I am sitting at Balboa park next to the secular humanist tent. They have a whiteboard out front that says “is Jesus the reason for the season?” with the option to tally yes or no. The no column has far more tallies. Every few minutes or so a mother with her child tries to give Jesus a few points, but the markers don’t work. There are some awkward laughs and she usually tries to wish them a good day and get away before they strike up a conversation.
These guys are funny, I have to admit, definitely funnier than the Christian tent around the corner. Some guy walks over and asks them if they saw the corner Christian get into it with the tarot card reader. "No," they reply, bummed they missed the day’s highlight. “They're gunna put us out of a job if they keep calling out all the superstitious groups for us.” “Harry, you’ve been retired for 10 years. Your lazy ass is already out of a job.”
They seem to be having a great old time, 6 old guys getting together on a Saturday afternoon to hash out conspiracies, tell jokes, and call out religion. Part of me feels like it would be a real shame if anyone were to convert them.
My Balboa park walks are always interesting. They usually start out with some slight cringing as I pass the Christians trying to coax me into a longer conversation with a “Jesus loves you.” Most of the time they are very sweet, the sweetest by far, but I can’t help seeing my sweet younger self in them trying to convince unsuspecting folks of their need for a savior — hard cringe.
I walk by the Allah tent and they always let me pass right by. Truthfully, I’m a little offended they never seem to want me.
Then I’ll pass by the yoga monks. These guys love me. They always offer me a free book and when I tell them I’m not much of a reader, they just say, it’s ok, they’re patient. So then I take one because how could I turn down a patient book? Now I’ve got 6 unopened Sanskrit books.
I then pass the atheist tent. They don’t coax anyone to come to them. They just set up some juicy Christian bait, like their crafty whiteboard with Jesus losing a popularity contest and crack jokes until the convos roll in. I always find myself giggling at the clever humor they whip out as I pass by.
I am always contemplating spirituality. I can’t help myself. It’s probably why I get such a kick out of all these guys and why in some way I genuinely revere how they come out here to evangelize their deeply held convictions.
Sitting here in the sun, it all seems sort of lovely. To believe, to debate, to tell jokes, and even to take sides. There is so much room on this earth we call home for all of these people. For their thoughts and ideas. No great hand comes out of the sky to claim its favorite and toss aside rest.
My favorite thing about Christianity is what it taught me about the tenderness of God, the grandmother-like patience of Source.
My least favorite thing about it is the way it seems to oddly run out when you die, and then you are left in eternal torment while your all-powerful, eternally loving God has His hands tied behind his back because of his “respect for your freedom of choice.”
Hell is a grownup concept. What I mean by that is children don’t innately understand it. Growing up in a Christian school, the most asked question is “how could a loving God send people to hell.” It's probably the most asked question of anyone trying to embrace Christianity. They put hell to us dozens of ways trying to get us to swallow it. They talked about justice, but not how an eternal burning is quite a lopsided sentence for the average Joe and Sally who just never got around to accepting Jesus. Then they tried explaining to us how horrendously evil we are without Jesus. A child stealing cookies from a cookie jar is excellent proof that we all are born totally depraved. However, it’s actually quite shocking how well this one worked on me. I grew up often equating my humanity with it’s close resemblance to Hitler. Hitler was the only way I could justify God and his unquenchable vengeance, which I so badly wanted to do because I loved Him so.
All of that to say, I have a deep distrust of grownup concepts. I am constantly learning from children what strange ideas I have adopted as I grow up and forget my knowing. I start to question anything I notice children resist.
The other strange thing about Christianity is what a pedestal we give to anything old and male. I remember in ministry school when they offered a 6-week course on women in ministry. The purpose of the course was to go through all the verses in the Bible that limit women and debunk them. Though I was grateful for the class, I found it strange in that it seemed to imply we could not simply rely on common sense to tell us men and women are equal and deserve equal place. Rather, we had to wait until an old respected male in the community came to that conclusion, wrote a book about it, and now we can teach a class about how we are now aloud to disregard a few more verses in the Bible.
Christians need verses for everything. I find this strange considering the Bible that we hold so dearly was written by people hearing from God and challenging the culture from divine inspiration. Yet, when something doesn’t sit well on our spirit, such as women not being able to speak in church, we need to get the whole council of old guys together to determine how they can retranslate some things until it makes more logical sense. Then we happily go back to professing the Bible’s untouchable perfection.
The Bible taught me a lot of things, but having a deep-seated respect for the person that stands before me, no matter how different they are, taught me much more. Real human stories are the best lessons.
I write all of this not to tear a thing down, but to get to the heart of something that I believe is beautiful and worth preserving. The trouble I have is that if the church keeps clinging so tightly to its dogmas, to who’s "in" and who’s "out,” it will lose the chance to offer something profoundly meaningful to our world. In fact, it is already losing it.
The upcoming generation does not draw lines between themselves. There is no male or female, hurling “gay” around like it’s an insult, or strong religious preference. The only line I see being drawn is between them and those who are not willing to embrace them. To embrace them as they are, not as we imagined them to be.
To put it more plainly, I guess what I am asking is if we can finally just embrace our gay family? Like fully this time? Can we, as the future of the church, offer our transgender nieces and nephews a door in? Give them a space where they are allowed to feel God pouring through them and all around them just like we had the privilege of experiencing? And not so that they will become straight or conform to what we were told is a holy vessel, but because we love them. Because we love each other more deeply than we hold any preferences or beliefs.
God adores gay people. I know you know that, but here is something I know you ache to remember. He adores them as gay. He adores them all the more the gayer they become. He loves her when she becomes a they and him when he becomes a she. He loves process and transformation and all the beautiful things we learn from it. It's why He gave us this earth and all the freedom that comes with it. There is no distinction with God. It's always only been with us.
I have fallen in love with Jesus, not because He is the only way to God. Maybe he is. I’m not here to debate that. I am simply here for those of you who have known that deep expansive love that seems to have no other name but Jesus, Yahweh, pure honey on the lips, and ask you, please, can we open our doors a little wider now? Open our hearts. Our minds. Can we extend this love out to those the church has so awkwardly half-embraced and to those that are too colorful to fit inside the limitations of our giant ancient book? There is so much more room and I am tired of guarding the door.
I know that one day I may have a child that is gay, lesbian, bi, transgender, or the like, and if that day ever comes I will not fall into the trap of wondering what went wrong. I will look into that child’s eyes and remind them they are deeply loved, and even if they are still not accepted by the church or the god of Christianity, they will always be accepted by me. I encourage you to do the same because I have a feeling God is not as petty as we thought Him to be. That Jesus is not the God of straight people. And I hope, dearly, that one day there will be a space that does not judge the heart by its preferences but by its eternal worth and irreplaceable value.
This, I believe, is the future of the church.
With hope,
-Aubrey
