther said, “We carry His very nails in our pocket”. That means my sin led to His death, my sin caused Him pain…and still He loves me.
The more I read God’s Word and the more I experience of His Presence in my life, I see that God is very concerned with holiness. Does that mean we have to be perfect people? No! It means that our sin gets in the way of our relationship with God—and with others. It also means that God has more in store for us than just being happy or doing what we feel is right. God intends for us to be absolutely transformed, from the inside out, so that we are more like Christ, every day. The Scriptures say we are to be “conformed to the image of Christ”. There are two paths set before us each day: the one is marked by our own wants, desires, fears, and need for happiness. The other is marked by surrender, sacrifice, pleasing God, and the desire for holiness. The latter is the better choice, but most often the more difficult choice. I would wager that, in the end, the more difficult path is the one that leads to the greatest happiness. Happiness seems like one of those elusive things—the kind of thing that you will never find if you are seeking happiness for its own sake. Happiness—true happiness--is a byproduct of something else; it is something that happens along the way. If we were made by God for His pleasure, then true, full life (and happiness) can only come through a relationship with God that is our first and ultimate priority.
If your ultimate desire is to please God above all else, it means you have to view the world through His eyes. So many people want to see the world on their own terms…and “happiness” is the ultimate litmus test for what is right and wrong. The ultimate judge of right and wrong is God. Our interpretation of “right and wrong” should be based on what pleases God…what God requires…what brings the most glory to Him…not what makes us “happy” in the present moment.
I’ve read that the Cross is where God’s love and God’s holiness meet. It makes me think that living out our faith needs to be a balance of holiness and grace, as well. I see Christians err--on either side--way too often. Sometimes we talk about God’s love so much that we turn it into a gushy, feeling-based love that accepts everything and has no concept of anything ever being wrong: as long as it makes you happy, it must be good. We picture God as this cosmic grandfather who just laughs at our transgressions and offers us candy. Other times, we get so focused on the holiness of God that we forget to love. We fail to offer forgiveness and grace. We judge and exclude. We refuse to walk with and embrace the least, the lost, the flawed, and those different from us. Somehow, if we could find a way to balance the two, I think we’d be a lot closer to understanding what God is all about. God is about leading us closer into relationship with Him, transforming us and making us new, setting us free, and making us like Christ in every aspect of the way we love and live.
So, my beliefs about pretty much everything come out of a heart that wants people to experience nothing less than God’s best for them. I care more about a person’s soul than I do about present, circumstantial happiness. It is not about being good or bad, right or wrong. It’s not about a bunch of rules just for the sake of having rules. It’s about so much more than human opinions and emotions. It is about the radical, life-changing love of God in Jesus Christ. But then again, I’m a rule breaker…so I would see it all that way! I get the impression that Jesus was a bit of a rule breaker, too, so maybe that’s not such a bad thing to be.
5 comments:
Getting into this idea of accepting others, there is this idea that accepting people means you have to tolerate their actions. So not true. People confuse tolerance with respect. And if you don't tolerate them, you don't love them.
So much of this idea of love has been watered down and soiled. Taking the analogy that Rob Bell has used, "We love God and yet we also love tacos." We've smashed everything together and say it's love, but there is so much more. I love each and every person more than i could love a football team or my job. I hate what you are doing, but I love you, the person, a million times more than that hate. People confuse that... and it's sad.
And to your viewpoints, what makes you a democrat? Sounds very conservative to me. :p
Amen, Tina. You've done your schooling proud (and your Lord)...
Get after it Tina! Well done. And I'm with you on the politics thing...Repub's can't stomach saying they're liberal on anything, so they average it out as moderate while we Democrats can range from "conservative" to "liberal," whatever those terms mean.
three comments...wow! Happy day!! I love comments :-)
Gumby/Jeremy: As for politics, what makes me a Democrat? At heart, it has to do with the role of government in people's lives. I think the government should be taking care of people. Issues like healthcare reform, education, poverty (to name a few) are issues that, I believe, are deeply on God's heart...you know, all that talk in Scripture about caring for the "alien, fatherless, and the widow". If the Church would step up and be the Church, it wouldn't even be a problem...but, alas, here we are with an ineffective Church and huge social ills that need to be addressed.
My views have changed on this over the years. Actually, I was a member of the Teenage Republicans and campaingned intensely for Bush Sr. in the 92 election against Clinton (my 18th birthday being Dec. 31st, I was not allowed to vote in the election...it would have changed the outcome, I'm sure!). Being a former republican, I feel I can say this as a BROAD geralization: Republicans tend to be focused on the welfare of the individual--and on the rich individual, more often than not; while Democrats tend to care more about all people...again, a vast generalization.
So, I am incredibly pro-life and opposed to homosexual marriage...but I also care deeply about the environment, social concerns, anti-war efforts, and am opposed to capital punishment...and, I'm not against paying taxes that actually benefit society (though, any party would admit the need for a re-alignment of our current budget...less waste, more focus, all that jazz). As far as taxes are concerned, I almost have some socialist leanings...but that is another topic for another day.
As in so many things, I am a "person without a country" when it comes to a good "fit" for my politics. Neither party really suits me...but as a basic approach to government, the Democrat principles are more appealing to my sensibilities.
Hello Pastor Tina,
Greetings from California. I check in on your blog from time to time. This is a great post. I appreciate your stand on these issues. To speak to the contrary would not be pleasing to God. After all, we didn't write the Bible. Our task is to believe and proclaim it. Jay
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