On Friday night round one in the culture war slugfest that is the Jennifer Knapp dilemma took place.  It happened on Larry King Live of all places.  It included Jennifer, Larry King, Bob Botsford, and Ted Haggart.  The event was cordial and polite with all parties in this round attempting to be on their best behavior, (I guess aiming for style points from the judges mostly).  The politeness with which it took place might allow one to think it was not a bare-knuckled brawl of the highest order, which it was.

It was a polite brawl is the best way that I can describe it.  All the people involved looked exactly as I figured they would, cheap dime store caricatures of who they were.  Everyone looked petty and small in my estimation.  No one came out looking like a rose.  Everyone took serious wounds coming out of the altercation.  The cause of Christ was set back on Friday night.  And new reasons to think Christians are mean-spirited were given to anyone watching that needed one.

It was hard for me to watch.  I wanted to yell, ‘just shut up’ at my television, but I couldn’t, as the rest of my family was sleeping at the time I watched it.  I wanted to turn it off, but I couldn’t.  It was like watching the train wreck you know is going to happen that eventually does.   It made me sad.  And I think it made all of Heaven sad.

Let me explain why…  Everyone involved made the work of the Kingdom all the more difficult as a result of the broadcast.  It made it harder for people truly trying to help their neighbor wherever they find them.  It made it harder for anyone carrying a cup of water in the name of Christ.  It hardened hearts, and closed ears.  It cast mud on the name of Christ, and left every believer trying to be about the calling of their creator with a black eye.

There were no successes as a result of the broadcast.  It wasn’t possible for there to be any.  Why Mr. Botsford went on the show at all is beyond me?  He knew he wasn’t going to be able to change Ms. Knapp’s mind.  He knew he wasn’t going to convince her with rhetorical flourishes and sound logic.  It just wasn’t in the cards.  She wasn’t going to break down in tears and repent on national television.  If the goal was to convince Jennifer on the subject of Biblical truth, then going on Larry King was the wrong venue for it.

These sorts of things have to happen in private.  They have to happen in the context of a relationship.  It is only in the comfort and security of a meaningful relationship that one person can share truth with another one, with any hope of success.  This is something Mr. Botsford I assure you already knew.  Which leads me to ask, why did he go on the show at all?  Why did he seek the confrontation?  I don’t know the answer to my questions right now.  I can only guess at his possible motives, and my mind won’t let me assign pure ones to his actions.

The right way to handle this issue is to show the love of Jesus.  People have to know how much you care before they will ever care what you think.  People of faith need to be expressive of the love of Christ to the wounded and the broken among us.  We need to live the lessons of the parable of the Good Samaritan.  That man didn’t ask how the victim came to that place.  He didn’t query the nature of the victim’s perspective on hot button issues to determine whether or not his neighbor was worthy of his aid.  He rolled up his sleeves, and cleaned his wounds, and bound his injuries.  He took the man to a place where he knew aid could be rendered to the injured, and the paid for the care.

So our response to these issues must be…  We must hold the broken and the battered.  We must help them with their wounds.  We must take them to the healer, (which we aren’t by the way), so that they can get the care they need.  In this description, you haven’t heard one ounce of judgment or condemnation.  That isn’t our role.  That isn’t ever going to be our role in these situations!  Our only role is to be there in the midst of pain and agony.  Our only role is to share the essential nature of our spirit with those in need.  Our job isn’t to judge or condemn.  Our job is to be the hands and feet of God’s grace in difficult circumstances.

It won’t be easy to do this.  We won’t feel comfortable in the process.  Our lack of ease or comfort with the task at hand doesn’t relieve us of the requirement of doing so.  It makes the clarion call upon us all the more urgent to step up to our task.  The more we love without pretext, and share the wealth of our hearts without precondition the less the stereotypes and caricatures will  fit us.  The less we act like heartless bullies on steroids, the more we will be able to help people and actually advance the Kingdom of Christ.

Acting in this fashion doesn’t justify the sin of others.  It accepts that our role has nothing to do with judgment or condemnation.  The task of making people aware of their sin, the righteousness of God, and judgment to come belongs to the Holy Spirit.  Our impersonation of the Holy Spirit is pathetic at best, and comes off as petty and thuggish.  We have none of the Holy Spirit’s deft and delicate touch.  We are the spiritual equivalent of a bull in a china shop in these circumstances.  We need to seek first to love and to comfort those in desperate need of the Grace of Almighty God!  Anything less doesn’t measure up to the calling that has been place upon our hearts, minds, and souls.

