Why Do We Do This To Each Other?

I have not seen the series, The Chosen, but it has garnered rave reviews from Christians across the United States (and I’m assuming other countries as well). It is, after all, refreshing to hear of media companies tackling the Truth of Scripture from a vision of realistic interpretation rather than some attack on Jesus, His Message, or His Church.

Everyone was really excited…until…

One of the behind-the-scenes workers on the show had a Pride Flag near where he works. It made it (accidentally?) into a social media post for the series. And, as is usually the case, the so-called Christian Community lost their ever-loving minds. (And yes, I think “ever-loving” is an apt play on words for this post).

Suddenly, calls for boycotts were in place across Twitter and other social sites. Apologize or die was the cause of the day. The show that drew so many people in for it’s portrayal of life of Christ and His disciplines suddenly seemed anathema.

And I have thoughts. (Don’t I always?)

My Christian Faith is Mine Alone

This is the first, and perhaps most important, point. It is the reason I cringe when The Evangelical movement says they support Trump because he talks about the Bible, or opposes abortion. Does that really mean anything?

It is the reason I cringe when I hear politicians citing Biblical references as the reasons they promote certain legislation. And that happens a LOT in Tennessee. That may be their belief, but is it the belief of other religions? Of other parts of the Christian Community? Of even other people who attend their own church?

I have a particular faith rooted in the traditions of the Early Church Fathers. I believe in a God that exists in three distinct persons. I believe Jesus is the Only Begotten of the Father and that Mary was impregnated through the agency of the Holy Spirit and was a virgin at the time of conception. I believe there is a knowable Truth in the universe, and that Jesus is the One Way to that Truth. I believe in the infilling of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. I could go on and on.

And some would rally to that paragraph and hold me high on a pedestal as a writer others should read.

But I also enjoy an occasional whiskey, bourbon, or glass of Merlot. I cuss a little. OK, sometimes I cuss a lot. I sometimes watch movies that display nudity and sexual content. I no longer attend church on a weekly basis. Or any basis really.

And those same people would point to me as a heathen who needs salvation. Or at the least some form of sanctification (although I dare say they can’t define what that means exactly).

But there’s the rub. My faith is my own. It is personal. And there is nothing…absolutely nothing…that says I can’t also support the rights of the LGBTQ+ community and place a Pride flag somewhere where it can be seen. (I haven’t, but that’s not the point is it?)

My Faith Doesn’t Dictate How You Live

Because my faith is personal, it can only provide direction for my own life. Not yours. My faith is not the same as the faith of my parents. My faith is not the same as the faith of my children. Yet both have had a role in shaping a personal faith for me. My parents did not dictate to me a way of living any more than I could dictate a way of living to my adult children.

My faith cannot be used to determine right and wrong for anyone but me. Yes, the Bible is filled with eternal Truth. And there are keys to living well to be found there that should apply to everyone regardless of race, color, or creed. But it is also up to me to “rightly divide the Word of Truth” for me.

Let me give you an example from today’s headlines.

I grew up in an era where drag and cross dressing were a part of the television formation. Milton Berle often dressed in drag to do a skit. Red Skelton did the same. Dame Edna was an incredible talent and comedian. The list is long and varied.

Drag Queen Story Hour has never really bothered me on a philosophical level. There is a man who dresses as a woman (usually a wildly imaginative woman with far too much makeup, way too much hair, and a chest that rivals Dolly Parton). Is that any different from Berle or Edna? We take kids to the circus, but we don’t complain that men and women dress in awful makeup, ridiculous hair, and oversized shoes. Well, unless we have an irrational phobia of such things.

No, the problems for “family friendly drag shows” for me involve the times when these performers decide to make their show more than just suggestively provocative with off color jokes. When they decide to do a striptease and parents encourage their 6 year old to put dollar bills in their garter belt, I have a personal problem at that point. Or, as recently posted on Twitter, a drag queen at a “family friendly” even wearing an extra large dildo on the outside of his clothing and suggestively masturbating that dildo in front of small children, it is a problem for me personally. When I see a 10 year old dressed as a drag queen doing a strip tease dance with adults throwing money at the boy, I am appalled personally. I think it is a line too far.

For me.

For my faith.

