I don't know why words are such a comfort. Or why I continually begin my writings with "I" and "I don't know."

One thing I do know is that words still have the power of healing for me. To hear them said, to receive them written, to write them down- all manifestations of the heart and head via language consoles me. The words "I love you," when meant, pierce through layers of hurt and betrayal to assure and assuage once again. "I hate you" cuts and wounds, tearing deep through blood and sinew, no matter what grace and kindness have preceded these words.

And when I write, even when I know no one is listening, or maybe only a few stray eyes have happened upon the page, it little matters; I am still ebbing that steady tide in my chest. The physical weight I feel lifts and my breaths flow more steadily as words drip from my pen, or my computer, as these technologically advanced times and drive for convenience has exterminated the pleasure of gripping a pointed object and finding release in watching my words flow from it.

My words. They are not just any words. You and I, we use the same alphabet. 26 letters are arranged and re-arranged, but from those 26 symbols, tired worn out prose wheezes out or rejuvenated meanings lift from the page with the freshness of their assortment. Melville used the same toolkit as I, but we speak different terms. These are my words. My heart, my head, my insufficiencies and grammatical deficiencies and linguistic strengths, ebbing and swelling, petering and failing with their expression found in words. Words, words, soothe my soul, speak what I cannot.

I have decided that it little assists me in life to keep my words to myself. They swirl round my head, useless and aggravating, crazy-making and stupid. If I speak them, they gain a purpose. Some weary soul may stumble unwittingly across them and find new energy. Some pugnacious heart may trip over them and stop insisting on foolhardiness. Some wiser soul may reflect and leave a note, aiding me in my journey.

My journey where? This is the question that has adequately trapped my words tonight, setting the parameters for their flight. Creativity is most possible, I am told, when the limits are clearly set. It's equally true of human potential. It's still true of words spoken from the heart. The story, the terms of the day, the purpose of the moment, guide and instruct the words to be used.

So now words come pouring forth in pursuit of purpose. My purpose. Life and death are issues for later. I am not deciding to be born, nor entertaining taking my life, or any life. I am looking at the here and now, the obvious and irreducible fact of my existence, and simply reviewing, "now what?" I am reviewing, not initiating the pursuit, as my avid quest to answer this question has been years, and many universities, times, places, and friends, in the making. Why me? Why now? are questions to be asked a hundred times, to be reviewed frequently as a mooring in an oft-tilting world of shifting identities and propositions.

I am Beloved. I am here at His will. I am Chosen, and Purposed. I have no doubt. Never have. The Desire that spoke me into Existence spoke the world, light itself and the seas into the same Existence. His Great Love pulsates in me as the very heartbeat of my waking. I seek to do His bidding, not because I am a drone or robot, but a great Will of Love, broken and weak, redeemed and renewed, strong and focused on Him.

And... on many other things. Here enters the ponderings of these words, the instigation to muse. What lot have You given, or allowed, or asked, or commanded, for me? Is it happiness the way I want it? Or happiness only in the sense of goodness that you demand- or both, one enabling and necessitating the other? My heart sits with the weight of sadness. Not despair. Not destitution. Not pain-beyond-speaking. Just sadness. The kind that weighs and clings, bears down on your shoulders until you're tired simply from being. The kind that makes bed inviting and the morning sun loathsome. The kind that walks bestride you with each lifting of the leg, each raising of the head, each movement of the hands. The kind that makes your eyes tired and your back ache. The kind that doesn't quit being your bedfellow, won't move to allow for more air, and insists on dominating every blackened thought in your head.

It's not death-grief. It' not frantic moaning for help. It's a quiet sitting, knowing all is well with the world but this. It's a deep assurance that in the grand chiaroscuro of light you are a small dot of darkness and Someday you will be a different dot. A lighter one perhaps. A clearer one, surely. A different one, absolutely. Now is only now and now will pass away Later. But Now is here, with its pulsating sadness and blinding dullness. This kind of sadness is weighing. It doesn't make you stop or rethink if you should be. You know you should be. You know Goodness. You have Goodness. You partake in Goodness every day. It's just that in that partaking there is still the nowness of sadness, and somehow it's all ok.

Loneliness is the death of many, even before they die. Loneliness pervades much of our contemporary structure of society. It's in the breakdown of Family, in the commercialization of Romance, in the sexualization of Friendship, in the privatization of Church. Loneliness is the enemy of the state. It's the perfect tempter to all kinds of Satanic escape. Loneliness is the constant companion of grief, and the true soulmate of sadness. As such, I recommend not an all-out attack on loneliness, but an acceptance of it's place in life. An acceptance and not a fight. It's ok to be lonely sometimes. It's not ok to pretend you're not lonely when you are. Loneliness cannot be overcome- it must be accepted, and then displaced. Yes, loneliness can be displaced. Love, the true and ardent expression of all that we worthlessly call Love, displaces the depths of loneliness. Over time, using many people and places and experiences. But eventually, Love wins out. Every time.