When she left, she was largely a Contemporary Christian music artist.  She has accompanied her return with an announcement, in extensive interviews in both Christianity Today, and The Advocate  , that she is a lesbian, so most experts are unsure as to where to classify her music right now.  Is it pop, is it rock, is it still contemporary Christian music, most don’t know and aren’t sure.  And when our culture isn’t sure how to label something, isn’t sure which category, which pigeon-hole in which something belongs, chaos ensues.

I sincerely hope I am wrong about what seems to be coming down the pipeline to a theater near you and me, but…  I believe that in the coming weeks and months there is likely to be a heated discussion between the gay community, and mainstream Christianity revolving around Ms. Knapp.  It is likely to be angry, vitriolic, vicious, and bloody.  We are likely to hear some of the worst things possible from both camps about each side.  It has happened before and it is likely that it will happen.  It’s almost as if we can hear the knives being sharpened on both sides for the rhetorical bloodbath that is to come.  It’s as we can almost hear the tools at work preparing the battlements, digging the trenches, and filling the moats to defend each position.

And if that is what this situation boils down to, I think it will be a disgrace.  If this whole matter becomes nothing more than another culture war slugfest between these camps, it will be another black eye for both communities.  It will end up being a box on both houses.  And it will serve as a distinct reminder to the world of how cold and callous we all can be to one another.  It will remind everyone that for six thousand years of recorded history we have advanced in brotherhood so very little.  It will be as repugnant is it repellant to the broader world if this situation devolves into that sort of melodrama.

And let me be clear, I am not taking sides in this debate, and I do not favor any one individual perspective.  I do not favor people of faith not speaking the truth.  My problem is that these debates always seem so far away from the manner and tone in which Jesus responded to them.  When Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, there was not condemnation in his voice for her.  He didn’t bang his fist into the side of the well, and speak judgment of her situation, as was his right.  He showed a deep and abiding compassion for the woman.  He was willing to break all the laws of Jewish society in his time in order to speak with her.  From the text it is obvious that Jesus displayed a delicate and tender touch as he laid out the truth.

And that delicate and tender touch is, from my perspective, what is missing from how mainstream Christianity deals with this issue in general.  The leaders of most faith communities pontificate on this issue more akin to the Pharisees of Jesus time with their vicious hate filled diatribes.  I can almost see them ceremonially rending their garments and covering their heads with ash as the customary Pharisee might have as they speak their position.  It makes me cringe every time I hear these people speak.  It makes me wonder about the sum total of my faith if that expression is what Christianity is supposed to be about.

Honestly, I wish the hate-mongers and religious zealots and downright whack-a-loons could just shut up.  It makes me reach for my remote every time I hear it.  In truth, I think the Church should not engage in this debate at all.  I believe that Christianity is ill-served in every encounter on this subject.  For obvious reasons, the tenderness with which our savior would approach this situation is absent in our discussion of it.  There is little if any love or compassion in our speech on this subject.  And all it does is leave those who fall into this category feeling ostracized, feeling like an outsider, and feeling like a leper.

That isn’t the character we see abundant in the ministry of Jesus at all.  Jesus dealt with these situations usually quietly away from the crush and press of the crowd.  In the rare instance in which he was forced to deal with it publicly, he didn’t take the sinner to task.  He took the accusers to task.  He challenged their right to stand in the judgment seat at all.  He said powerful things like, “Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.”  I picture him with a stone in his hand saying that, ready to offer it to the first person willing to step up to the plate, knowing full well that none could or would.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say that Jesus did speak the truth to the individuals in these narratives.  However, as a member of the Trinity he had every right to.  He was there at creation.  He was present when God turned the lights on.  He was present when God recorded the details of the lives of every human being to ever live.  He knew everything about Jennifer Knapp before she ever came to be.  He will one day be part of the great white throne judgment of all humanity.  He will be sitting on that throne.  Neither I nor anyone that acts as an accuser in this life will.  It is God’s right alone to judge humanity.  The power of acceptance and condemnation fall solely in the realm of almighty God.  And we as Christians should get truth.  We should bathe in it.  We should let it sink into the fabric of our being.

Christianity should be spending more of its time trying to live the life they claim to.  They should be spending their life smoking what they’re selling.  They should be dwelling in the rich and verdant garden that is a life spent in communion with their creator.  They should be seeking to ensure that the Fruits of the Spirit are growing in abundance in their lives.  They should be spending time learning to show the love of Christ to others.  Not the phony, fake, plastic thing that passes as love, but leaves people feeling cold and alone, but rather the warm, nurturing, and dare I say intimate, kind of love that leaves no one feeling as such.  The kind of love that was abundant in the ministry of Christ.  The kind of love that turned ordinary Galilean fishermen into apostolic giants in their time is what’s needed here.  The kind of love that turned the world on its head in the first century, as it upended the political, social, and cultural world of its day is what’s called for now.

