LGBTQ | ALLY

Loving the Sinning When Speaking the Truth… with Love?

a.k.a Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin isn’t in ANYBODY’S Bible

A funny thing happened on the way to this blog post. I was finishing up another piece, and I thought of a note I had written. Somewhere. I am not exactly what they call “organized”. At all. Add to that a short-term memory span of about 10 minutes, and you can see where this is going, can’t you?

So, there I was, distracted me on my mission to find the note to create the things to make the money? Easy, yes? Not so much. Distracted me can find a rabbit hole in a fox den.

After slugging through several different places I pile things on, I started looking through my old journals, trying to wake up my memory.

As I read, I could see myself furiously scribbling as I do when I think of the thing while doing the other thing. I grab whatever is closest, and I write a note.

Said note is always incredibly illegible, even seconds after I stop writing. Utterly unreadable (I think much faster than I write.)

But I rarely feel the need to edit or label or reference my notes, pointing to what prompted me to write them.

Because I’ll remember.

As I paged through the book, I read my words from a decade ago.

It took about a half-page into the journal before the lights pinged in my brain. I recalled the circumstances that prompted the writing.

And I thought of the changes in my life, myself, since that writing. I reflect how although my life today is very different (on the outside) from who I was when I wrote this journal entry; the questions were the same questions I ask myself now every day.

What makes that particularly relevant is when I first wrote this journal entry, it was the notes for a talk I would give that Sunday evening in our white, evangelical church.

And now?

Those same questions drive my mission of loving and advocating for many LGBTQ refugees in Kenya, many of whom are strong, faithful Christians. Back to the journal.

I think it was 2012. Give or take a year. I stood at the front of the small group of prayer warriors. This group was a gathering of sincere Christians who gathered Sunday evenings for corporate prayer.

Our group was usually ten or 15 people, sometimes 25, rarely more, unless there was an occasion more compelling than just prayer. During this season, we took turns among ourselves, leading prayer on Sunday nights.

This night, it was my turn to speak. I used the opportunity to question out loud what we mean when we say, in holy voices, “hate the sin but love the sinner.” And when we are very busy looking down upon those to whom we “speak the truth in love?”

These two phrases were common responses among my Christian group of friends whenever we were pressed, with controversial things outside our particular worldview of right and wrong. I also used both axioms fairly frequently and sometimes actually tried to live that way.

Then, as now, my issue begins when the truth-speaking part smashes into the hate the sin part a little too loudly, and the love part gets left along the wayside. Let me be completely candid. My issue was strong- and it included myself. The ugly truth is, sometimes it was easy to feel righteous and right when you carried a great big book full of God’s words.

That night I shared with my fellow pray-ers how we often spoke a lot more love the sinner than we actually did the love part in real life. In this moment of heart-wrenching soul searching, I spoke directly and clearly and talked about things you aren’t supposed to talk about in church.

I wondered that day how each of us would feel when we heard the couple who sits over there in the third row on the left, with those two cute babies, wear dealing with her breast cancer. But what about when we find out they cheated on their taxes so they could access some doctors overseas for treatment? Are we still feeling bad for them? What if we found out they work in the bank across town, embezzled 2.3 million dollars from their employer for the same treatment? Do we still rush to have brunch together after the second service? Do we still invite them to our bible studies?

I asked how we all felt about men who beat women and demean them in private and acted as if they were perfection in a suit out in public. What if they just told raunchy, sexist jokes on the men’s fishing trip? Or got caught looking at a little porn?

Then I said, “What if the guy is the head usher on the third Sunday of the month? Or that famous preacher on the internet who told us all how to be better Christians?” “What if the guy is your favorite little brother?”

Finally, I asked, “When two people love and respect one another and want to build a life together, are you happy for them?” And, “What if they are gay?” And what if one of them is your favorite Uncle Joe?

Some people wiped away a tear and nodded, hearing my horrifying questions about how we conducted ourselves. Others shook their heads a bit at my impropriety in church. Still, others looked longingly at the music pastor sitting at the piano, hoping he would strike up a good old-fashioned hymn and shut me up.