I'm living proof of this. My soul cries out for the happier times, the times I consider happier. When friends and family were present, when my life was large with people and plush with activity. When I could sit with the happy buzz of chatter all around me, knowing that I was a part of something meaningful and organic, dynamic and continuing. People- family, I love human souls getting to know one another and being true to one another.

Last night I had the chance to babysit again. I hadn't played with or been around little kids in nearly six months. Academia and law firms have little to do with children. I go to the park during lunch to study the LSAT, but my eyes are frequently drawn away from the textbook to the playground. Little ones shriek with laughter, cry from falling off the seesaw, quietly take a backseat to the older and more obnoxious ones, assert themselves or posture, increase motor skills and language acquisition. The tiny microcosm of the swingsets gives me a glimpse at the next generation's economy, relationships, religion and interpersonal skills. They are tiny and being shaped, learning of everything and everyone right in front of my eyes. Little souls run around on the grass, clumsily picking up a red ball and chasing their daddies.

But sitting, preparing for law school, and watching from a distance these happy lives, is not the same as being in the thick of them. Last night I spent hours playing with a little five year old and 18 month old. I wrapped up my night by rocking the baby to sleep, singing softly to him every song I knew and ones I made up on the spot. With his body cuddled up to mine, his head on my chest and his hands softly keeping Bear close, I felt like a mother. I felt at some small level what it would be like to have my own kids, whether or adopted or biologically mine it little matters, but my kids. My kids that for 18 years would be in my house, and I would call them Family. My husband would come in, see my softly rocking our child, and I can just imagine the look of utter contentment on his face, a good man with strength and fidelity. I could picture it all, and felt the tiny baby melt into sleep in my arms, his breathing steadying and his sighs and yawns fading to the silence and stillness of deep sleep and happy dreams.

Loneliness cannot be fought, but it can be displaced. Words help. They utter, catch at and strain to express truths of the deepest sort...

Idolatry and the book of Isaiah

My church is going through the book of Isaiah right now. The prophet Isaiah rails against the people of Jerusalem on the Lord's behalf, decrying them with words like "sinful," "iniquity," "evildoers," "forsaken," "despised," and "estranged" within one verse. Jerusalem "is filled with idols; they bow down to the work of their hand." They rebelled against God and do "not know... do not understand" their God. They called evil good and good evil, darkness for light and light for darkness.

What a confused people! What idiots! These are the same people who bowed down to a golden calf instead of listening to the cloud by day, fire by night, smoke on the mountains God who opened the Nile before their eyes. Seriously? Can you be that dumb?

I've shook my head in wonder at these people before. They of all people had no excuse to doubt in God- He acted in tangible ways then like He never does now. After they had tasted the manna, you would think they would say, "yup, gonna believe this guy next time." But of course they didn't.

Oh, then, the little voice starts slipping in again: they had tangible evidence of God's goodness, huh? They gave up their hearts to less than He? They obviously misplaced their reliance?

Sick with the swine flu and ordered by the doctor to not return to work until Monday, I'm facing a lot of down time at home right now. I began flipping through album after album of pictures my friends and I have compiled over the last few years. Snapshots of my life flashed before my eyes and I was swept away in memories, those captured and not captured by our cameras.

Fields and fields of wildflowers on a spring morning. Fog rolling in off the coast with the mountain peaking through on the beach. An Oxford winter and snow, golden sunshine and gently falling rain, laughter and pubs and castles and new and old friends. London cathedrals and towers. The stunning roof of Michaelangelo's hand on the Sistine Chapel. Wonder after wonder of ruins and monuments in Florence, Venice, Rome; Gelato by the river, inside jokes. Hot chocolate and churches and brilliant yellows and reds and blues of the Senoritas in Barcelona, Spain. Flashing brilliance of the snowfall outside the window of our speeding train, the Swiss Alps in the distance and French accents. Disneyland adventures, happy laughter and carefree days downtown, Pumpkin icecream and Premiering movies. Violin music, enchantingly intoxicating and delirium-inducing, solid strength of friends felt on either side like a wall none can penetrate to reach me. The birth of my own baby filly, soft and spindly and new to life and me. A wild ride down the beach, my hair flowing in the wind, the feel of surging power of the near-stallion beneath me and ocean spray in my face. A picnic in the park, rolling downhill, grass stains, stomach aches, and unending laughter. A drive through the mountains, Spring pushing its baby life through the floor of the valley, green spreading like fire across the plain below. A trip across the country, Zion and the Grand Canyon, breathtaking and devastating. Skiing downhill, whiteness ever increasing, cold biting and wind exhilarating. The sound of wedding bells at friends' weddings and the comforting knowledge they will be good and happy marriages. The cool floor of the chapel, my body lain on the floor before the altar, knowing finally nothing else mattered.

