First Date (12.14.05)

So I went on a first date a week ago. It was with my brother. Not what one would expect to call a first date, but my brother and I don’t talk. We never really have—we’ve tried from time to time but nothing lasting. Every attempt we make is typically one sided in that one of us does the initiation and the other goes along with it. Typically it’s not mutual. This last time was necessary-just unwanted. It was all him.
This date came to be with my request that his latest boyfriend not be invited to Christmas. Normally, I would mind if one of my siblings invited a significant other to dinner--it was just that I couldn’t find a redeemable quality within the man. My first encounter with him was unimpressive and each subsequent visit has been worse. Its too the point where his presence is likely to trigger a mental health crisis in my life.
I stopped talking to my brother about two months ago. He spoke to me like a child and so in my passive aggressive way I stopped talking. He wanted me to be okay with things. He wanted me to okay with his new disease and the in addition to that, the man who gave him it. This date was an attempt at bridging the gap. Smoothing things over in attempt to win this man an invite to the holidays. No success- I don’t like him and my brother isn’t the one to change that. Time will.
So we went on our date. Three hours of interaction between my brother and I. Not my typical idea of a good time. I don’t hate my brother- I just don’t know him and going to dinner just the two of us meant that we had to interact. After the car ride to the restaurant we ran out of small talk and I wasn’t ready to approach the issue at hand. So for about an hour we continued the small talk-- touching on everything but the meaning of our time together.
It’s hard for me to open up to someone who I don’t think is interested. It’s even harder when that person looks bored. Our lives have been so different for so long. I live a life that is very different from his and I hold a belief that says the life he lives is not approved of by God. I think that is where we get stuck and we can’t move past this.
My faith tells me him being gay is a sin. It’s hard to say that is not what I believe but it’s not what I believe fully. I believe the Bible is clear when it says homosexuality is a sin. But it also says all sins are equal so what does that matter. Has the church got its panties in a knot over something that in many rights is no different then their lying. I struggle with all this.
A sin is a sin is a sin, right? But for some reason that is not how we treat it. In our minds and in our hearts we have created a hierarchy of sinfulness in which we can compare ourselves to one another. It allows for us to look at each other and make a judgment. Is that what Christ died for? Did He die so that can play judge to those who lifestyle is outwardly different then our own? We are obsessed with this role. We are Judgy McJudgerson and we love it.
Our comparisons require nothing of us. We are not responsible for their actions and we are free of having to do much more then point a finger and shame them: those homosexuals, those pornographers, those masturbators, those sinners… shame on them. It doesn’t make sense.
I struggled with an interesting issue this spring—SIN. It wasn’t that I was sinning, because I am sure I was, but rather what do we do about sin. I became obsessed with this, and Thomas Merton. It wasn’t fair—maybe that isn’t the right word, but something like that.
This question came after a local mega-church claimed to be responsible for a major corporation pulling their support of gay rights legislation. They threaten a boycott of the company and the company said it was focusing their lobbyist on more business related interest. Either way this church did Christ a huge disservice in my mind. I often wanted to cuss the pastor out for his hate on behalf of church.
For many weeks this pastor would be on the news or in the paper claiming that it was God’s will and that they have won a victory for Christ. How? By creating a culture that is homophobic and hateful. I can’t but thinking that that is not message God had intended for us.
So as result of his public dislike, a gay rights group went to protest and sit in on his church’s Sunday services. In this group was a sweet old Christian lady who was dwarfed by this large man of a pastor. In her kindness she asked the pastor if her gay son would be welcomed at his church. He replied that he would be welcomed, but if her son didn’t change his ways that he would kick him out of the church like all the other sinners.
I wanted to ask the pastor whom have they kicked out for lying, cheating, or leading a fellow believer to stumble? Who have they removed because of their generally accepted sin, which falls in the acceptable range on the sin scale? It frustrated me. How can you hate a people group and still be Christian? Is that the virtue that came after love thy neighbor or is that a footnote on the bottom of some page in the Bible.
Like I said, I struggled with SIN. How do you love someone who is sinning without saying everything is okay? I wish things were different. It would be so easy if we weren’t asked to repent. To not have to say we are sorry and ask for forgiveness—how easy would that be? If somehow there was a way to make it possible that we could live as we please and not be responsible for it. I am confident that God loves us regardless of whether we change. The rich young ruler, Jesus loved him, even though he wasn’t willing to make the changes Jesus asked of him.
So what if someone never changes. They seek God with everything they have but change nothing. What if my brother is gay for the rest of his life? I know the Jesus has for him isn’t negated, even though it isn’t acknowledged but where do we draw the line.
For some time now I have understood that acceptance (and tolerance for that matter) doesn’t necessarily imply approval. Living in outside of Seattle I accept that it rains, and with some frequency, but that doesn’t mean I agree or approve of it. The same goes for snow.
I accept the way my brother lives his life. I don’t approve. However, that my no means should imply that I hate him. I don’t. Often I don’t agree with how he treats people but that isn’t hate. The frustration that is had when someone hates by brother because he is gay can’t always be described—unfortunately he never sees that.
It goes to show how little we know each other. He says we do a good jump of separating those parts of our lives: my faith and his homosexuality. However, if we were to truly get to know each other what we were doing wasn't going to work. I can’t separate my faith from who I am and I can’t ask him to separate his homosexuality. Maybe its because we view each other lifestyles as choices. And in both cases choices that impact our lives immensely. He can’t talk about his illness without talking about his lifestyle, and for me I can’t talk about being a student without mentioning my faith.
Being a seminary student everything is about faith. This degree prepares me for a world where if I divorce my faith from my education things become problematic. So if when we went the entire first date with out discussing my faith I struggle to say what it is I wanted. My life doesn’t make sense without the religious context, or at least not to me. That night I struggled to explain the grief I was experiencing and the difficulty I have in undergone trying to understand why.