Deus Caritas Est

Pope Benedict's first papal encyclical is available online here. I haven't read it yet, but I hope to read it later tonight.

A Letter

One of the purposes of this blog is to personalize the so-called ‘gay issue.’ That means letting you into my life a little (while still trying to maintain some modicum of privacy). I share with you this letter I wrote to my father. I haven’t yet sent it, and I’m not sure if I will, but I want you to read it because I want you to understand the pain that families have endured, and will continue to endure, because of our Church’s current ‘position’ on the ‘gay issue.’ I don't yet know at this point what will happen between me and my family. Hopefully we can come to terms with each other. I fear that we cannot.

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Dad,

I’ve given much thought in recent months about our relationship. I’ve wanted to call you, tell you everything that’s going on in my life and in my head. I’ve wanted to open myself up to you in hopes that you could understand what, exactly, I am doing and thinking (and correspondingly, why I am doing and thinking those things).

But I haven’t called to talk. I haven’t written, and I decided not to talk to you when I was visiting home. I can think of a few possible reasons why (but, frankly, I’m not sure which is the real reason):

I think I haven’t talked to you because I’m afraid of losing you and Mom again. The last few years have been hard on me (harder, I think, than you appreciate), but no time in my life has been as difficult as the months when you refused to speak to me and refused to have me in your home. I don’t want to endure again the pain of separation, the loneliness, the anger, and the emptiness of being a virtual orphan. I am afraid you’ll turn your back on me again.

I think I haven’t talked to you because I’m afraid of sounding unsure when I talk to you about my life and my faith. It’s odd: I can ramble and talk incessantly to perfect strangers about my faith, my theological ruminations, my concerns for the future, and the hurts of my past. But when I sit down to talk to you, I freeze. Instead of a moderately intelligent, somewhat self-assured 25 year-old, I become a stumbling, bumbling, confused pre-teen who’s in trouble with his parents again. I can’t explain myself to you because there is too much to say; I can’t defend myself because I can no longer speak on your terms and with your religious vocabulary (and when I use my own vocabulary you just tell me I should read less). So I end up stuttering and, flustered, I become defensive and combative. I haven’t talked to you because I’m not sure I’m able to talk to you.

I’m also afraid of not having all the answers. You, it seems, have it all figured out. If you have any Doubts, you’ve never revealed them to me. And since you have church, God, faith, and sexuality seamlessly woven together into a bullet-pointed, proof-texted devotional lesson, you allow me no room to wonder, to question, or to doubt. This makes me feel as though I can’t talk to you until I can combat each point, each assumption, each conclusion, each text. Until I can match scripture for scripture. I am not prepared to do that, so our conversations are between one who knows every answer and one who is struggling to figure out a few of the many possible answers to our common questions. You must give my mind room to breathe and process when we talk before you list yet another six verses and end the conversation. I would like it to be okay with you that I’m struggling. You could tell me that everyone struggles, but you don’t. Instead, you tell me the answer (your answer), and get upset when I don’t unquestioningly accept it.

I am, in short, afraid of you. My father. And, I’m afraid of me. Afraid of what I’ll say, and, frankly, afraid of where I’m going, since I go there largely alone (you will not accompany me, I trust). I would like to be able to lean on you, but I don’t think I can anymore.

Earlier, I said I have too much to say to get it all out. What is it I want to tell you, though? That you’re wrong? That the things you’ve taught me are wrong? That your visions of Church, of God, of Scripture, are crooked or backward or upside-down? Sometimes, yes, that’s what I want to say. But it’s more than that.

It’s not so much that I think you’re wrong. I just think there is more to be said. There has to be, or I have to leave behind the faith you’ve given me. I can no longer (and have for some time been unable) to accept all the things you’ve taught me, at least without some qualification. I can no longer look at the Bible in the way you taught me. I can no longer look at my mother in the way you taught me. I can no longer look at myself in the way you taught me. As I try to make your faith my own, I find I have to make adjustments.