If you need evidence for this, the people of Antioch called the followers of Jesus, ‘christians’ because they had love one for another.  The nature of the faith they espoused was so characterized by the love of their rabbi that the world couldn’t help but label and identify them as such.  (As an aside, it is worthy of noting that the text says that the people, not the followers of Jesus came up with that moniker.)  The apostle John also says that we show our identification with Christ when we have love one for another.

How does the venomous diatribes that those who claim to lead our faith, measure up to this standard?  How do we measure up to this standard, when we do the same?  I know I am painting with a broad brush here.  I do however feel comfortable in doing so, because the brush I am using also covers me, as I am just as guilty of being like this as anyone.

The path out of this quagmire is simple though.  We need to accept that we are all broken and battered recipients of the stunning grace of almighty God.  We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God.  We have all failed God in numerous ways.  And the collective sum of our failures put Jesus on the cross.  There is no single sin that put Jesus there more than any other.  The sin of homosexuality is no more revolting to God, than any other sin under heaven.  The truth is that all sin is an abomination to God.  All sin serves to separate the sinner from their creator.  I am no better than anyone else and my sin God finds just as nauseating as any other person’s. 

Honestly, if I haven’t sinned numerous times before I leave the house in the morning, it’s a good day.  I thank God daily for the grace he displays for my sin.  Should I be any less graceful to others?  Am I being the unmerciful servant when I refuse to accept the grace of God as it falls on others, or in my dealings with others that have committed more obvious sin?  My sins committed in secret being just as detestable to God as any other.  How big is my God when I approach my life in such a fashion?  Is there room for the omnipotent God of heaven and earth in such a faith?

We shouldn’t allow this situation to become a binary black versus white debate.  We shouldn’t allow Satan the power to divide us in such a fashion.  A black and white debate fails to bring healing, and unity, and brotherhood.  It fails to provide a vehicle for the love that should be the hallmark of our faith to be expressed.  In the end, such a debate leaves everyone and everything looking like some dime store caricature of what our creator intended.  It allows the wolves in sheep’s clothing in both camps to lead us into the abyss that is a morass of hate and anger and failure.

In reality, the truth of the situation is obvious.  The facts are clear.  We members of the community of faith don’t need to fight to express them here.  What has to be said has been said.  It doesn’t need to be spoken again and again and again.  What we need to do now, is defy the stereotype that people have for us.  We need to show that are not small minded bigots and homophobes.  We need to focus on showing the love of Christ wherever and whenever we have the occasion.  We need to reach out to all our neighbors, regardless of where we find them.  We need to remember that we have planks in our eyes, and we can’t extract the speck in our brother’s or sister’s eye without causing harm to them.  The work that needs to be done here belongs to God.  All that we can and should be doing right now is show the love of God until he comes again without comment or controversy.

In truth, what Jennifer Knapp chooses to do with her life, and how she is working out her salvation with fear and trembling, is not for me to judge.  At the end of her life, she will give an account of herself to her creator, and it will be in the midst of that intimate private audience with the one who breathed the breath of life into her nostrils that it will be conducted.  I won’t be there to accuse her, and no one else will either.  The one that knew her before the foundations of the world, the one who loved her with an abundant and awe-inspiring grace will.  I don’t know how it will turn out precisely, because distilling a mysteriously righteous and holy yet loving and benevolent God is a hard thing that doesn’t fit easily into our finite temporal brains.

At least for me, I plan to pray for her as I do many people.  Not because she is in any more need of prayer than me or anyone else, but rather, because I want to ask God to show His love for her.  I want God to remind her how much He cares for her.  I want her to feel the sheer abundance of that love falling on her like a flood, such that she could never deny from whence it came.  I also plan to enjoy her music.  I plan to revel in her success.  I plan to weep with her failures.   Just as I think God in heaven will.  The rest is beyond my right or my role to comment upon.

The problem begins when we take this nature and attempt to apply it to God.  It leads us to say that God is X, or whatever X happens to be based on our flawed and incomplete understanding.  God strongly condemns this practice in many places.  He rebukes those who would follow him from trying to cast him into an image, any image for that matter.  This is in no small measure, because any image, idol, or icon of him fails utterly as an expression of him.

This hasn’t stopped humanity from trying.  The Israelites demanded idols to worship in the desert.  They even turned the Ark of the Covenant into an idol of sorts in one of their confrontations with the Philistines.  In both cases, God handed down some of the harshest discipline in the entirety of the Old Testament, (with the notable exceptions of the Sodom narrative and the captivity periods).

