love through relationships

I spent Saturday night in the midst of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, at a church that opened its gates and doors to the people going along, providing refreshments and space, in the name of Jesus and for the love of Him.

I was so glad to be out there as part of the body of Christ, offering assistance and space. And yeah, there were conversations had about faith and belief, but mostly just smiles and inquiries, offers of water, chai, pancakes, and sausage sangers.

There are people who will disdain this as "affirmation" and others who will sneer that it's "propaganda".

Is it affirmation to succour the humanity - hunger, thirst, exhaustion, sensory overload - of those we disagree with?

Is it propaganda to put our best foot forward when we have the resources and desire to?

I've wanted conservative churches in Sydney to put their actions where their teachings are for a while, particularly in a space that challenges us more than it comforts us. Not typical "evangelism" stuff but hospitality and kindness, "living lives of such generosity and love that even the pagans will see you are different and rejoice" as Paul once said.

I don't want the word of God to be used as a bludgeon. I want it to be living water, satisfying a thirst most people don't even realise they have. But you can't force it down their throats and expect them to be grateful. That's not how this works.

"How do you show Christian love if you aren't also judging them according to God's standards?"

It's a question that most Christians wrestle with in one form or another. Most of the people in my circles tend to fall on the side of "if you do anything with them without emphasising their sinfulness and their need for God, then you are failing them and failing God, and failing your Christian calling". In the extreme version, it means you don't have gay friends or trans friends. You don't eat with sinners. You don't break bread with the fallen and not-getting-up.

I mean, it's okay if they're socially "civilised": you know, they would fit into the church so long as they never opened their mouth or had to make a statement of faith.

On Saturday night at the 'open grounds' in the midst of the Mardi Gras, a young earnest Evangelical said she didn't want to ask people how they were enjoying the night because if they said 'yes' then she was enabling their sin and making it seem like it was okay for them to be sinning.

Which mostly leads me to the reminder that our version of 'sin' is entirely too small.

Fucking someone outside of wedlock? Sin!

Kissing someone of the same sex because of attraction? Sin!

Enjoying a celebration that's set up around a sinful lifestyle? Sin!

But...

Bitching at a family member before you left the house this morning? Not!Sin!

Ignoring the homeless person with their hand out when you walked past them on the way to work? Not!Sin!

Making snide comments about someone who doesn't have the ability to hit back? Not!Sin!

Our version of 'sin' is limited to the things we do, rather than the way we interact with people, rather than the way we interact with our fellow image-bearers, rather than our attitude to existence. It's a very small version of sin, which makes it easy to decry those things that other people do while ignoring the things that we do. And even those of us who know that sin is an attitude and not merely actions often forget and try to ensmallen sin so it excludes our own sinful acts and thoughts and omissions.

I've talked about this a lot on here before: the very distinct insistence that we have to tell people the gospel... And yes, we do. But picking the time and the moment, backing it up with a relationship, being about more than just the words? I think we have too many words and not enough of the other stuff. We live in a time of words and wordiness, of speeches and comments, of shortform videos and long bursts of information. People don't want our words anymore.

They want our love - our actions, our kindness.

Can we tell the truth kindly? Yes. But also, it requires first a relationship. God does all His best work through relationships.

peculiar irony (also witness to the world)

Someone said something to me on the weekend; just a fragment right at the end of a social gathering. She mentioned my FB feed and how I posted interesting things on a Christian perspective: not just the standard Christian lines that are parroted by evangelical Christians (and, yes, misrepresented in a worldly context, but we exist in a worldly context), but Christians who are struggling with those grey areas that conservative evangelicals like to paint as black and white.

Women in ministry. Gays in the church. Abortion. You know, those things.

I wonder if 'the world' wants to see Christians struggling more with these questions. Publically struggling. Admitting they don't know the right/wrong of it, or even admitting that they have a right/wrong of it but being willing to let others make those decisions themselves, wrong though they might be.

Sometimes I wonder if our solidarity of belief as Christians isn't a deterrent as much, if not more than, our apparent behaviour. And not just coming to the easy blanket answer: "well of course slavery is okay, because Christians have owned slaves since the time of Paul, right? So it can't have been wrong..."