I can’t look at the Bible like you want me to. Your way just seems too shallow and unfulfilling. I would love to just cite a chapter and verse for each theological proposition I proffer, but I can’t do that in good conscience. The way you taught me to look at scripture ignores too much: it ignores the humanity of the authors, compilers, and redactors. It ignores the bias of those who have given us our traditional glosses of texts. It reads selectively to fit a predefined comfort zone. It diminishes the Gospels in favor of the Epistles and pretends that apocryphal and non-canonical books don’t exist. It ignores the social, cultural, historical, and ideological contexts of the Scripture.

I can’t separate scholarship and faith like you want. You are afraid of what will happen to me if I keep reading. I think you’re afraid that the books I read will lead me away from God. I, on the other hand, am afraid of what will happen to me if I stop studying and learning. I’m afraid my faith will shrivel. For me, studying, learning, and reading are acts of worship. I can’t imagine faith without them. I must admit, though, that your fears are, to some degree, founded. The things I read change me. I can’t read a book on feminist theology and then look at Paul’s writings the same way I did before. But that doesn’t mean I can or should stop reading and thinking. It just means I have to be careful while I do so.

I can’t separate my faith from my Experience. Take the experiences I’ve had with my friends as an example. In the same way the things I read change me, my friends and colleagues change me. You are afraid of this, too. I know that. But it cannot be helped. When you and Mom told me I could not come home, when the stress of graduate school, loss of family, and near loss of faith landed me in the hospital, my friends were there for me. I was cared for, loved, and affirmed by those you believe are leading me astray. Perhaps they are; I don’t yet know. But I know that when I was at my lowest, they held me, stood by me, and gave me what you (and my Church) would not: affirmation. They saved my life and, perhaps, my faith. So what am I to do with them? Am I to leave them behind because they don’t share our (your) faith? Am I to shut them out when they tell me I should find a different church for my own health and sanity?

I have to make adjustments because of the things I know in my heart. I know that women are equal to men in value, intellect, heart, faith, and clerical ability. I know that it is immoral to assign them a lesser place. I know that it is wrong that I’ve never heard either of my Grandmothers pray (not because they have no faith, mind you, but because they are women). It is wrong that I haven’t heard my mother pray since I was baptized. I know that any use of scripture to diminish the place of women in our society, our families, or (and especially) our churches has to be a false and errant use of scripture. I know and believe this and, though I can accept the fact that you think I’m incorrect, I cannot accept the ease with which you seem to dismiss me and those like me who want our sisters’ voices to be heard.

Another thing I know in my heart: I am gay. You will not accept this, nor will you accept the way this shapes my view of faith. You still believe I can be cured. You still believe that I’ve made a misguided lifestyle choice. You believe it impossible to be gay and a Christian. You insist on believing that my eternal salvation hinges on whether I am “practicing” or “celibate.” I can live with the fact that you believe these things. I cannot, though, abide your absolute refusal to consider the possibility that I might have actually thought this all through, that I might actually deserve your respect, that I might actually be more than a petulant, misguided child. I cannot abide the fact that you never ask me how I’m doing, that you’ve never expressed concern that I might be hurting, and especially that you’ve never acknowledged that you and your church might have caused me pain. You’ve never apologized for the comments you’ve made about gays and AIDS, you’ve never apologized for the things you said to me after I first said the words “I’m gay,” you’ve never acknowledged that you may have overreacted throughout that first year.

So, for all these reasons, I can’t talk to you about my faith. I can’t tell you that I was asked to leave a church I had been attending for two years. I can’t tell you that I’m afraid I’ll never find a church I can call home. I can’t tell you that, while I’ve figured some things out, I don’t have all the answers (I am, after all, only 25. I’m young and could sometimes use advice.).

I don’t know where we go now. I don’t know how we come to terms with our differences. I don’t know how we rebuild our relationship after the last several years of pain. I hope we can. Maybe it will just take time. But until the time comes when we can be truly reconciled, what do we do?

All my love,
Your Son

Losing the Farm

This is why gay couples need legal protection. Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.

A Project

Some questions for any readers out there:

1) If you were going to interview a gay Christian or, more specifically, a gay Christian in a Church of Christ, what questions would you ask her or him?

2) If you were going to interview the Christian parent of a gay child, what would you ask her or him?

3) If you were going to interview an 'ex-gay', what questions would you ask her or him?

I would love some input here...