These are but a few of the most breathtaking moments in my life, when I lived so fully I could feel every component of my body, was aware of every aspect of my surroundings, washed in gratitude and delighting in life. Each I know was a deliberate gift from God, an outpouring of His manifest love fore me, both a gracious and natural consequence of seeking His goodness. "You anoint my head with oil, and my cup, it overflows."

And yet, I would give up every single moment I just described to be with a man I love.

I would give it all up, erase it all, say thanks but no thanks, and walk away- just to be with him. In some ways it doesn't matter who. It could be someone else tomorrow, and certainly was someone else years ago. My heart has long since learned to seek earthly happiness in any human form. My heart wants the physical comfort and tangible comfort of a man, so obviously less than God. I am better than the Israelites? I think not. Men may be made by God in the image of God, whereas golden calves are made by men in the image of God, but at the end of the day, it matters not where my heart has strayed. Whether it is to the castle or to the den of thieves, the range of ways one can fall matters little when neither the castle nor the den of thieves houses God.

Idolatry is idolatry.

Hebrews 12 teaches that "It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your week knees... See to it that... no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled; that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal."

What does sexual immorality or unholiness have to do with Esau's birthright? The same as any heart's straying from God. The author of Hebrews had just linked God's discipline to His treatment of us as sons. His Fatherly ways with His children is to purify us, to refine us in the fire. To endure this is to seek His holiness, to keep our hearts clinging to Him and nothing less. For our hearts to stray in sexual immorality or unholiness is to seek something less than God, to avoid His discipline, and this is akin to selling our birthright to His kingdom, which He bought with His blood.

I'm sure that stew looked awfully good to Esau at the time, and the golden calf was somehow appeasing to the Israelites in the moment. My own heart's leanings are no less absurd, when all are measured against the absolute blessings of God and the meaning far beyond all comfort and food and stability that He offers to us in His pursuit. It is a candidly bad decision to choose man or beast or stew over God and therefore sell our birthrights to being His sons.

Lately I've fallen into an atypical pattern of self-pity. I hate pity; I never pity anyone, least of all me. But for some reason I've felt justified in some sense to have a little pity party. It's taken a few hard blows to be reminded that life is just difficult, and for me just a little. There are many whose cups have been filled with a wine far more bitter than mine. What is this thing about suffering? Why must it continually rail on us, blow after steady blow, with no sign of relenting with old age or fortune or even love. The pains I must endure are far less than many I know and love. Why must it be so hard? "The Lord disciplines the one whom He loves..." Agh, what a horrible family life, with a Father so unbearably pure He can't accept anything less than perfection from His children, with a heavy hand and a quick blow at every little thing. I'd turn Him in to Child Protective Services if He were an earthly father.

And yet, it is a far different matter. Hebrews finishes the explanation of why we must endure this discipline: "For you have not come to what may be touched..." But I wanted something I could touch! I wanted something physical, not this far-off Spirit who can't stroke the hair out of my face when I am sick or hold my hand when I am scared! "For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the heares beg that no further messages be spoken to them." Ok, that doesn't sound so comforting. On second thought, when the Israelites did have God's physical presence, it sounds pretty frightening: "Indeed so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, 'I tremble with fear.'

"But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gatherings, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a bettter word than the blood of Abel... Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken." This sounds like a far more ideal place than letting your heart rely on a man or a golden calf or a bowl of stew, or even that God-on-the-mountain terror. It may include discipline of a kind that is gruesome and hard, of a focus on suffering "to fill up the completion of Christ" (?), something I am wrestling with but still do not understand. Despite the pursuit being replete with this discipline/suffering my head forces my heart to say its ok. Isn't God patently better than the Golden Calf? I have to ask. And the little moments of goodness that I have been given time and time again, even though I would give them up for less than God- I still have to recognize He gave them to me as hints, just hints, of the deep goodness He is. "Taste and see that I am good." They're just tastes, but it's enough to satisfy my heart for a time that my head is right. Eventually I will need to come to a deeper and deeper understanding of who He is... so that I can say "I know him, I understand" in a way the Israelites of Isaiah's time never did. But until then, the tastes are good enough.

"Thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire."

Articulating Desires

How can the temporality of man somehow be a comfort? Psalm 37 says to fret not about evildoers, “for they will soon fade like the grass.” We don’t worry because they aren’t the ultimate triumphers. They leave the picture before too long. Rather than fretting, we are to recognize that man is but for a moment, and that moment will determine a lot. For the evildoers, their time to be held accountable will come, and their brief moment on the stage of humanity will be their downfall. In contrast, the next verse says to the believer, “trust in the Lord, and do good.” Because we recognize that we only have a limited time on earth, we should dedicate ourselves to doing the things that are worthwhile. That is, evil is finite and will pass away with the end of the earth. Why then does it matter what we do? Therefore do good,Scripture says, and it seems that this is the only thing that has eternal import. While doing eThus since we are so exceedingly finite, it is only proper to do good, and rather than fret, we “dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.” Recognizing our brief stay on earth helps us settle in and be at home. Rather than being sporadic and leaving the land and not being settled into a place, it is all the more paramount for us brief sojourners that we do dwell. If you’re only going to be somewhere for an hour, you should use that time there to the fullest advantage. “Faithfulness” also has the long-term, roots sounding connotations, along with “dwell.” Again, the contrast for the knowledge of our brevity to increase concepts of faithfulness and dwelling should impress our memories.

This whole Psalm has to do with how one should conduct oneself in light of evil’s non-impression, its shortness, our life’s shortness, our need to do good. These disparate threads are tied together to frame a cohesive panegyric on living: “Delight yourself in the Lord,” “Commit your way to the Lord,” “Refrain from anger.” This is a how-to book for those seeking to fully acknowledge their finitude in their lifestyle. There in the beginning the often-misinterpreted verse comes: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Liberal interpreters often say that this verse means so long as we find joy in God we can do whatever we want, or that as a reward for doing good (mistakenly conflated with delighting in God) we will get whatever we want. My aunt pointed out to me a few years ago that this is not about God giving you the things which you desire, but giving you the desires themselves. That is, right living (do not fret about evildoers, recognize your fleetingness, do good, commit yourself to God, etc.) actually transforms your desires in life. Your desires themselves change their directedness. Rather than being focused on self, getting what you want (meaning what benefits you), you focus on others, specifically the Lord, and your heart begins to desire after righteousness and wisdom and humility and identification with Christ even if that entails suffering.

I have still wrestled with how all that works out, though. Is “Delight yourself in the Lord” a command, like a mother throwing down liver before her child and saying, “You will eat and you will like it!”? Must we train ourselves to delight in God as a matter of self-discipline to a joyless obligation. Yes and no. Yes to needing self-discipline to cultivate right desire. No to joyless obligation. Think about the appetite. It is said that some have a cultured palette, meaning that they actually enjoy finer foods. Greasy hamburgers and fake cheesy cheese flavor of Cheetos just don’t do it for them. They actually want finely sautéed vegetables and a well-marinated, moist piece of meat with mushrooms, or some sort of ethnic food. Not only is their appetite more “sophisticated” it is also exact. It knows exactly what fulfills it at the end of the day. Their appetite now (more or less) matches their bodily needs. Even in the world of food, though, a fine taste requires discipline. You can’t know the differences between various cheeses before you have tried many of them, learned their different names, and developed the skill of distinguishing between different types.

Distinguishing. That also means discerning. Quality living, if I may use so trite a phrase, requires discernment. The food critic discerns flavors, textures, weights, consistencies and can therefore make a judgment. He must know multiple flavors, multiple textures, has tried various combinations, put words to different aspects, synthesized meanings and rendered judgments. Delighting in God is the same. If we don’t know good from evil, we can’t love God. We just can’t. If we do not know the very essence of His being, then we cannot hope to find joy in Him. We must teach ourselves, or be taught, to discern good from evil, a short life versus a long life, what merits our worrying, to what we ought to commit ourselves, which emotions are beneficial. Amidst this, we learn what fulfills us, what leaves us empty, what takes away from us. We must be self-aware, self-reflective and open to others. We must be able to identify and articulate specifics about our states. I desire x. I was hurt by x. I was loved by x. I loved x. I was helped by x. I helped x. When we can make these distinctions and connections and discern meanings, we can begin to train ourselves to love rightly, to seek forgiveness, to offer sacrifice. And, in the midst of learning to love rightly, we learn what we love. Only an admittedly broken and healing man can say “I loved winning arguments and they fed a desire inside of me.” Actions are often indicative of desires. What you are doing can sometimes tell you why. There are reasons for the way you act. What motivates you? What do you want?

