Cultural Refugees in Gay Nightclubs...

Sometimes things don't work out exactly as I plan. I idealize super-spiritual events and pray for ground-shaking God-moments... they don't always come.

Two weeks ago I went up to Portland for a friend's birthday party. I knew there would be homosexuals and Buddhists, liberals and Darwinists there – all the most interesting kinds of people I seldom encounter in my church.

I planned on bringing up an assignment I was working on for a seminary class: designing a postmodern church plant. In my mind I envisioned exciting, stimulating conversation – delving into the very nature of faith and community. I wondered about the fascinating perspectives I might encounter…

Little of the spiritual talk I had hoped for took place. Whether led by fear, complacency, or the Holy Spirit, I couldn’t find the proper time to introduce my class project. After cutting up a cake, we went out for drinks and somehow ended up at a gay nightclub.

And when I say "gay," I mean really gay!

We made our way through a large, open bar area that connected to a dance floor. Men were everywhere, dancing, laughing and drinking; an occasional woman stood out prominently in a few of the groups. We entered a lounge area in the back that was fairly well lit, comfortable, with couches, cushy chairs and even a Christmas tree.

What struck me sitting there with my three straight friends (our gay companions stayed on the dance floor) was the unspoken aura that filled the room. It wasn't happiness or fun or even sadness. It was more like partial relief. A tense undercurrent still seemed to permeate the air. These men looked and acted like distrustful refugees.

As we talked, I watched two young men enter, glancing around the room. They said nothing to each other as they carefully sat down in two overstuffed chairs facing one another. I thought I caught a brief look of ease as they began to adapt to their surroundings, and if I could have put words to what I witnessed they would have said, "I think it’s okay. We're safe now."

I was in a bomb shelter. A refugee camp. A place where the wounded and broken came to hide and confide - to find solace or escape.

You can say what you want to about the theology or legality of homosexuality. I’m initiating no-such discussion. Instead, I raise the question: if not a gay bar, where could these men go to be broken, wounded and imperfect? Again, regardless of theology, can the church be a place for solice? Can we let these hurting souls recoup in a safe, respectful, gentle atmosphere? Or must we break down their walls of sin before we allow any relaxation or decompression to occur?

I don't think a gay nightclub is a good place for a gay man to find healing, wholeness or safety. Yes, he can be gay without fear of judgment in such an environment, but no one can be transparent in a meat market - gay or straight. No one can put down the facade when they're being checked out and sized up by potential suitors (one of the reasons I think many church youth and young adult groups are so dysfunctional - but that's a whole separate can of worms).

Maybe we could take a little break from the gay topic in church. Maybe if we let people come in and feel safe, the Holy Spirit would do some amazing, powerful things. Maybe we jump the gun on the Holy Spirit. Maybe we don't trust the Spirit to speak without our vulgar voices chiming in at a whim.

I don’t think this issue is simple or black-and-white. I don’t even think it’s ready to be resolved in our Christian culture yet. I also don’t think it would be appropriate for every Christian to walk into a gay bar – maybe it wasn’t appropriate for me. But right or wrong, I’d rather take chances to discover these refugees in hiding than stay so safe that I never meet the people I once called “lost.”

Buddhists, Homosexuals, & Fresh Perspectives...

Tonight I'm off to Portland for a birthday party. I'm looking forward to it because my final project for this semester at Seminary is to create a proposal for a new Church Plant. I know that plenty of Christians have plenty of ideas about how a progressive church could or should look, but I wonder how many actually take the time to discuss possibilities with the unchurched. I remember reading that Rick Warren undertook such a "door-to-door" venture before his megachurch came to fruition.

Tonight I'll have the pleasure of spending time with Buddhists and homosexuals and socialists and atheists and all kinds of other interesting people! I'm looking forward to asking THEM what THEY would like to see in a church... even if they didn't personally attend! What kinds of virtues would they like to see touted, modeled and embodied by professed Christians? Under what circumstances or in what environments could they handle setting foot in a Christian church?

More to come!

Prostituted Love...

My sister just caught her boyfriend soliciting a local prostitute online.

Now don’t go judging me – she gave me permission to write this; her vengeance becoming my socio-theological goldmine! But all joking aside, how far has common morality slipped? Is the Internet Age to blame? Has easy access to e-smut pushed us further and further toward the brink of
depravity? Was the world always this bad or is Original Sin merely as American as hot apple pie?

What I’m trying to communicate, however crassly, is that common ethics appear to be on the decline just as personal spirituality is exploding into everyday life. The 21st Century looks to offer more potential for Christian evangelism than, perhaps, any period in the last two hundred years. Today, even vocal anti-Christians believe in God and respect Jesus, but such spiritual openness hasn’t translated to the kind of Kingdom Jesus came to
establish.

