Friday

I have reached the end of a long week, though a good week. I feel weary, as I always do on Friday, and always have whenever I am working relatively full-time. It probably doesn't help that I biked to and from work today, and on the way back towed what felt like approximately 983 pounds in my bike trailer (Selah, my laptop, a bag full of stuff I probably didn't need from the Goodwill, plus my bike tires are getting flat and it was windy in the wrong direction). I am very happy that it is the weekend! Jeremy has been so sick all week that it feels terrible watching him try to slog off to work each morning, and now we can relax, play, and voluntarily work!

Warning: No matter who you are, you will probably hate the rest of this blog, either because you think I am watering things down, or because you think I'm a judgmental jerk. So maybe you shouldn't read it. :)

Last night I feared I deeply offended someone by talking about my faith. I went to happy hour with two friends who aren't exactly work friends, but are people I know through work and WiPP. (Hey! I just figured out how to insert links in my blog! I know, I know, you are probably thinking that any moron can figure out how to do that. But if you are, shut up.) Anyway, we got to talking, and the topic went to gay marriage, and I expressed that I voted against that proposition that outlawed it back when, which is how we ended up at Imago--it's a long story; if you don't know it, we will tell you. It does involve an amusing dash out the back door of another tiny church and us driving away with tires squealing while nice old ladies looked out the window at us in confusion. One of the women with me expressed that that's why she can stay Catholic--the church she very occasionally attends told them they can believe whatever they want, or something to that effect. So the woman I may have offended (who won't marry her life partner because there are people in this country who can't have that privilege) asked, "So, as someone who doesn't subscribe to any organized religion, do you mind if I ask if your churches are like that, are they really Catholic/christian/what they say they are?"

So I launched into my spiel about theological conservatism with social liberalism, yada yada yada, and I don't think she liked it. At all. And I kind of get that, because there are lots of things in the Bible I struggle with myself. I don't have a hard time believing that people are born gay. I can believe that the Edenic way of life involved a man and a woman, since, well, look at our physiology. Tab A, slot B--if you don't catch my drift, talk to your mom. I also believe this is a fallen world, and people are born all kinds of ways that are hard for them. I am really really lucky, for no particular reason--I am a white, protestant, heterosexual, English-speaking American, raised in a well-off, educated family. All I'd have to be to is male to be sitting pretty on top of a giant glass ceiling. I do know that the Bible just doesn't seem to have a lot of room for being gay. I don't know why. I somehow hope that we are wrong, that we are misinterpreting something. It is easy to find reasonable and educated articles online to this effect.

I do know this, however: whether you consider it A-OK, you are unsure, or you think that a gay lifestyle is a sin, there is no way you can tell me that it somehow disqualifies a person from having a relationship with God and a place in the church. I am definitely a sinner myself. I don't even want to tell you how much. Especially not since I can't quite remember who I have told about this blog. I still get to love God though, to follow Him, and even to hold a respectable place in my church and society. I would rather see someone in a gay, monogamous relationship than out there doing something that clearly injures other people or brings tremendous shame to Christianity--like killing people overseas and pretending God's on our side. This might all be pissing off some of you people out there, but that's okay--I feel pretty firm in my convictions. I am not saying that the Bible says one can do whatever one pleases. It doesn't. I also know, however, that we had better think twice before casting someone out for one kind of behavior we don't agree with, but freely behave however we want, and be silent friends of others who do the same.

Anyway, I hope that my friend understood I wasn't trying to make a judgmental statement of any kind. I also don't want to lie about or alter my convictions. It would be easy to do so, and I didn't grow up in an environment that was particularly supportive of them, but I need to, in my growing as a person, stand up for what I believe, and yet examine myself, and be certain that my beliefs are not contrary to the nature of the very God I know.

Okay, end of rant. I don't know why this issue has been on my heart for a long time, but I honestly feel as though God wants me to be involved in it. I don't know what that means, quite frankly.