We all have people in our lives with whom we disagree. We’re against some people’s ideas. We’re against some people’s behaviors. We’re against some people’s attitudes and inclinations. Despite our differences, though, in most cases we’re still in a relationship with them. We might not say we “love” them, but oftentimes we do love them in a non-romantic, I’m-committed-to-you kind of love.
Sometimes I think our hypersensitive and superficial world wants to change that, though. If you say someone is wrong, you’re labeled as mean, hateful, or some other pejorative term. This is especially true when it comes to homosexuality. If you believe your friend or family member’s homosexual behavior is morally wrong, you’re probably thought of as unloving. Indeed, it’s no longer enough to tolerate a person who satisfies their same-sex attraction; you’re expected to celebrate them.
It’s not just non-believers who think this way. I hear this kind of talk even from Christians who adopt pro-gay theology, the view that the Bible is gay-affirming or neutral about homosexual sex. They usually baptize this idea by saying God loves everyone and we’re all His children. While it’s certainly true God loves everyone, He also makes moral demands throughout the Bible.
In fact, all through Scripture we see God and Jesus point out sin but still love the people who engage in it. Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” We not only engaged in wrong behavior, our attitudes and inclinations were against God. That’s because we’re all born with a spiritually genetic condition that produces a natural inclination towards beliefs, desires, and behaviors that God says are wrong. We’re all born that way. We all have an orientation towards sin. Despite our moral crimes and hostility towards God, He still loves us.
Why is it, then, that gay-affirming Christians don’t accuse God of being unloving when He condemns immoral thoughts, desires, and behaviors? He, of all personal beings in the universe, makes the most number of moral demands on the lives of free people. He also levies the harshest judgments. Given this harsh record, He’s still described as loving.
That’s why it’s possible for us, human beings made in God’s image, to do the same. In fact, we’re commanded to love people even though every person we encounter does wrong. Certainly there are some people who don’t love others with whom they disagree, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t many Christians who love people they think are violating God’s commands. I can think of all sorts of situations where I’m against a person’s ideas, desires, inclinations, or behavior but still genuinely love them. Here are three quick examples.
- The Church: I’ve been going to church for a long time. I’ve worked with pastors, elders, and other staff. I’ve worked in youth ministry, participated on a pastoral search team committee, and served on a commission board. During this time, I’ve met many fellow believers who are – let’s just say – not my type. We didn’t get along. Our quarrels were over who they were, what they believed, and what they want to accomplish in the church. Despite my grievances with them, I loved these brothers and sisters. I worked hard to treat them with respect and show them I care in light of our many disagreements.
- My family: I have family relationships with people I have issues with. My kids sometimes misbehave (boast, lie, cheat, etc.) and I discipline them for their immoral behavior. Do I still love them? Absolutely! In fact, I would argue that if I didn’t love them, I wouldn’t discipline them when they act immorally. I’ll offer an even more extreme example. If my daughter (when she is older) moved in with her boyfriend, I’d be vigorously opposed and angry with my daughter. She might try to tell me she’s in love with him, that it’s natural to be together, and that they’re made for each other. There’s no excuse she could give me that would make me condone her behavior, but there’s also nothing she could do to stop me from loving her. I’ve also had situations where I thought my wife’s behavior or attitude was wrong (and, by the way, many times where she’s thought my behavior or attitude was wrong!). Sometimes my concerns with her have lasted many months. Despite these issues, I love my wife, dearly! I’ve even had family members (who claimed to be Christian) divorce for unbiblical reasons, rendering them ineligible to remarry. When they asked me to attend their next wedding, I told them I couldn’t because of what Scripture teaches about marriage, divorce, and remarriage (Matthew 5:32, Luke 16:18, etc.). That’s a big deal, but I still love that family member. If you were to ask them today, “Does Alan love you?” I can guarantee they’d emphatically say, “Yes!” Why? Because I can oppose people’s attitudes and behaviors, but still love them.