For my ways of thinking about the world.

I think states like Tennessee meant well when writing laws that would prohibit such sexuality in front of small children. I also think the courts got it right to declare the law unconstitutional as being overly vague. People DO have a right to self-expression and free speech. Regardless of what we think about that expression or speech.

I Can Support The LGBTQ+ Community Without Losing My Understanding of How The World, And My Faith, Operates.

As a high school administrator, I have worked with students who professed to be gay, lesbian, non-binary, and transgender. I hope I treated them all with the respect and dignity I’ve given to any other student regardless of their professed orientation.

I say “professed” because I have also seen many of these same students leave high school and decide they are not gay, or lesbian, or non-binary, or transgender. And, of course, there are some who continue in the self-identity they chose in high school as well. They knew. But many are experimenting for various reasons. Experimentation is a hallmark of the teenage years I suppose.

Those that asked to be called by another name were given that courtesy as much as I could remember. The same is true for their chosen pronouns. I’m older, and out of touch with many modern youthful things, and I made mistakes. But I was willing to work with them where they were. And no one bit my head off when I got it wrong. They understood I was trying.

I learned too late as a parent that the more you try to stifle a chosen activity in your kids, the more they want to do that activity.

At the same time, I am not in favor (and will not be required) to do any of that under some umbrella of compelled speech. I refuse to give up my personal rights of expression in order to bow down to the latest political fetish.

The Bible says to “train up a child in the way he should go.” And part of that means to provide them with the path toward Truth found in Jesus Christ. But another part of that, to me, in my personal faith and understanding, means to give them the room to discover who they are. They are young. They will experiment with a lot of things. You won’t like some of them. You may not like any of them. But they have to have the room to breathe. The room to live. The room to “be.”

I Don’t Treat Children As I Treat Adults

When Elaine Paige decided she was no longer a lesbian, but a trans man, I didn’t understand it. It is one of those great mysteries of life I will probably never get. When Elliott Paige decided to have a double mastectomy in order to feel more like a man in his body, I really didn’t understand it. But then, he didn’t ask me, did he?

I believe, regardless of my faith, that adults have the absolute right to live the way they choose to live. We’ve been through the gay is illegal phase because of our religious beliefs. We’ve been through the interracial marriage is illegal phase because of our religious beliefs. We’ve been through the gay and lesbian marriage is illegal phase because of our religious beliefs. And all of those have been led by someone who just knew that their faith trumped the Constitution.

It doesn’t.

But I will forever draw the line at the chemical and bodily mutilation of our children in the culture war. Our children are sacred. And if there is ever a cause that would make me decide to become an activist / advocate / or voice for what is good and pure in the world, it would be the protection of our children.

As a parent, you can support your child through their teen years regardless of how they present themselves. There is no power any greater in the physical than the unconditional love of a parent for his or her children. None.

Children experiment with ways of being for many reasons. Boys go walking around the house in their mother’s high heels slinging her pearl necklace around like a rope. Girls put on their father’s work boots and try their best to keep his tool belt up around their waists to be just like him. We cannot interpret every experimental stage as the end-all-be-all truth of our children’s condition.

What we can do is take the boy in his mom’s high heels and hug him tightly to let him know he is loved beyond measure. The same for our daughters. Most children are naturally drawn to the affection of their mothers. It is a natural (and perhaps stereotypical) reaction of a woman to be affectionate, hugging, and even kissing their children to the point of annoyance. But the man is often distant, not connected well to his feelings about himself or others, and unable to offer such affection easily.

I speak from personal knowledge as much as anything here.

So the children often do whatever they can to get the attention, the positive attention, of their father. And it is way beyond time for us to “man up” as it were.

Back To My Point

I’ve said all of the above for this one simple reason. I don’t care that someone on the set of The Chosen has a Pride flag. It doesn’t diminish the importance of the story any more than Mel Gibson’s Anti-Semitic, drunken tirade diminished the power of The Passion of the Christ, or We Were Soldiers Once, And Young, or Hacksaw Ridge.

The power of these things is in the story, not the storyteller.

It’s time to get over ourselves and live our own lives in our own faith and our own understanding of the Truth, and stop trying to make everyone else be more like us.

After all, most of us just suck.