And those oppposed: Two steps back, one step forward

Even though I don't share it, I feel like I understand the position of those who are opposed to homosexual ordination, gay marriage, or any number of other attempts to deny things to same-gender-loving persons.  I'm sure there are some genuine bigots out there, as well as true homophobes, but I also understand the argument put forward, and how someone might feel the need to defend it.

It is hard to be a Christian, for some, while not believing in the literal truth of every passage of the Bible.  It has been said a great deal before - if we cannot trust what the Bible has to say about people having sex with same-gender temple prostitutes in the Old Testament, then how can we trust what the Bible says about other things?  If we can't trust the teaching that it is against God to be 'effeminiate' in Paul, how can we trust Paul's teaching that we are saved by justification through grace?

There are what I feel are good reasons that I do not hold this position, but I can understand it.  If we begin to question basic assumptions about God and about the Bible, where do we stand?  What can we trust?  And I can see the perceived threat of homosexual ordination, that it will be the last straw, or the beginning of the end.

I think we do our sisters and brothers a disservice when we act as if these are the fears and concerns of lunatics rather than (for the most part) faithful, reasonable people making decisions about what they believe.  Just as they do us a disservice when they act as if we are abandoning the Bible in favor of the culture, or turning away from God, when we seek to honor the callings of those among us who love people of the same gender.

The fact is that every conservative picks and chooses what from the Bible he or she believes or choose to live by.  They do this because they have to live in the world and balance that with the words and experiences of those who lived thousands of years ago.  They do that because the Bible was not written by people with experiences or worldviews that were like ours, and we're trying to translate the Bronze Age into the Postmodern Information Age every time we go to Church.

The fact is also that every progressive lives on a slippery slope every day.  We admit we have to pick and choose in our context, and we talk about how best to do that.  And the danger is that the only thing leading  us are our own biases, our own corrupted capacity to see clearly and reason thoroughly, our own compromised wisdom.

The fear on the right is easy to see.  It is the fear of admitting the picking-and-choosing process, and dealing directly with how exactly one picks and chooses, how exactly one should decide how to think and act.  There is no one, anywhere, who just "does what the Bible says", or just "believes in the Bible".  The Bible is not Cliff's Notes for Life or an instruction manual - far from it.  It is a collection of voices interested in what we are still interested in as Christians now - who is God and what are we to do?  Sometimes our answers to that question owe more to the GOP and social conservatism than good exegesis, just as sometimes we can get caught up in the infinite pluralities of postmodern thought and not get anywhere at all we couldn't get living in a vacuum.

The threat, and the challenge, for the theological left is to make definitions more clear and to build concrete identity.  What is the content of our hope?  What is the light in our lives?  How are we distinct from just another liberal social organization?   What is it that we stand on, and who do we know God to be?

In the meantime, we're going to fight about gay ordination.  It seems inevitable, and a lot is coming out as part of this conflict.  Are going to pick and choose the strictures of God, the rules we want to enforce, while ignoring other commands and callings?  Are we going to be anti-gay but pro-war?  Pro-family but ignore Jesus' own definition of family?  Will take one rule literally and another figuratively based on our own preferences?

Or are we going to look to the splinter in another eye and ignore the log in ours?  Are we going to deconstruct and then leave nothing behind to separate us from an over-funded Rotary Club?  Are we going to pick and choose the image of God we want based on our politics?

My hope is that, somehow, out of this conflict we'll find a better way of doing things, come to understand ourselves better as a denomination and as the Church universal.  One step in that direction is to go back and seriously consider the position of the people you disagree with.  Even, fates forfend, talk to them.  Ask them why they believe what they do, and actually listen.  Despite the eager rhetoric, this isn't Godless versus Fundie.  This is us versus us, Christ's body versus Christ's body.  It is like an auto-immune disease, the body fighting against itself, the symptoms spreading everywhere.

The idea is not to win, should never be to win, but to come out on the other side more Christ-like than when we came in.  If we can do that, then I think the particulars of this conflict will already have been resolved, somehow.  So the 30-year fight over gay ordination will continue, but with any luck, the millennia-old way to sanctification will continue to be followed.

The history of the Bible, of the Church in every time and place, was and is one of constant conflict and struggle.  We did not emerge in unity and harmony - quite the reverse in fact.  We have come this far and I think we have even learned a thing or two along the way.  God has taken our fighting and has made good come of it.  My hope is that this time will be no different.