I spent a lot of time asking myself these kinds of questions. I questioned if the way I demonstrated my Christ-like love showed people what Jesus was like at all. I began to look at all my proud accouterments of being a born-again Christian, right down to my battered bible in a case with handles, and began to question who I was.

It wasn’t long before I could see so many ways we believe we are the best possible person we can be, when, in truth, we carry deep-seated garbage that might just be hatred in the wrappings of an interpretation of what God said.

While loving the sinner, I realized the truest sin of all is the ways we would judge those dirty little sinners as if we (the white, American Christians) are somehow better than them.

I also began to see just how guilty I was of harboring a lot of hateful and ugly thoughts about people who didn’t dance under the banner of “God, as I defined Him.” I was a mental gymnast with my dazzling speed when jumping to conclusions and pronouncing pronouncements about how you could be a lot better person if you were more holy, like me.

I needed a new definition of loving the sinner and speaking in love. Forget my enjoyment with hating someone else’s sins or worrying about whether my truth made sense in their world. It was time to act as if I understood what love actually meant.

Here’s How I Love Differently Now

Since my grandson came out as transgender seven years ago, I’ve changed how I do some of those faux-Jesus-like behaviors. I left some things behind. I don’t spend much time at formal gatherings anymore. I spend a little less time preaching to others about how holy we Americans are. And I spend time every single day, doing some actual LOVING of some actual people.

People who others label as “sinners.” People who look very different from those who attend the churches I’ve been in throughout my life. People who spend their days being persecuted, threatened, and beaten because they fail to live up to the righteous judgment of those who do the praying in their churches. People who identify as part of the LGBTQ world.

The ones labeled the “worst” of the sinners labeled a curse.

So who are these people who are labeled as so much worse than your average American Christian? What are they asking for that makes them so ostracised and condemned? Not much. Just everything you and I take for granted.

They want to live in freedom, get married, if they choose, work at what they love, and raise a family. They want to lay their heads down at night, with their bellies full of something other than rice, and sleep restfully, knowing that tomorrow is another day. They want their children to live and not starve or die from preventable diseases like malaria and typhoid and hatred.

Freedom, human rights, equality. That’s all. They want to love and be loved. They want to be accepted as the bright, strong, intelligent people they are. They want to enjoy their basic human rights without fear of death on a daily basis.

They are LGBTQ Africans who have fled to Kenya seeking asylum. They come from various countries around Kenya. They left their homes, their countries, their families not by choice but because the religious zealots determined them to be the sinners who could not be loved. And everyone around them is more than willing to speak that truth. The ugly truth of hate.

Not the truth of love and mercy. Rather, the truth that they are cursed, and they bring the very judgment of God down upon all mankind. These are the words, the truths, their very own families have told them. These are the truths that drove them out of Uganda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and more.

They ran so they would not be killed. Murdered. For their “sin” of loving someone other than the “acceptable.” So they would not be killed by their own fathers, and mothers, and priests. Because you see, many African countries, like much of America, are very good at hating the sins of LGBTQ people.

The trouble is, far too many of us are so busy “hating the sin” of others and “speaking the truth” in righteousness that the loving part doesn’t take center stage very often. Most of the time, the so-called love is just another four-letter word.

I learned, from nothing more than loving my grandchild, that love needs to be a lot more than something we sing about in church and offer to our fellow, freshly showered and expertly coiffed and very, very white Christian friends. Love is a God thing. And therefore, it isn’t a human job to decide who deserves it. God does a fine job of that. And if some outlaw really needs condemnation? He can handle that too.

The truth is, God is perfectly capable of sorting everyone out. He doesn’t need me to do so through my judgment and discrimination. I believe God is the only one capable of choosing if one person is more sinful or loving than another. He knows our very hearts. We rarely do. Instead, we depend on our presentation of ourselves in the world.

I choose to walk in as much love as I can in this life, for everyone, in a tangible way. It begins with respect and dignity. It results in love.

As for God questioning whether LGBTQ people deserve the same love and respect as the “holiest” among us? Of course, that’s what a loving God would do. God doesn’t throw his children away. Especially for loving someone? Love is the very essence of who God is.

We can do better. We MUST do better. Because, in the end, if everything changes and we remain the same, nothing has changed at all.

That is the truth. I speak it with love.