\u201cMy command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.\u201d
\nJohn 15:12, NIV<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n
I try. I\u2019ve talked, read, debated, prayed (a lot), and I still don\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n
How is love incompatible with Christian teaching?<\/p>\n
To quote from our very own Book of Discipline (2008): \u201cWe affirm that all persons are individuals of sacred worth, created in the image of God. All persons need the ministry of the Church in their struggles for human fulfillment, as well as the spiritual and emotional care of a fellowship that enables reconciling relationships with God, with others, and with self. The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n
So let me get this straight. We affirm that everyone is created in the image of God, everyone needs the ministry of the Church, everyone is of sacred worth. Except those whose beliefs and lifestyles are \u2018incompatible with Christian teaching.\u2019<\/p>\n
We welcome all who wish to partake to the Lord\u2019s Holy Supper, but make specific exceptions when they want to actually be more than just communion-takers. Am I the only one who sees the hypocrisy present in our Book of Discipline? Everyone is important, everyone is sacred, but yet some just aren\u2019t good enough to be United Methodists.<\/p>\n
What do we mean when we say \u2018incompatible with Christian teaching?\u2019 What do we really mean? Have we really thought about what that phrase means on a practical, relational level? Personally, I think it gets used a lot as a cop-out, a way to dismiss a view\/opinion\/paradigm without really having to think about its consequences. Or, maybe it\u2019s because it makes us uncomfortable or we just don\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n
We, as United Methodists, do plenty of things that are incompatible with Christian teaching. Harsh and cruel words toward a fellow child of God are incompatible with Christian teaching. The way we pollute our earth is incompatible with Christian teaching. Our apathy toward atrocities both right under our noses and far away is incompatible with Christian teaching. The way we turn a blind eye toward the poor, the outcast, the disenfranchised in our very own neighborhoods is incompatible with Christian teaching. We say that we are human (we are) and that we strive to move toward perfection (I hope we do), but to use these words to justify our inaction and our satisfaction with the comfortable status quo makes a mockery of our Wesleyan heritage, and worse, of the Christ we are called to serve.<\/p>\n
This rant of mine is not about one particular group of people, and yet it is. We have politicized the word \u2018inclusive\u2019 to mean something very specific. \u201cInclusive\u201d means \u2018open to all.\u2019 It\u2019s one group of people, and it\u2019s everyone. It\u2019s those in our local churches and those around the world. Those who speak English as a native tongue and those who are more familiar with another beautiful language. Those who are young, and those who are old, and those who are in between. All of us.<\/p>\n
How can we be an inclusive church, yet say that who a person is and who they love, is incompatible with Christian teaching? How can we open Christ\u2019s communal table to all and yet reject some? How can we preach \u2018open minds, open hearts, open doors\u2019 and then slam those doors in the faces of those who have the courage to knock? We bemoan the fact that our church is dying, and yet spend our time drawing lines in the sand, separating those who are in from those who are out. This, to me, is incompatible with Christian teaching. It\u2019s blatant hypocrisy. It is.<\/p>\n
Now while I\u2019m not clergy or a seminary student, I am a layperson who has studied the bible quite a bit. And from what I\u2019ve read, Jesus is pretty mum on the subject of homosexuality, homosexual marriage, and monogamous same-sex relationships. The rest of the disciples didn\u2019t say much either, although Paul had quite a bit to say about pedophilia, prostitution, and the bothersome obligations of marriage. And if we really want to get that literal about Leviticus and Deuteronomy, well, then we\u2019re all in trouble. The Bible says a lot of things, folks, and we\u2019re being pretty presumptuous if we think we have a lock on the entirety of Christian teaching.<\/p>\n
In fact, Jesus spent much of his ministry in community with those who had lifestyles that, at the time, were considered \u2018incompatible\u2019 with the \u2018right\u2019 way of living of their day. The disciples spent plenty of their time with people very different from them as they spread the word of the risen Christ to people in far away lands. The new Christian churches struggled mightily with what it meant to be a Christian, a follower of Christ. Did all Christians have to be circumcised and celebrate Jewish traditions? What about clean\/unclean foods? In the end, they decided that physical appearance and dietary preferences mattered less than the belief that Jesus Christ was the Son of God made flesh, who came to this earth as a baby and died for our sins.<\/p>\n
I can imagine that if the early Christians had stuck to their comfortable beliefs, what they were used to, what was easy, none of us would be having the conversations at GC2012 that we\u2019re having right now. Why? Because Christianity would not exist. Those early churches would have died out as nothing more than a fad of its time. It was in the willingness of the early Christians to continue to redefine what their priorities are, where there true path was, what their ultimate goal was\u2014to spread the message of Christ to every single person they met and live out his call in word and deed every single day.<\/p>\n
I urge us all, in this time of \u2018connectionalism\u2019 and \u2018silos\u2019, of lifting each other up in worship and cutting each other down in committee meetings, to reflect on the message of Christ. Look to the early Church for inspiration and guidance. Obviously, this is an issue that has been around for quite some time, and the decisions made a GC2012 certainly won\u2019t be the final say. To be the inclusive church that we proclaim that we are, we must be in this together. Not just for each of our churches, but for our Church. I fear that if we forget this, soon we will be just another fad of our day.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are one in the spirit, we are one in the Lord
\nAnd we pray that our unity will one day be restored
\nAnd they\u2019ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love
\nYes, they\u2019ll know we are Christians by our love.\u201d<\/p>\n
Will they?<\/p>\n
Photo Credit: Flickr user epSos.ed, Creative Commons.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cMy command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.\u201d John 15:12, NIV I don\u2019t get it. I try. I\u2019ve talked, read, debated, prayed (a lot), and I still don\u2019t get it. How is love incompatible with Christian teaching? To quote from our very own Book of Discipline (2008): \u201cWe affirm that all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-344","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-conversation"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/6180907719_fe9b41146f_z.jpg?fit=640%2C359&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l75j-5y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":857,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions\/857"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}