This is the central challenge posed to postmodern Christianity: how does one introduce a higher ethic, an absolute Truth, in the midst of exalted relativism? We approach this question when we talk about “relevance” or “emergent Christianity,” but too often the relevant issues at hand are lost in theological rhetoric and pop-philosophy that has little to do with practical living. My
views of hell and creation may be changing (and they certainly are thanks to postmodern literature) but if my love doesn’t grow then my Christianity is just as stale and marginalized as it’s always been.

Conclusion: theology, per se, isn’t the solution.

So if intellectuals can’t save Selfish Me or my spurned sister or her philandering ex, where do we go from here? How does Christianity redeem a world where Christian virtues are trivial to the point of social incompatibility?

The Apostle Paul boiled it down to this: “and if there is any other commandment, all are summed up in this saying, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Romans 13:9) Jesus lived and breathed this kind of self- negating, rights-surrendering, community-altering agape. It got Him killed.

If we are to embrace a brand of Christianity that truly alters our lives and the world in which we inhabit, it will require more from us than throwing out our secular music and wearing kitschy t-shirts bearing memorable Jesus-ized slogans.

First, we have to rediscover the unsexy unselfishness inherent in Biblical ideas of love. We have to remind the world (and ourselves) that love involves sacrifice. Somewhere along the way we lost the “otherness” that love demands. In a generation where self-gratification reaches new levels through erotic mass media and a dangerously casual dating culture, the idea of abstaining from indulgence sounds almost puritanical. Yet such an attitude is completely contrary to a 1 Corinthians 13-kind of love that is defined, not by feelings or emotions or sensuality, but by matters of will, of choice and of sacrifice.

It doesn’t sound very erotic, but it may be the only prescription for healthy, transcendent relationships.

Next, we have to expose and defy the capitalist attitude that blindly tells us, “More is better – even relationally.” This lie convinces my frat brothers back in college that quantity is better than quality – that bedding four women in a week is perfectly acceptable – that there is plenty of time to settle down and be domestic later on. Years later, this lie convinces a man that his wife may have been adequate when his salary was 40K a year, but now that he’s reached Junior Vice-President, it’s time to think about image.

“More” has been defined as a certain shape of body and a certain social inclination; a plastic replica of happy living. After all, how could something so pedestrian as love survive the rigors of corporate appearance?

Finally, love must be removed – with a scalpel, if necessary – from the romantic entanglements lauded by pop-culture’s generic TV-archetypes. Ironically, this aspect of false love may be the most difficult to rid ourselves of. Because it is seemingly benign (almost adorably innocent) it escapes the critical lens of truth. Who could deny the life-changing love that grew and blossomed between Justin and Brittany? Brad and Angelina? …Kevin Arnold and Winnie Cooper?

Who would want to?

The truth nobody likes to admit (but everyone knows deep-down) is that love can be quite unimpressive, even boring: my parents have watched British comedies every Saturday night for fifteen years! Before that, they square danced. God save us from such fates…

Or perhaps: God redeem us through such simplicity.

I live next-door to a woman with schizophrenia. Her husband left her last month – tired of the sickness, I would imagine. For the last four nights, she has danced to blaring country music in her driveway, silhouetted by the empty glow of her parked pickup’s headlights. She’s out there as I write this paragraph, lost in some blurred reality that few will take the time to care about. I wonder what facets of love are lacking in her life. I wonder which parts of “ever after” fell by the wayside as her husband walked away for the last time.

Love is a lot of work - gut wrenching at times - which means that Christianity is inevitably hard, no matter what the televangelists say.

In cautious reflection, I guess there must be a rush in making e-mail contact with a real life prostitute – the adrenaline of “what if” must excite the baser instincts in a man. Perhaps my sister’s ex isn’t so vile. I suppose I can almost see how something so empty and meaningless could provide a tempting escape from the responsibilities of a real, deep, give-and-take
relationship…

But prostituted love isn’t real. Neither is empty, self-help Christianity, which promises far more than any religion could deliver: the simple life, the good life, the American Pie.

I don’t really think the world is getting worse. I think we’ve always been a mess. What’s different, at least in America, is that today’s Christianity offers to do more than redeem lives and communities. It has offered to provide the same sexy highs that the world desperately runs after.

The church, in many ways, has sold itself to a lurid fantasy; an accessible community prostitute, promising quick and easy thrills with no strings attached.

I must confess, I called that church once… I was lonely one Sunday morning, not relishing another ho-hum sermon… but I hung up when they asked for my credit card number.

Not to be overly political, but...

Why is the voice of peace so mocked - so offensive - to today's church? Forget Bush, forget Democrat and Republican titles. Why do we use war references to talk about evangelism? When did the plowshares of the Army of God turn into real swords and real machine guns? When will we be bold enough to lay down and die (to turn the other cheek and die) for peace, instead of killing for it? When did modern political rhetoric take priority over Jesus' own words?