Those examples stand out in stark relief and should prevent us from repeating those tragic mistakes.  Sadly, however, they do not.  Our modern, or post-modern if you prefer, intellects are stilling trying to cast God into a box.  We try to intellectually understand God in concrete terms we can easily absorb.  We attempt to lay hold of the infinite with our pathetic finite brains, and cast for ourselves a mental idol that we can easily make sense of, rationally understand, and work with.  We try to boil God down to some ‘cookies on the bottom shelf’ pabulum that is easily digested by the broadest cross-section of humanity.  It’s what we humans are good at, despite divine commands to the contrary.

My own personal experience speaks volumes to how tragically misguided these efforts are.  In each case, God seemed solidly bent on confounding the box in which I had constructed for him to reside.  I would believe God to be this, that, or the other thing.  I would construct a systematic theology to support this frame of reference, and I would then proceed to live life from this place.  In each and every case, I would feel sure I’d constructed a solid framework which God could work from and reside within.  And in each and every case, the framework would collapse of its own weight, because God either didn’t know the role I’d written for him in the construct, didn’t care to play by the rules I’d codified for him, or wanted to frustrate my every effort to build a box for him mental or otherwise.  As to which one was the most proximal cause of my frustration, I’m sure I won’t know this side of Heaven.  I do now believe that it was a little of all three.

And so it is that I am no longer a spiritual box builder.  I’m tired of building a thing only to find out how pathetic a job I’d done at building the container.  Today, I find myself enthralled by the mysterious nature of God.  I swear that the older I get the more mysterious God becomes.  And the older I get the less interested I am in box building and systematic theology construction that effect to explain God.  I’ll leave the box building and systematic theology construction to the younger crowd.  I don’t have the energy or the desire for it anymore.  I am, today at least, content with the description God gave to Moses, “I am that I am”.  Nothing more works, fits, or effectively applies.

Who am I, after all, to describe effectively a being that exists, a part from the confines of this mortal coil?  Who am I to attempt to rationally explain a being that at its very core is not rational?  I wasn’t there at the moment God turned the lights on by the simple act of a spoken declaration of will.  And it’s unlikely I will be there when he turns them off to replace them with the glorious radiance that is his fundamental being.  I wasn’t there when the God that doesn’t change yet somehow remains mysterious laid the foundations of this world, and all the others.  And, unless I am wrong, I won’t be there when he reveals the new Heaven and the new Earth, (at least in the flesh).

So I am left only to accept that God is, and that my life should be lived from a place of acceptance of that immutable truth.  I shouldn’t posses the wantonly arrogant hubris that believes the Bible gives me anything more than enough information about God to find faith and belief for that God.  To do so is absolute folly, and dare I say utterly foolish.  The Bible is not a handbook for understanding God.  It is not a biology textbook that quantifies God in realistic terms.  It does not function to provide a vivisectionist’s guide to dissecting the divine.  Rather it provides the evidence that confirms the existence of that God, and the route by which that God can be interacted with.  Anything more is vain folly and narcissistic arrogance that places more worth on the spirit of man than his creator confers himself.

The last few months of my life have been a transition from a theoretical understanding of this principle of the activist God to a more genuine understanding of this principle.  I don’t say that as a point of pride, or as something of which I am proud.  I didn’t set out to end up here, and I certainly wouldn’t have chosen to come here, but I am here nonetheless.  The transition from theoretical to practical can be summed up in a single word, uncertainty.  A life in which the things that were certain before become uncertain now, is the definition for this.

Before this period began, I could say with some measure of confidence what the immediate future held.  I could say that our bills were going to be met without difficulty.  I could say that our healthcare was assured.  I could say that I was a valued member of a team that made a difference in state government.  Today, none of that is true by default.  Each day carries with it a direct measure of uncertainty.  Today, and every day since this period began I am forced to confront the uncertainty that is incumbent in this situation armed only with the convictions of my faith.

I enter each day and have to reaffirm my faith that God is my provider, and that he cares for me and those he has entrusted to my care.   Each day I have to believe that this activist God has a plan, and that his plan is what is best for me.  Each day I have to accept, sometimes grudgingly and sometimes not, that God’s timing is perfect and that my timing isn’t his.  I have to dwell in the moment, and know that the God of Genesis 1:1 is working on my behalf for my best end, and I have to accept that no other end than this is what’s best.

Some days, like today, I find myself struggling with what God has promised and his timeline for fulfilling that promise.  I find myself, not unlike Sarah in the Old Testament, wondering when God is going to fulfill his word.  I find myself wondering about my value before and to this activist God.  And sometimes, I wonder if my prayers are breaking through the ceiling at all.  And on my worst days, I wonder if God has forgotten my number. 