- My friends: I’ve had non-Christian friends throughout my life. All of them engage in behaviors I would describe (because Scripture describes) as sin. I know some of them have sex before marriage. Some cheat on their taxes. Some steal movies by downloading them illegally. Some find it natural to lie when they get in trouble. Some find it natural to lust when they see attractive women. The list goes on. But I love those friends. I spend time with them, go to the movies with them, play tennis with them, talk about my hopes and dreams and fears with them, and basically behave how you’d expect someone to behave with a friend they love. I don’t celebrate their sinful behavior, but I do love them. Is it hard for me to love them? No. I love to love them! Why? Because Christians who uphold classical Christianity and classical Christian values routinely love people whom they believe are in rebellion towards God. It’s not that hard when the Holy Spirit lives in you.
It doesn’t matter how a friend who identifies as gay describes himself to me. He might say he’s a gay man, has a natural attraction towards the same sex, engages in gay sex, or something else. It doesn’t matter if his description is about his behavior, identity, inclination, sexual attraction, gender, or whatever. I know I love him (or her, in the cases where they identify as lesbian) even though Scripture claims his inclinations are misdirected and condemns his behavior.
I’m not denying there are Christians who are hateful towards homosexuals. I know there are. I’ve met a few and spoken to them about their feelings. But these people are not the same as the vast majority of conservative Christians I’ve talked to across the country over the last decade who unapologetically affirm Scripture’s condemnation of homosexual sex, yet vigorously love those who engage in it. Ignoring this distinction is irresponsible and assumes the worse of people who practice true civility.
Another “avenue” by which to approach the landscape of loving both all that is Every-Man and loving all that is humanity’s elemental Essence is (in some respects) through this topic's "overlap" found in helping our Teens navigate their way through “Critical Conversations” at this link. The singularity which subsumes both loving Every-Man and loving Essence just is the singularity which subsumes both Love and Truth – both Grace and Truth.
Perhaps this then: Another approach with respect to our Teenagers:
Many of our teens have lived through the harm of the absence of their father, just as, many of our teens have lived through the harm of the absence of their mother. For those who have, the emotional and intellectual impact of our humanity’s essence is, simply, painful and immediate and tangible. In short: it’s real. In the same way, many teens have had to suffer through the absence of people’s grace in their own journey should they themselves or perhaps one of their parents have struggled with same-sex attractions. This dichotomy is informative for our teens – who will and do encounter these sorts of experiences. And if they have not experienced such, they will have friends who have and perhaps are right now walking through such experiences.
Therefore, for our Teens who have had to live through any of the above, or have friends who have had to live through such, recall that in all of our interfaces with each other there are the unavoidable realities of Essence and of Grace and we must honor both if we are to mature into the image of Christ – Himself full of Truth, full of Grace. As we will see, Pastor Martin Luther King Jr. appealed to our humanity’s essence (one can read about “essentialism”) and informed the world stage that ignoring the fundamental truths of our human essences led some to claim a “difference” between Blacks/ Whites, between African Americans and Caucasians. We cannot expect to fully actualize Mankind’s Good when we thusly ignore, out of fear, out of an uninformed mindset, out of a felt-degree of anger or hatred, or out of all of the above, the elementary truths of Mankind’s essence, and that is why Pastor MLK got it right – his essentialism finally out-distancing such misguided thinking.
But there is also this: Pastor King lived in and by Grace towards all – Hard Stop – even to his own hurt.
What does this all “look like” in the real world? Here’s a bit of “unpacking” with respect to such contours amid Essence and Grace:
I visited a grade school (1st and 2nd grade) in an impoverished area and recall the (all women) teachers essentially pleading with me to return. That felt good until I learned why the request came. The children in that class were, for the most part, fatherless and me, as a male, had, these teachers felt, a certain “some-thing” which their young impressions painfully needed, but were lacking. They didn’t need me to be a rocket scientist. They needed something far more expensive – they knew their young students needed a generator, an image, a model of appropriate and consistent male-impressions, as it were. And the community in question in this impoverished area knew all too well the unfortunate reality of gambling away the greater for the lesser. It still “felt good” to be asked to return as often as possible – though for unexpected reasons.
We’re forever seeing hints of this leaking onto the floor in all sorts of places.
