Today’s Scripture Reading (April 28, 2016): Psalm 64
A friend recently showed me a video of a pastor speaking about the LGBTQ (homosexual) community. The speech was amazing and filled with hate. He took every opportunity to call members of the community down and berate them for their lifestyle. He called them sissies. He mocked their beliefs. He verbally abused them. And then he moved on to the Pastors who were supporting the community, who hired worship Leaders who were, his words, sissies. He verbally abused them for a period of time. He called them the “candy men” because they attempt to “make the world taste good.” And then, when he finally was finished with the pastors, he moved on again with the choir who was standing behind him. He repeated his word of the day, sissies, in their direction. He told the men of the choir that they walked like women. It was just a video, but by the end of it, I (a heterosexual male Pastor and former Worship Leader) was deeply offended, not for myself, but for the entire community that the man was calling out.
And the people cheered. I have to admit, at first I wasn’t sure if they were cheering or trying to get at him to lynch him. But my friend assured me that they were cheering – the whole place was cheering – the audience, the pastors, the worship leaders, the choir, everyone was egging him on wanting more. The place went wild and wilder with every insult the speaker threw in the direction of the LGBTQ community.
Then it occurred to me. This could only happen because the LGBTQ community was totally absent. This has consistently been our struggle as the Christian Community. We talk about people rather than open up a dialogue with them. We are like the ones David describes as shooting from the position of ambush, suddenly and without fear. The reality was that this speaker was “the candy man,” he just kept on telling the crowd that had gathered exactly what they wanted to hear. He was not confronting sin, although I am sure he thought he was, because the sin that he had envisioned in his mind was absent from the crowd. I am sure that some of my readers are frantically wanting to point out that David was talking about the “innocent.” I accept the rebuke. But the point is that we are called to be in communication and community with others, not just ambushing those who might be walking by.
I am deeply concerned about the way that the contemporary church confronts what it calls sin. Our tendency is to confront sin that doesn’t exist within our communities and to do it in an aggressive and hateful way. We shoot our arrows from positions of ambush and we set our opponents on the defense. And it happens over and over again. There is no room for discussion. We are absolutely in the right, at least in our own minds. Except that, that is almost never the case. The truth is that we need dialogue desperately. We need to understand our opponent’s fears and hurts. And we need to be able to love through our differences. This is our job. And we need to find a way that we can do it. If we don’t, then we are guilty of our own sin which is actually greater than theirs.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm 65
No comments:
Post a Comment