Jesus asks this confounded question again and again throughout Scriptures: to his disciples, the woman at the well, himself. “If it be your will, let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but thine be done.” In order for him to fully expose himself to his Father he had to first discern his own will. If he did not know his own will, then he could not rightly say, “not my will be done.” He would be forever stuck in saying, “all I know is I want your will to be done,” but he would not know himself. Surely Christ’s will was not corrupt- he had desires “opposed” to God the Father, but he didn’t deny them. He allowed what he wanted, and then clarified what he wanted even more, “thy will be done.” Even Christ, limited by the multi-levels of human desire, had complex emotions.

Sometimes we don’t even know what we want, no matter how hard we try to know. This is when the Spirit can intercede for us in prayer- meaning we are trying to reach out to God about our desires. The Spirit does not intercede in prayer that is a cast-off on God. By that I mean that those who avoid the hard work of trying, skip the expression of personal desires and simply say “whatever thy will.” If it were sufficient to say “thy will be done” as the sole component of prayer, the Spirit wouldn’t have to intercede with groanings too deep for humans, and the Lord’s prayer would have been a lot shorter. No “give us this day,” no “lead us not into trespasses,” no “thy kingdom come.” Just “thy will be done.” There would not even be a recognition that we are asking for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. We are specifying where we want it to take place and how we want it to take place.

By refusing to articulate human desire before the face of God, we put a divine emoticon over our truer, more complex desires. Of course we want God’s will to be done! But in what? For what? Why do we care? What’s going on- what’s at stake? And more importantly, where are we in this process? The person who asks for God’s will secretly so that he can bring down revenge on an enemy has a vastly different state of heart than the person who asks for God’s will so that he can ask to be taught humility. If they obscure the reason why they come in prayer, however, neither is going to get far.

The “thy will be done” phrase is not extraneous, however. It is still holds primary significance. What did Jesus want? He wanted the cup to pass from his hand, but he also, and more strongly, recognized that this didn’t seem like God’s plan and he wanted God’s plan to happen because he trusted God and knew that God had the best plan anyway! “Best” by whose standards? one might ask. By the one who created standards, I would say. Read Hebrews and Colossians and Genesis- there’s a lot of glory going around and Christ knew he was a tertiary part of God’s not only cosmic but eternal plan. He knew it was best in all regards that he do God’s will even when his own will told him differently. So in the end, his will was right after all. That’s not a cute turn of phrase; it’s mightily important. Ultimately, Christ did not want the cup to pass from His hands, if he knew that the Father had planned differently. Since He wasn’t the one calling the shots, since He did trust that the Father had planned differently, he gladly took the cup and drank from the cup of death- and, as it turns out, life. He knew that that would happen- He knew that by subjugating his desire to the Father’s his ultimate desire would be fulfilled.

What was Jesus doing in the midst of all this praying, sweating blood, and obeying? He was delighting in God. How do you submit your heaven-given, virgin-birthed, salvific life over to death unless you know for a fact it’s going to be better in the end. Christ took the cup of death against his will because he knew of the father that “He’s working all this out… the end is going to be so amazing.” Delight. Joy in the redemption plan God created and the use of us to effect it. Glory. If we really, honestly, actually, genuinely, unhypocritically, personally, faithfully believe that God’s will is greater than our own, and we know our own wills enough to admit them to God and compare the two wills and judge His to be better—then we are doing so out of delight. Not shallow hope. If we actually believe it, meaning we think it is true (not sort of, kind of wish and hold our breaths that it is true), then we will be laughing for the thrill of it. That does not of course erase the pain of the particular. Christ still had a spear stuck in his side after wearing a crown of thorns and being pierced through the hands and feet to be nailed to a cross he had carried on the lash-torn flesh of his back. He had been mocked, spit on, denied, been a disappointment to those whom he loved deepest, and been forsaken by the Father to whom He had entrusted His life. God could not look upon such sin of the world which Christ took upon Himself. For the first time in eternity, the Father turned His face away from His only begotten Son. “Forsaken” really doesn’t near the crux of that kind of rejection.

But the joy, the joy of participating in the particulars (good and bad) of a redemption story you know with full conviction is going to be glorious (beyond compare, better than anything one could ask for), is surely delight. That kind of living is delighting in God. If you see that in your life, if you see your actions directed toward glorifying the Father, you see the manifest delight you have in your God, well, that’s indicative that your desires are right on track.