Not long ago while watching the BET awards there was, buried in the midst of the pageantry, a comment on the (factual) problem of the absent father – which (apparently) seemed important enough to drop into the mix of a live recording. Everyone understands or gets that reality – as it’s just palpable, measurable. All the affairs of our children’s masculinization and of our children’s feminization carry us unavoidably into the inescapable problem of the absent father over there and the absent mother over here, and so on. All of that is clear, observable, and all of that is so unfortunate that communities champion those who fight to untie such painful knots in the next generation of young parents. All of these are robust lines of hard data in an arena which is championed by all sides here and such (unfortunate) data presents us with something from which nearly no one dissents.
For intelligent, data-driven reasons.
Because it’s true.
The social sciences consistently echo that data when we look at other combinations and permutations.
The child’s potential need not be fully actualized as it is painfully and unfortunately obvious that we all enter our world already in possession of potential which our world, the world we enter, is, quite often, unsuccessful in fully actualizing. When it comes to the maximal potential of a child’s plasticity as such relates to the fullest actualization of the child’s emotional intelligence amid the sexes, we come to an uncanny observation:
Early submersion within an ongoing, stable, and emotionally perceptive environment insightfully exhibiting that which is fully human inside of the robustly feminine milieu amalgamated with the robustly masculine milieu measurably provides the sort of stimuli and personal interfaces which are in the end necessary to maximally elicit the child’s embryonic (plasticity) intuitiveness. Mechanistically speaking, such caring reciprocity recurrently interfacing amid those distinct milieus (feminine/masculine) are then applied to, or impact upon, the child’s highly plastic potential and that (as it relates to the child’s future capacity for emotionally intelligent adult interfacing amid the sexes) houses our most credible, repeatable, and balanced consistency.
It seems that we have two approaches which allow us to arrive at that location – that of final causes (the God paradigm) and that of the latent potentiality of an already-present and deeply embedded neuro-biological network (reductionist, no-god paradigm) as the “end of the line”, as it were. In both we find an uncanny degree of convergence. The reductionist (no-God paradigm) who appeals to neurobiology as the end of line where our humanity’s employable substrate is concerned finds all the evidence of his stimuli-outcome trajectories converging in all of the same locations as those trajectories predicted by final causes (the God paradigm).
We find no effective difference in what provides the child’s plasticity the greatest opportunity of fullness in a robust development of the child’s emotional intelligence across the full range of the robustly feminine to the robustly masculine as the child progresses to a fully functional adult. The relational landscape which provides that early childhood plasticity with the highest degree of actualization is the stable, ongoing, emotionally intelligent, and caring environment of submersion in the singular atmosphere which is itself constituted of the fully feminine milieu amalgamated with the fully masculine milieu.
That singularity sums to the relational milieu which is the factual some-thing found in the real world as granting our children the most predictable degree of success. As already noted, none of this is to say that other combinations or permutations don’t get by, often quite well – they do – but we are speaking here of the fullness of range of what just is our humanity’s fundamental essence as it relates to childhood’s early plasticity and a robust emotional intelligence amid the sexes.
The data on children raised with one parent is relevant in a few ways here. Children raised by the single father are found to be less aware of, and more likely to possess some degree of maladroitness in, many relational contexts where the feminine is concerned. And the reverse is seen in those raised by the single mother. This of course does not amount to simple dysfunction, but rather to degrees of awareness, to degrees of ability to fully interact in and with and by our humanity’s full range of potential, of capacity as all the affairs of masculinization and of feminization come to the forefront. Obviously this can be in part overcome by emersion – from day one – with a wider circle of close – daily – contacts (it takes a village, so to speak). However, we still, even there, do not seem able to find that which factually equals that which is yielded by the daily intimacy of the home submerged in the masculine/feminine of father/mother as our own humanity’s fully feminine to fully masculine range weighs in on childhood plasticity.
