Not THAT type of Christian

        I have a confession to make, a “coming out”, if you will:  I am a Christian.  A full-fledged, honest-to-God (excuse the pun) Christian.  I long for church every Sunday and wish Sunday School and church lasted longer.  I read theology books at night, instead of watching t.v.  I download hymns on my iPod and play them almost all the time while I’m driving or while I’m alone in the house.  Good for me, you say, right?

        But, I don’t broadcast this very often.  I might mention church as something I do, or a place where I have met people, or something I do with my kids.  I certainly don’t let other people hear my iPod playing hymns and when company comes over, I put the Jesus books I’m reading on the shelf.  Those who are close to me know I’ve found new meaning and vigor in my life from attending the Episcopal Church.  But, I keep it on the down-low to those I meet casually.  There is NO way I would put a Jesus fish on my car or ask my hairdresser if she is “saved”.  Why can’t I broadcast the startling Good News that I’ve heard recently to everyone I meet?  Why am I a “closet-Christian”?

        The sad truth is that we Christians are a diverse lot and do not agree on very many things.  We tend to let our differences define us, rather than our similarities.  And, our differences are kind of a big deal.  The difference between believing that a person who is gay is going to hell because his or her entire lifestyle is a sin, and believing that God created all people just as they are, gay, straight, bisexual, transgender, etc, AND that we are all valuable and should be loved is a HUGE DIFFERENCE.

        When I tell someone I am a Christian, I want to preface it with, “I’m not THAT kind of Christian.  You know, the kind who is judgmental, strident, hateful, self-righteous.  The kind of person who told my sister (months after losing our dad), “It’s too bad your dad wasn’t ‘saved’, because he was a nice man and now he is in hell.”  I do NOT want to be lumped in with that type of person.  I do NOT want to share a distinction with the haters.

        The ironic thing is, I don’t really know any of THAT type of Christian, not really.  The Christians I knew growing up in the Mennonite Church were kind, loving and served people with a grateful heart. When I say I’m a Christian, I also share that distinction with the people who give up their time to can meat to send to needy families across the world, the people who bring refugees from Russia and Laos to their community, find them jobs and homes and become great friend with them, the people who work tirelessly at a church music program and give every penny of their compensation for it back to the church.  I also share that distinction with people of other faith traditions, the man who gave the funerals for my grandmother, grandfather, and father and who serves as a pastor of an Apostolic church.  I also share it with my Episcopalian family members who work tirelessly for social justice within the church and within their own careers.  And, I share it with the Methodists, Episcopalians, Lutherans and Catholics (and many others) who I know and love every day who live out a loving, ethical, Christian life.

        So, why isn’t it that MY type of Christian is the OTHER and the hate-filled, self-righteous stereotype is the main type of Christian that people think of?  And, when I say stereotype, I mean it seriously.  Because I do not believe that any person can truly be wholly bad.  Even those hateful, self-righteous people that I can’t stand probably give money to the poor, or stand up against capital punishment, or volunteer in some relief organization or something.  Even they need to be loved.  And that is the challenge, right?

        Please understand that I’m not defending the position that homosexuality is a sin.  Personally, I find that idea indefensible.  It seems so hateful and ridiculous to me that I can barely discuss it rationally.  Maybe that is the problem with the issue—most of us feel so strongly that we can’t settle down to figure it out.  Here is my effort at rational discussion of it.

        When I started going to the Episcopalian Church, after attending a Unitarian Universalist church for a few years, someone within the E.C. warned me.  He said, “Pay attention, because we are a tolerant people, which means that we have to tolerate the intolerant, too.”  Ahh, there’s the rub.  How does one sit in community with those one disagrees with so fundamentally?  How do we find the similarities in the midst of some differences?  I am sure there are people that I worship with each Sunday who are not as affirming of the LGBT community as I wish they would be.  What should I do when we discuss this?  Should I try to evangelize them into my way of thinking?  Should I judge them for their intolerance (which could stem from many, many different places)?  Or should I listen to their views, question them and try to understand how they could think so differently?  As an outspoken liberal, I want to do the first and I often fall into the judgment trap of the second.  Then, I wonder, is it as bad to judge a “judger” as to be the “judger” myself?  Liberals can be self-righteous too—every human is good at that.

I think the right choice is probably the last one—to sit in community with people you disagree with--because that is the most difficult thing to do.  And, I’m learning that Christianity, though simple, is hardly ever easy and that although Jesus’s yoke is light, it is not without sacrifice.