Psalm 37: 4, then, seems to be a hypothetical “if-then” statement: If you delight yourself in the Lord, then He will give you the desires of your heart. It is not a command to do this. One cannot force a heart to have a certain bent (for surely that is delight, as we have discussed), but it is a decision to orient your heart in that direction through self-discipline and training. Just as developing a sophisticated palette takes intentionality, time, and perseverance, so developing a heart that is rightly oriented to God so that it delights in Him takes intentionality, time, and perseverance. But the one who has accomplished this, whose heart is rightly directed toward God (as evidenced by the fulfillment of the law, and the other verses of Psalm 37), has the exact kind of desires that God can, greatly wants to, and will always fulfill.

Weighed Down by Heavy Silence

Weighed down by heavy silence
Buoyed by light laughter,
Sounds, and their absence, have weight,
Carry meanings without words.
Words, too, weigh or life,
Transport, transgress, or cut
To the quick a listening soul.

The deaf hear not the sounds
That convey harsh critique or
Caressing praise. Words touch, too.
They bite, fester, sometimes heal
Wounds caused by other words
And sounds too much to bear.

A cry in the night pierces darkness,
Without words sounds break black,
White noise settles back in place
In light made by God's voice,
Which called forth the day.

"Bear each other's burdens,"
The sweet voice of Christ
Crushed our ears with His
Too-hard-to-obey Word,
And we stumbled under the knowledge
Of another's weight, shared
With us through heavy words.

Words carry weight, or they lift,
Transcend, transform, or gift
Us with glory: "Well done,
Good and faithful servant.
You have run well and spoken
Well of Me." In that day
You will be freed from
The words of temptation under
Which you crumble with sin.

His Word confirms and firms
Our quavering voices of praise,
Strengthening and lifting
Our now weightless, single voice
To the heavens.

Identity claims and homosexuality

I have a few brief thoughts on a question posed to me the other day: Can a celibate homosexual be a member of a Christian evangelical church?

Normally I shy away from such loaded, politically fragmented and emotionally charged questions. I usually think more than enough has been said about such things, and any extra words will probably end up hurting or confusing someone more. Plus, my love of argument days are long gone. I now argue economically—only when necessary. This is one of those times.

Disclaimer: this is not a robust, nor long pondered thesis. It is just a thought, but hopefully one I will substantiate. Feel free to offer your feedback—it is a developing view and I am more than open to critique. But here goes…

The label “homosexual” is an identity claimn in today’s culture. In the past, this was used to denote a certain act, but now it seems to be used as a statement of identity. We don’t have same-sex or hetero-sex attractions; we are straight or we are gay. This language assumes that our sexual desires are properties of our very nature.

I don’t want to deny this. I think issues of sexuality touch the human soul deeply precisely because sexuality defines a core aspect of humanity. I don’t think humans are primarily sexual (there are many qualities which I think should define us first: rationality or capacity for emotion, for instance), but humans are definitely sexual. But what does this mean?

Let me posit my own view, undefended, that sexuality involves both body and soul. I know that belief in the soul is not so widely accepted these days, and amongst those who still defend the soul’s existence it is disputed whether souls have properties of sexuality. In either case, however, we all agree that sexuality involves the body. Some may posit that issues of gender and such are merely social constructs, but I don’t hear too often that sexuality has nothing to do with the body. By definition, it has to involve bodily structure if it involves a bodily act. Thus, if we are to talk about homosexual acts and heterosexual acts, we are talking in part (at least) about bodily structure.

Now, homosexuality and heterosexuality may be different than homosexual acts and heterosexual acts. I think that is what the popular argument implies. The former may be statements about someone’s person and the latter simply about a physical act. If that is the case, then let me ask the following questions.

What does it mean to say “I am a heterosexual” or “I am a homosexual”? In popular culture this means “I am sexually attracted to people of a certain sex” (either the same or the different, or both). But is this all that this is saying? Isn’t our sexuality still partly due to the type of sexual organs we have? And those sexual organs are designed (or evolved, take your pick) for sexual relationships with the opposite sex. If that is true, then my sexuality is for the opposite sex by nature: I am a heterosexual (physiologically speaking) although I may have homosexual desires or even engage in homosexual acts. A homosexual individual then is physiologically heterosexual with homosexual desires. Thus we must be careful in making a non-nuanced identity claim such as “I am a homosexual” without clarifying.