This is why everybody champions those in this generation who make real efforts to spare the next generation from that fragmentation of the whole. Ignoring the fundamental truths of our human essences led some to claim a “difference” between Blacks/ Whites, between African Americans and Caucasians. We cannot expect to fully actualize Mankind’s Good when we thusly ignore, out of fear, out of an uninformed mindset, out of a felt-degree of anger or hatred, or out of all of the above, the elementary truths of Mankind’s essence, and that is why Pastor MLK got it right – his essentialism finally out-distancing such misguided thinking. We cannot evade reality and expect to find something worth having and Pastor MLK Jr. pressed in on that fact. It is a peculiar danger that (perhaps) of late that same intentional shunning of, willful neglect of, even disenfranchising of, key fundamental essences of our humanity where our children are concerned may be evolving, and the price there can only sum to those which Pastor MLK taught us so well. Such a repeat of yesterday’s unfortunate approach to Mankind can, and ultimately must, bring equal forms of genuine psychological harm and human misguidedness and those then must in return bring some new layer of emotional harm, and those then must bring yet some new layer of….. and so on. Such is the danger of ignoring what we’ve learned from our past mistakes if and when we claim “sameness” among a collection of different milieus found in-play atop early childhood plasticity. Ignoring the essence of our humanity didn’t help mankind amid “Black / White” issues and, in fact, it ended in the actualization of the antithesis of the Good – that is to say – it was ultimately unloving. Repeating now with our children that very same fear-driven mistake, that very same dis-invitation of yet another key slice of our elementary essence, cannot, ultimately, end in that which sums to loving our children.
Not factually, that is.
Disinviting truths about our humanity from the assembly cannot serve humanity in the long run. No one, none of us, can move forward in a degree of autohypnosis or in some degree of wish-fulfillment and expect to succeed. We simply cannot commit the same emotional and intellectual crimes of the past and expect to find our fullest humanity.
As already noted, adoption is wonderful, and two parents there seems to be more promising than one. *Any* stability is better than none, and so on in said degrees and where there are degrees there are, painfully for our children should we repeat the mistakes of the past, the grave potential of wasted opportunities – opportunities excluded or disinvited or marginalized merely out of fear, out of an uninformed mindset, out of a felt-degree of anger or hatred, or out of all of the above. Once again, the early plasticity specifically under review is with nearly across the board consensus most fully actualized by the early submersion within an ongoing, stable, and emotionally perceptive environment insightfully exhibiting that which is fully human inside of the robustly feminine milieu amalgamated with the robustly masculine milieu measurably provides the sort of stimuli and personal interfaces which are in the end necessary to maximally elicit the child’s embryonic (early plasticity) intuitiveness. Mechanistically speaking, such caring reciprocity recurrently interfacing amid those distinct milieus (feminine/masculine) are then applied to, or impact upon, the child’s highly plastic potential and that (as it relates to the child’s future capacity for emotionally intelligent adult interfacing amid the sexes) houses our most credible, repeatable, and balanced consistency. There are (unquestionably) *degrees*, that is to say, there is so-so, there is okay, there is better, and then there is the “best chance for the highest degree of actualization” or the ideal milieu relative to the child’s plasticity and his or her future emotional intelligence amid the sexes as a functional adult.
Of course, just because “X” for various reasons offers the highest possible chance for actualization of that robust emotional intelligence amid the sexes does *not* mean that good functionality is not obtainable with “X-minus-some-thing”. We all get by with various levels of discomfort or unawareness or uneasiness, or what have you, amid something less than fully healthy interfaces as adults. But being functional has gradations, or layers, or degrees, as it were. We find here an unfortunate reality on the part of one certain narrative in the denial of such layering in our humanity as it develops. Where that narrative of late is (perhaps) concerned, as Pastor MLK taught us all so well, disinviting truths about our humanity from the assembly cannot serve humanity in the long run. No one, none of us, can move forward in some degree of autohypnosis or in some degree of wish-fulfillment and expect to succeed. We simply cannot commit the emotional and intellectual crimes of the past and expect to find our fullest humanity. The very essence of what makes us fully human was ignored and that made-up-reality was used to show a supposed “difference” amid Black and White human beings. Just the same, genuine opportunity for the child’s best shot at actualizing the full range of masculine/feminine emotional intelligence is always awaiting the child upon his or her entry into the world and, for all the same reasons which Pastor MLK taught us, disinviting truths about our humanity from the assembly cannot serve humanity in the long run. No one, none of us, can move forward in some degree of autohypnosis or in some degree of wish-fulfillment and expect to succeed. We simply cannot commit the emotional and intellectual crimes of the past and expect to find our fullest humanity. The very essence of what makes us fully human cannot be ignored as we just cannot seek a reality that is “as we wish it were” and attempt to (thereby) show “sameness” amid factually different milieus of robust emotional opportunity in-play atop early childhood plasticity.