And, no, the media is not on our side. That doesn't mean they're always wrong about the ways that we're bull-headed and stupid. Just because Scott Morrison claims to be a Christian doesn't mean he's not also a complete shitwit with zero sensitivity and formulated compassion.

"Be cunning as serpents and innocent as doves," Jesus said. Naivete is not any kind of an excuse, and yet so often it seems to be the first Christian defence: "I didn't know."

We are to know the truth - the truth of the gospel, absolutely, but also the truth of ourselves and our world. To see the flaws in ourselves, admit to them, improve on them. No, it doesn't guarantee our salvation, but it pushes us slowly towards becoming made in the image of Jesus.

My mother's church friends told her that she was wrong to remarry, that she should wait and maybe God's direction for her life would become clear. She was okay to re-marry by our modern Christian mores (my father had been unfaithful to her which most modern ministers would say was okay because my father had broken the intimacy of the relationship and so she was free to remarry), but her husband-to-be was not because he and his wife had divorced for the modern "irreconcilable differences".

The church they went to would not let them get married in the building, so they left the church. All the church. For almost a decade.

Sometimes I think insisting we all toe the black and white and shaming people when they don't manage it does more damage than the admission that we're struggling with something, and trusting in God's grace in the meantime.

--

There are four women I was friends with a decade ago and more.

In the last three months, they have all turned up on my FB feed commenting on things that they disagree with (environmentalism), or things that they want to get 'woke points' for (not being racist).

The irony is that not one of these four women has extended an independent "Hi, how are you?" to me in that decade. They have made no overtures of friendship, asked no questions about my life - they haven't even hit LIKE on my FB posts. And, yes, I notice these things.

I notice the people who come by and comment on stuff - innocuous stuff, stuff that isn't Christian or political, which is just every day life. "I love your quilting work." "Ooh, nice garden!" "Are you okay?" These four women do not fall into the 'everyday friend' category - not even on FB.

They cannot be arsed to care about my life apart from when I post something that either makes them feel good about themselves, or which challenges their beliefs.

YES. I NOTICE.

And if I notice this about fellow "sisters in Christ", you can bet your blue, winged donkey that non-Christians notice this about the Christians who are intent on morally policing them.

High-up Christian leaders bemoan that people don't follow 'moral values' anymore, that the church is no longer a voice in the community.

Maybe - just maybe - this is because so few Christians are part of the community. And if Christians haven't done the hard yards of friendship, then non-Christians are not going to listen to them. That's the plain and simple truth.

Paul knew this - of course he did as one of a bare handful of Christians in a pantheistic society where worth was dictated by the gods, not by a declaration of human rights. To the Greeks, he became a Greek; to the Jews, he became a Jew.

And, no, a lot of people who we befriend are not going to listen to the gospel from Christian lips anymore. They've heard it all before and it's like the screech of nails down blackboard to their ears as high-profile leaders are shown to be abusers, to be bigots, to be willing to hitch their carts to the morally corrupt individuals in the name of political power.

What 'the world' will be willing to listen to is the language of love: an ear hearing their pain and sorrow and frustration, a voice crying out for justice for all people not just for the people who are like the voice crying out, a handhold - not even a 'hand-up or a hand-out' that our politicians like to dichotomise - someone to say "you are here, and maybe I can help by being here, too".

--

I saw a phrase via Michael Frost’s FB last year: ‘once born’ and ‘twice born’ Christians. ‘Once born’ Christians find their faith and never question it. God is there, he is holy, he is great, he is good. They hold to that all their life and it’s not difficult. ‘Twice born’ Christians find their faith, but they might struggle at some point, lose it, walk away, grieve, and in the end come back to the faith again. It’s not an easy journey, but it’s a faith rooted in trust in God and his promises, not in the reality of their lives.

I don't know that I've been twice born; I've never lost my faith, although I drifted away from the church. But I am very grateful for those years spent drifting, learning ways outside the traditions of my childhood, discovering people living on the fringes and the edges of the world that I was brought up in. I like to think it's given me compassion and understanding, and the ability to walk into greyscales that I don't think too many Christians are comfortable walking in - and as a result, they struggle to do anything but black and white the situation and other people's choices.