Ok, now back to the question of the church. Why is it important to care about identity claims in the question of whether homosexuals can be members of a Christian evangelical church? First of all, identity claims in Scripture are a big deal. Christ says pretty quickly that we are to renounce our self (body and soul) and take on the identity of Christ. Sacraments such as communion and baptism represent our union with Christ in his death and resurrection. We die to self and live to him. Colossians is helpful here. Colossians 3:3 boldly states, “For you have died, and your life his hidden with Christ in God.” And later: “You have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Col. 3:10).

The “old self” can be any number of identity claims: I am one who worries, I am one who lusts, I am one who is angry, and the list goes on. In a non-exhaustive list of properties of the old self Colossians includes coveting, being angry, slandering, lying, being sexually immoral, etc. The old self is someone who sins in many ways, but is probably characterized by one or a few predominant sins. Dying with Christ and being renewed means submitting your whole self to His power of death and resurrection: your sexual self (straight or gay), your emotional self, your physical self, etc. If at any point you take up your old identity claims, you are denying the power of Christ in your life and excluding the fact that you are identified now only by your relationship to Him.

I can no longer say, I am a worrier- that identity has been taken over by Christ. If I act as if that still defines me, then I am defining myself outside of Christ, and frankly, any identity claim outside of Christ is outside of the church. The person who takes back his old identity is excluding himself from the church, not the other way around. On the other hand, the one who “dies to self” still has the long process of sanctification to go. He has continual trial, and will always struggle with desires of the old self, whether those desires are to worry, to lust, to desire sex with the same gender or sex with the opposite gender who is not your spouse. It doesn’t matter, in one way, which tendency is to be overcome. I’m not trivializing homosexual desires; I am taking into consideration the extreme difficulty of fighting off homosexual desires. But in any case, the person who denies the identity claim of the old self must be accepted into the church. The body of Christ is just that—those who have taken on a new identity, and yet will still fight old desires the rest of their lives.

It isn’t a question of whether a celibate homosexual can be a part of the church. It depends entirely on whether that person reclaims (accepts and thereby legitimizes) his identity as a homosexual after the saving work of God, or claims his identity as one who is hidden in Christ and admittedly has homosexual desires. The latter should be welcomed with open arms; the former has rejected the work of God.

The Problem of Doing Things Right

It's worse to have things go wrong and not be able to blame yourself. If you did something wrong, at least you can have hope that it won't happen again. You learned something; you won't make the same mistake again and so the bad thing won't happen again. But the problem is, sometimes even when you do things mostly right, you still get hurt. This seems harder to me than when you do things wrong. If you do things mostly right and you can't blame yourself, then you don't have hope that changing your actions will change the outcome at all. There's just no guarantee that it won't happen again.

A couple of weeks ago, I got kicked by a horse. He was young and skittish. But I'd been around young horses for years, and I knew how to act. I did things mostly right, and it wasn't even the "mostly" that got me. I was talking to my boyfriend on the phone, so maybe that was a bad idea, but I was paying more attention to the horse because I knew it could be dangerous if I didn't. The frustrating thing is, I thought through all my actions. I spoke fairly quietly and moved slowly. I walked up gently, slid my hand down his leg, took off his legwraps. I slid the saddle off his back and he stood his ground, his eyes and ears following me, but he was clearly not alarmed. I ran my hand across his back as I moved so that I kept in contact with him. He was wary, but mostly relaxed.

As I put the saddle away in the tack room, I noticed that he had sidled up next to my gelding. I knew that my gelding might kick the young horse, so I asked him to move away. I walked up behind my gelding, wanting to get more to the side of the young horse so that he would see me (and less afraid that my gelding might kick me). I spoke firmly to him as I walked toward him and made sure that his ear was cocked on me so that he knew I was there. But when I reached out and gently touched his hindquarters, gently asking him to move away from my horse, he was startled and lashed out.

Wham! The impact of his nearly 2000 pound body of muscle forcing his hoof into my leg shoved me back a step and I cried out. Wham! He had immediately struck again, this time higher, and blood started running down my left arm, in concert with a throbbing feeling now in both my leg and arm-- mostly numbness. It didn't break anything, but I have a scar on my arm now, and a lump on my leg which will be a part of me for quite some time. The scar won't ever go away. I'll mitigate the effects with vitamin E, protection from sunlight and all around good care. I already minimized damage with antibiotics, anti-inflammation medication, Neosporin, constant bandaging, doctor visits, ex-rays and so forth. But it won't ever go away. And the bummer is, I didn't learn anything from it. I can't stop it from happening again.

My trainer told me it was probably about 30 percent my fault. It turns out that a cocked ear is not enough to tell you a young horse sees you. You need eye contact. So, I learned something, but the thing is, it's not enough to stop it from happening again. Sometimes, young horses just kick.