As noted elsewhere, where the child’s future is concerned, *any* stability is better than no stability, and that less/more merges unavoidably into palpable degrees of opportunity for the child. But similarity is not sameness and (unfortunately for all of us) we have a wide array of converging data from which very few dissent which affirms what every school teacher and single parent know, which is that we simply cannot find elsewhere that which factually equates to the daily intimacy of the home submerged in the masculine/feminine milieu afforded by the singularity of father/mother as our own humanity’s fully feminine to fully masculine range weigh in on childhood plasticity and future emotional intelligence amid the sexes.
As noted, other combinations or permutations do well enough – but we are speaking here of a sort of identity claim – that A and B are identical realities where early childhood plasticity amid the full range of masculine/feminine emotional intelligence weighs in vis-à-vis the child’s opportunity. Observational reality seems to be declaring such to be (in at least some vectors of crucial import) a factually flawed identity claim. We must proceed slowly, with eyes wide open, if and when we make appeals to childhood stability vis-à-vis the family.
Marriage is one thing, and, indeed, Thomas Aquinas on “Tolerance and Law” may apply. But marriage is not “the whole show” – that is to say that marriage is not the whole show if and when we mean to invoke the essence of early childhood plasticity. That essence has (unfortunately for all of us) eons of data which are simply unavoidable.
Essence yes, but, still, we must be moving towards Grace:
The crimes against African Americans which were fueled by our own willful dis-invitation of the fundamental realities of our own human essence created a painful, genuine, and preventable shortfall in the very substance of our humanity and, fortunately, we were gifted with the likes of Pastor Martin Luther King Jr. to brilliantly help lead us out of such error as he, thankfully, got it right. That is to say, Pastor Martin Luther King Jr. taught us with unmistakable clarity that when false narratives built atop fear, an uninformed mindset, a felt-degree of anger or hatred, or all of the above, begin to succeed they are themselves fated to come down on the wrong side of history – time and truth just do have that peculiar sort of relationship. History is both our teacher and a kind of proof in this arena. Narratives built atop our own self-deception or our own hope to have reality live up to what we wish it to be, rather than what it actually is vis-à-vis humanity’s essence just cannot endure over time. Eventually the truth of our humanity rises and we’ve seen these principles of Pastor Martin Luther King Jr. play out over and over again on the world stage – for millennia.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons many of us find ourselves embracing the metaphysical paradigm which converges in Christ – simply on the grounds of grace’s embrace of every last one of us – and – simply on the grounds that reality does in fact have a true narrative, perhaps up ahead of us, perhaps within us, or perhaps both – and – simply on the grounds of reason’s categorical imperative to embrace reality’s true narrative – to experience His unquenchable instantiation.
Many of us need to beware here, lest we offend grace, and, for all the same reasons, others of us need to beware here, lest we offend various truths of our own human essence. On whatever topic may arise we press – it’s difficult – to use caution in our own interior navigations of our own tendencies both towards and away from grace, and, just the same, in our own tendencies both towards and away from truth. We cannot offend grace towards our own selves and towards one another and think our narrative will – ultimately – flourish. We cannot offend truth towards our own selves and towards one another and think our narrative will – ultimately – flourish. Such shortsightedness has been found wanting upon the world stage – over and over again. History seems to reveal our final causes vis-à-vis our humanity’s essence surfacing – ever spying somewhere within us – ever spying somewhere up ahead of us – the unquenchable instantiation of the God Who is love. On such navigations amid grace and truth I’ve proven to be an inept sailor. Fortunately though, He holds all things and outdistances me. We are, it seems, not on the side of any Will-To-Power in any ipso facto sense, nor are we on the side of any Temporal Brand per se, but rather we are on the side of reality’s singular metanarrative, that is to say, we are on the side of Grace in all directions – towards all – Hard Stop – and – in the same sense – we are on the side of Truth in all directions – towards all – Hard Stop. Grace and Truth as an actual singularity. That is the Narrative Whose Name is The-Real as we find all such lines seamlessly converging in Christ.
This need not be, and indeed is not, at all, a statement on legality, rather, this is merely an observation of our own human essence and of the contours of grace.
Posted by: scbrownlhrm | March 05, 2016 at 07:58 AM