And maybe someday one of my non-Christian friends will be able to say, "Well, I don't know that I agreed with Sel, but she managed to love me in a way that made me feel valuable and said it was because of Jesus, so maybe I'll give Jesus a(nother) go..."

would you really give your life for your wife?

"Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave his life for her..."

I'm not a preacher. We'll get that out of the way. But I'm not married either, so I don't have a husband who'll beat or chastise me for 'usurping his authority'. And, no, my words aren't as God's, but they might be an insight that men won't get from a (male) pastor who's also a husband and - let's be honest - benefits from the situation just fine as it is.

There's a lot made of the "wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord". It's that verse that's used to justify a great deal of nasty power play in relationships as to "who wears the pants" and "who makes the decisions" and "who obeys whom". It's also a verse with a great deal of love and joy in it - I acknowledge that freely.

But you've heard a million pastors and preachers, male and female, ordained and lay tell you about "submission of women to men". Why add to that?

I'm going to toss a water-bomb into the middle of the congregation. It'll be a bit cold, and a bit surprising, and a few people might get a bit splashed and shouty because I dampened their clothes, but you'll come out of it okay.

Every preacher I've ever heard preach on the 'submission of wives' passage casually elides over the "love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave his life for her..." There's a little bit of exegesis on what 'gave his life for her' means, but it tends to be very waffly and very highfalutin'. Of course a guy would give his life for the woman he loves! If someone was holding a gun to her head, or if he could save her from a rampaging criminal, or something suitably heroic, leaping in to save the day just as Jesus did by dying on the cross for the church.

Yes, yes, I know you guys love your wives in the way a hero loves the love of his life, willing to die for her in a life-or-death scenario.

My question is: what about Jesus' three years leading up to the 'dying on the cross'? What about Jesus' life? That life he spent as an itinerant preacher, loving humanity, healing their hurts, getting his hands 'fouled' with the ritually unclean, addressing their concerns, giving up time he'd set aside for himself because the crowds - his church, his people, his wife - needed him to be present more than he needed his 'me-time'.

When a man points out the "and gave His life for her" phrase, nine times out of ten, they're talking about "life" in contrast to "death". They're not talking about "giving their life" in contrast to "living the way they want to".

How many Christian men and husbands look at Jesus' ministry to his people - his church, his wife - and think about emulating that? Do you love your wife by being present with her, getting your hands dirty with 'her' work (not 'helping' - are you a partner, or is she your servant?), listening to and addressing her concerns? Do you give up that 'you-time' on the weekend so she can have a break from the children and the house - and not just 'babysit the kids' (hint: if you're "babysitting", they're not your kids; when they're your kids - in blood or in name - you're "parenting"). And when she comes back from whatever activity she's been involved in, is the workload that settles back down upon her shoulders greater than it was when she left? Are there more dishes, more cleaning, more washing, more things to organise, more things to fix?

I have many married friends. We talk about plenty of topics - including theology, politics, health, and husbands-and-children. To a woman, every single one of them loves their husband - and their husbands are all great guys. And yet I've seen them take calls when ther husband can't find something or doesn't know something or can't deal with the kids anymore - and there's this look that they get, however carefree they've been before, that kind of sighs and says, I'll have to clean up the mess, won't I?

Now if you're giving up your life for your wife in a godly manner - being a husband and partner, not an extra child she has to herd along - jolly good, excellent, well done good and faithful servant, this piece isn't aimed at you. Don't get defensive, the last thing I need a bunch of hysterical guys saying I'm accusing them of Doin' It Rong. (Guys can totally get hysterical; observe the most dramatic reactions to: Max Mad: Fury Road, Ghostbusters 2016, Episode VII, and the announcement of the 13th Doctor.)

But perhaps the next time someone starts talking about 'wifely submission', you might also think about 'husbandly giving up' and just how you're doing on that front. Also, how much you complain about the things you have to give up (your time, that trip with your mates, that time away) to your wife, to your kids, to your friends. How many verses in the bible are there about Jesus complaining to the disciples: "Wow, these people don't appreciate me! I'm giving up my life for them, and they're just not grateful!"

there is not a married woman I've ever met and chatted with - and certainly no mother - who has ever felt that her husband truly lifted her load as Jesus has lifted the burden of guilt from the church. And yes, we are imperfect humanity in the face of divinity, but still.