People kick, too, in a manner of speaking. You can try your hardest to say the right things, act the right way, be gracious and expect little, and still people can react the wrong way. You can do things mostly right, and still get hurt. It's less frustrating when you feel like a bad situation is your fault too, because then you have hope that you can change the next interaction. But when you realize that you've done things mostly right (and this only by the grace of God), and yet still things are going badly, then you can feel angry or just plain despairing. How do I change a situation, if I'm not the problem? Funny, probably most of us can only say this a few times in our life. Aren't we always part of the problem? Well, sometimes not. Sometimes, we do things right, and still get hurt.

Should I not go back to the ranch anymore because I got kicked? Should I let a hoofprint shaped scar stop me from the sport of riding I love so much? If I got kicked more than I enjoyed riding, it probably would be fairly silly for me to keep subjecting myself to the damage. I can run a simple cost-benefit analysis on my engagement in the sport to see if it's worth it. 1 kick (and a few other scrapes and scares, to be fair); 12 years of exhilaration, beauty, harmony of horse and rider. I think I'll stay in the game.

But what about when humans are the ones lashing out? At the end of the day, and you've done things mostly right, and people are still hurting you, what do you do? If they keep acting the same way, do you still get near them? I don't have a complete answer, but I have the beginnings of one. We can say "It's not worth it" about a relationship and wash our hands of a person and that may carry some benefit, but have we truly understood the cost? The sense of despair in a bad situation in which you are confident that you have acted mostly in a right manner can be overwhelming. At the very least, it dampens your desire to continue acting rightly. "Why bother?" is easy to say.

The other alternative is to keep acting rightly and keep hoping that the situation will change anyway. At a certain point, it is up to the Lord to act within the situation to bring about the change toward good. He is in charge, anyway. But if he is in charge, and you have submitted to Him, then He already has your good in mind anyway. It would be too dramatic to call it persecution, but it's a similar principle: you've done things mostly right and you still get hurt.

God has a lot to say about this principle. In fact, Scripture says that if we do things right, the world will hate us. We can't take that as a justification for a pity-party, or a holier-than-thou attitude. We have to wrestle with the fact that that means even when we do things right, we will still get hurt. God isn't above pain, and we can't be either. For God, pain is not enough of a deterrent when something beautiful is at hand. The problem is, we can't see the beautiful thing when we're getting hurt in mundane stuff in daily life. When someone is angry with me, or a horse kicks me, I don't get to see the whole picture. I just feel the anger or the kick. I don't yet see the grander plan in mind, the redemption of souls, the beauty of horse riding, the character He slowly forging in me.

I can't see very far ahead. But I do have a choice. I can choose to stay focused only on what I feel, the anger or the kick, or I can look ahead as far as I can. I'll never be able to see the whole plan in my current, fallen state, but I can trust the One who can see. I've seen enough of His work in my life to know that the vision He has for me can't be too far off from the one I want for myself, except a whole lot better. I don't quite understand how my pain fits into that larger context. I would have to dig down a lot deeper into theological beliefs (such as how Christ's glory was masked in suffering and we are asked to partake of it, or that our habituation to right living enlarges our soul no matter the circumstance, or how we are promised God's rest if we strive to enter into it, or a whole host of other truths).

The point is, I don't have to get all of it yet. I'm learning as I walk, and I'm gonna keep walking in the right way as long as He gives me the grace to do so, regardless of the frustrating moments when I do things mostly right and I still get hurt. I have a feeling that the pain and scars we rack up in this lifetime, sometimes even despite right living, won't be worthy of comparing to the life that He has promised to give us if we continue in the life to which He has called us, to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. My neighbor, kicking horse or angry human, fits pretty well in that life to which the God I love has called me.

Oh Era, why must thou confuse so?

In a culture that crowns Objectivity king, we concede to each other, "Everything's subjective," and subjectivity reigns.

When the judge of Science issues its verdict from that objective 3rd-person, we silently mutter, "It's a matter of perspective."

When philosophers dispute the existence of "raw feels," we promote an ethic of "Do what feels right!"

Ours is an age that denies personhood to babies, and by the Turing test, welcomes robots to the family.

"Community matters!" postmodernity cries, so we flaunt our individuality.

As the state enforces tolerance, we hide our bigotry against the mentally inferior.

Evolution's orthodoxy, and efficiency is key: but fashion and pleasure will be our only guide.

If all logic is a matter of your starting point, and intuition fails, is there anywhere left to go?