One of my favorite stories growing up was " A man without a Country".
We read it in grade school, I think... It was about an officer who damned the United States and said he never wanted to hear it's name again.
He was kept on a ship for over fifty years, never to see its shores or hear it's name again...
Sometimes I feel like I will experience that fate, with other Christians, because of a few of the views I hold. So many of them seem so threatened by legalities and cultural changes, as our Country clearly leans, and in some ways, runs away from conventional Biblical values.
They feel threatened.
I wish I could placate their fears, but in truth, I'm sure they are correct.
This Country is changing, for better or worse.
It was during the Revolutionary War, when we demanded and died for our political freedoms that we claimed under our God.
It was during the Civil War, fought mostly over economics and masked by the illusion of freedom for all men, of all colors...
A hundred years after that, " blacks" still couldnt drink from "white" drinking fountains. I think that shows how " serious" about equality we were in Civil War times.
But eventually, under mans law, if not factual conditions, all men and women attained the same rights. We are all theoretically equeal, with the same chance of our hopes and dreams being fulfilled.
Now, back to the reality...
All it takes is a quick look at ratios in prison populations and differences in racial incomes, to see the fallacy in that.
Women do make less than men. That's a fact. More women are sexually assaulted in college than the entirety of all students that drop out, in any given year...
Those numbers aren't what our sons face at college. Not by a long shot.
That's not the kind of equality I would wish for anybodies daughter...
So maybe we can all agree that actual equality today, in this Country, is a farce, and that the only time anyone has ever been granted even that farce of equality, procured it thru war or the courts...
I come from a generation that assumed homosexuality was simply a lifestyle choice. One day " they" woke up, said " I think I'll be gay today" and then ran with it...
I don't know, being that I have never known that inclination, but I have had some very intense emotional intimacies with some of those in the gay community...
( Don't worry. They were Lesbians)....
I can tell you of a girl that was raped repeatedly by her father and brothers, from the age of four, while her mother read her Bible and did her Rosary in her prayer closet, all the while knowing full well what was occurring...
A girl who was victimesed the same way, by men in her Church. Her parents Church...
Escaping into drugs she sold her body to men, because it was the only currency of value, to anyone she knew. Her father pimped her out to his friends up until the year that he died.
She grew up to hate the God of her mothers prayer closet, of her parents Church and the One that would allow the existence she survived.
She wasn't very fond of men, either...
We met during my crazy-sober years, right after I had battled the God that delivered me from alcoholism and addiction. He Chose to remove all that had been precious to me at the time, after He saved me...
I responded with anger and resentment. Eventually He broke me, in preparation of the greater gifts He wished to give me. Not being certain of His " why", I was attempting to reconcile with a God I was still not fond of, while still slowly healing from the losses...
I guess she could relate.
For a woman who hated God, she certainly had a lot of pictures of Jesus in her apartment. I asked her why and she wasn't sure... The God of her experiences she was very clear about, but Jesus... She liked Jesus.
I can tell you that I have never seen someone try so hard to stop hating God.
We talked a lot about Jesus, how He died for our sins before we repented and was hated by those He sacrificed Himself for. I told her that Jesus would accept her just as she was, that if she admitted that she was a sinner, asked His forgiveness and accepted Him as her Savior. If she would accept that He died a substitutionary death for us all, He would heal her pains and her hurts and make her new...
The problem was that Jesus would accept her, as is, and work inside her, in His time, but His Bride never would...
His Church never will...
I know He said " Go and sin no more" , but none of the Christians I know have managed to do that.
But her...
she would have to...
I remember one day when she got tired of trying and gave away the pictures of Jesus from her house. Someone would take them or in the garbage, they would go...
So for the entire lives of my children, they have had her old pictures of Jesus,in their bedrooms...
She and her girlfriend introduced me to my Wonderful Wife, long before our first date. They knew I loved MaryAnne five years before my Wonderful Wife did, herself...
On the night Mare and I met, K- stole the concert poster from the wall it had been stapled to... She had no idea why, at the time and blamed it on joyfull larceny..
Seven years later, when MaryAnne and I told her we were engaged, she laughed, went thru some old boxes, and gave us that Nanci Griffith concert poster she had stolen that night...
Three years ago my Wonderful Wife had it professionally framed in museum glass, as a Christmas gift for me, and it is now the focal point of our living room.
I'm hoping to do the same for my friend some day, with those pictures of Jesus...
I feel like a child caught between warring, divorcing parents...
On one hand, I understand my Christian friends affinity for the sanctity of marriage. I understand their beliefs and struggle with all the implications that will affect us, if ever homosexuality is legally a civil right. It is apparent how that can not only threaten The Church, but also much of what its members consider sacred.
A Pastor forced to marry those he and his Church doesn't believe should be wed?
Forced to disband, if they don't accept and include what they believe offends their God?
I'm not ok with that...
But if a Church must go underground to survive, it must. It certainly won't be the first time, and by no way is it an unexpected occurrence, for those who believe...
I mean, it kind of was foretold....
And then I think about my friend who deep inside loves this " Jesus"..
But would be astrocized from His Bride, His Church, if she did not reform quickly enough..
If the God that changes all our hearts in His own time, took to long, for his other loving followers comfort....
I will stand in front of anyone and declare my faith in Jesus.
But I will not stand against those who love Him and God hasn't finished with.
We all have unresolved sin. All...
I won't stand against you, either...
In this battle I declare myself a conscienceless objector.
I don't know if that makes me a bad Christian or rebellious Church member.
I'm sure that God in His Justice and Glory, will surely let me know...
But this lady who loves Jesus and tried so hard to stop hating God ?
Knowing her story, I'm willing to give her a little extra Grace, a little extra time, before passing my human judgement, based on scripture, on her.
I will not be the one left to condemn her...
Will you?
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