And so it is on my worst days, like today, I have to struggle to believe in the activist God.  I have to struggle to believe that the God of the Bible still works that way today.  I have to struggle to believe in anything at all for that matter.  In a situation that from the outside looks bad trending worse, I worry, and I fear that it will never get better.  And the sum of those worries and fears become a smothering flood that threatens to drown me.

In the midst of those days, my solace, my comfort, my guide has become the knowledge that what I am experiencing is not uncommon to the human condition, and the human experience.  People before me have suffered this, and people after me will suffer this.  I have to recognize that this is a time in the crucible of life.  I am being exposed to intense heat right now; my distaste for this status quo notwithstanding.  I have to recognize the value of this time.  I have to somehow; as the writer of the book of James puts it, rejoice when I fall into trouble of various kinds.

And it has been in finding the joys of this time in the crucible that I have found relief from my fears and my worries.  It has been in being reminded of all that I have and how dear those things are to me, that the flood is swept away.  It is in participating in the simple joys of family life, that all that weighs upon me is relieved.  It is in watching my children find joy in playing cards, or watching a movie, or riding their bikes and scooters that I realize that things aren’t so bad.  It is in realizing what a wonderful woman I am married to, that I find the man I was meant to be.  It is the journey to becoming this man that God deemed it important to bring this time of woe upon me.  This activist God led me to this place.  And this activist God has deemed it important that I dwell here for a time, the exact duration of my stay is as yet undetermined.

I have found my place in the domicile that God has built up around me, and I relish it.  I have become actively involved in it, and it is a wonderful thing.  I have my good days, and my bad ones, but I love it for what it is.  And in all honesty, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

It seemed like everything was going well.  I updated my resume as requested by the human resources staff at the company.  I asked for prayer from the people closest to me.  And everything looked like it was going to work out.  Until all hope was extinguished when the person I had been dealing with asked for more detailed revisions to my resume, and included the resumes of the other candidates in the process to show me what he was looking for.  It was at this point that hope fled like the virtue of a prom queen after the prom is over.  And I was left with an unbelievable situation and I was surely stunned.  The other candidates completely blew me out of the water in terms of qualifications, experience, training, and job knowledge.  They had advanced degrees, and decades of experience I could only wish to have.  One was even on the development team for the most current release of the product this job entails supporting.

And so I gave in to the dark despair that lurks in the recesses of my spirit.  I was left with a number of questions regarding the quality and nature of my faith.  The Bible says in many places that God cares for all of his creation.   Jesus himself repeats this theme in his ministry also.  I believe this to be true, and yet I wonder about God’s provision in my immediate context.  I am fearful about the future.  I accept the Bible at face value that God has a plan for my life, and yet I am frightened about its timing and implementation.

I wonder if I am a liar when I say that I believe in God’s word on this subject, yet reside in such a dark and despairing place.  I wonder if it is sinful to be fearful that God won’t fulfill his promises.  Am I a hypocrite when I exhort others to believe in God, when my faith seems to be so shallow?  Am I the wrong man for anything God may have planned for the future, when I am compelled to ask these questions?  Should I just accept the counsel of Job’s wife and ‘curse God and die’?

And yet in my darkest times I was reminded that God is sovereign.  I was reminded that despite my circumstances, God still sits on the throne.  I was uplifted to know that in spite of all the wind and rain that is buffeting my situation the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent being that created the universe by the simple spoken declaration of his will still exists.  The power to confirm all that he has promised still resides in his spirit. 

If I do nothing more than retain the belief in those things, I will have succeeded in surviving the test of this moment, for surely it must have been a test.  I was compelled to remember always, that my timing isn’t his timing.  I was encouraged to remain steadfast in accepting that God pays for what he orders in our lives.  He protects all that creates with the same power that said, ‘let there be light’.  Those that God has entrusted into the care of my life, matter to almighty God.  I matter to him at the same time.

This moment might seem to some to have been trivial.  It might seem like much ado about nothing.  I assure you that it wasn’t.  The substance of my very soul was tested this morning.  I was weighed on the scales.  I can only pray that I didn’t come to the place of remembrance too late.  I can only wish that my despair wasn’t as costly to me in the long term as I fear it might be.  The path out of despair this morning was painful and difficult, but I came out of the place.  And I know I didn’t reside there or walk out of there alone.  The spirit of God was there trying to comfort the whole time.  It was this same spirit that provided timely remembrances of God’s word and promises.  And it was this same spirit that carried me out of the land of despair when it was time, my feelings regarding hope notwithstanding.