14 Things I Started Noticing that Wound Up Changing My Mind

sexuality, supernovas, and love

14 things i started noticing that wound up changing my mind ...

1. heterosexuals didn’t have it figured out, so why had we appointed ourselves arbiters of morality?

2. Americanized-christianity was driven by shame about anything sexual.

3. the group that kept telling me homosexuality was wrong was consistently the group putting power-hungry men into positions of leadership.

4. we were spending enormous energy keeping people out of church leadership based on sexuality. but how did we even know what someone’s sexuality was? why were we in the business of finding that out?

5. there were 4-6 passages in scripture that addressed same-sex relationships. after reading them carefully, i had as many questions as answers.

6. the person in the highest office of my denomination admitted they didn’t know exactly what those passages meant. oh, really?

7. started realizing this was less about sexuality and more about power, shame, and an inability to deal with grace.

8. read what jesus said about the eunuch.

9. realized evolution was real — not only in biology and chemistry, but in theology too.

10. cared more about the way jesus lived and what he said than about other parts of the bible.

11. when people in my denomination told me their stance on sexuality hadn’t changed in 50 years, i knew they were either lying, brainwashed, or completely ignorant of all the ways it already had.

12. had one conversation (took only one) with a labor and delivery doctor and confirmed that intersex was a real thing and then decided to have the intellectual honesty to admit that some of this was far more complex than anything i’d been conditioned to believe.

13. some of the gay people i was meeting displayed the fruit of the spirit as much or more than most straight people i knew.

14. that I always feel obligated to stand up to bullies and as un-comprehendable and stupid as it was, I was realizing that the church had turned into a bully.

The more I was willing to talk about any of this (and 15 other points I could’ve just as easily jotted down this morning), the more anxious and, frankly, weird the general church became. Such an odd thing to me.

Then again, that is probably the pattern that all of us (myself included) are culpable in creating. When backed into the corner of our own darkness, we tend to fight the light. Like negative phototactic bugs (cockroaches, for instance) we run from any truth shed in our direction until we learn that the light is our friend. Then we have a conversation and decide to be positive phototactic bugs (like moths) and start flying to the light. Of course, we always wind up flying too close and burning up, and though I categorically reject sacrifice as something that’s redemptive in and of itself, I will say that in the end, we all burn up, so better it be in the fires of love than the fires of hate. (Song of Songs 8:6)

Our world is bonkers right now, isn’t it? Bonkers, it’s an old Greek word. Seldom used. But reading Rebecca Solnit recently, I was reminded of something. I think her take on supernovas and how they pertain to our problems is important. She writes in The Beginning Comes After the End:

“But I wonder if this backlash is a supernova. When some stars die, they don’t dwindle at first; they explode in size and release staggering amounts of light and energy. Astrobiologist David Grinspoon remarked to me, ‘If we didn’t know about the inner hidden or less obvious workings of these aging stars they’d appear to us as if they were gaining strength and becoming something larger or more powerful.’ Instead, it happens because the star is dying, often because it’s collapsing under its own gravitational weight.”

Her point is that the chaos we see all around us might simply be the old stars of institutionalism collapsing under their own, already dying and dead, weight.

I think that might be the case. So, keep moving forward. Love mercy. And justice. And don’t make people victims of your old religious system. People are a mess, both gay and straight. And people are beautiful, both gay and straight.

The old gods (power) are dying and the even older God (love) remains. Live from love.