Good News??

 

First thing yesterday, I turned on the TV, going straight to cable news to learn the Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage.  I was overjoyed to hear that the federal Defense of Marriage Act was ruled unconstitutional, and California’s Proposition 8 was overturned.  Facebook was abuzz with the good news; it was the subject of the day.

Later, a colleague posted the article below on FB; I was intrigued by the title:  “Christians v. Gays: The Damage Done,” by David Gushee.  It came from the Religious Dispatches Web site, and both the article and reader commentary were thought-provoking. I highly recommend it.

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/7174/christians_v__gays__the_damage_done/

Sadly, much of the conservative, evangelical community was deeply disappointed with the ruling, which legally identified gay/lesbian couples as equal to heterosexual couples, entitling them to the right to marry, to have their marriage recognized as legitimate, to receive the full array of marriage benefits—at least on the federal level.  Those Christians who’ve ardently fought not only gay marriage, but the legal recognition of such marriages as valid, have insisted that not only are such marriages sinful in the sight of God, they will destroy marriage and the fabric of the family altogether.

Gushee’s title describes this battle succinctly:  Christians versus Gays…David against Goliath; good versus evil; God versus satan…a battle for godly social morality, for the soul.  It’s Christians who have waged this war, in the Name of Jesus. 

So as I read Gushee’s article, his readers’ comments, and the many posts and articles my FB friends posted all day long, I pondered the notion of “good news,” particularly as it relates to one’s affiliation with Christian faith and with the Christian “gospel.”

 Once an active, committed, practicing evangelical Christian, I was taught that “gospel” meant “good news”: the good news to an oppressed, sin-filled, hurting world that God had sent His own perfect Son to rescue us forever and restore His loving kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.”  I looked up “gospel” in a dictionary, which explained that it comes from the Old English godspell, translated from the Greek euangelion, that it really means “good” “news.”

In my 40s I felt compelled to leave evangelical practice, one reason being that I wasn’t seeing much good news coming from the Christian communities I experienced.  I began seeing more judgment, more dismissal of others as immoral, ungodly, and downright unsaved than I saw of good news to a hurting world.  There was a rise in condemnation of the very kinds of people Jesus would likely be hangin’ with, calling friend, teaching, loving, serving if He were here today in human form. Simultaneously I grew troubled by blindness at what I labeled self-righteous “phariseeism” coming from conservative evangelicals—a practice of pointing condemnatory index fingers at others while overlooking entirely the four fingers pointing back at themselves.  There no longer seemed to be much open, unconditional, love and sharing of truly good news.  The “good news” too often came w/ fine print.

Certainly there’s a great deal of immorality, self-serving behavior, greed, “me-ism,” addiction, ugliness, violence, misery (for many people, self-induced), entitlement in our world today.  We need a cosmic time out at the least, if not a heavy dose of damn tough love, for sure; perhaps at the least we need to experience the consequences of our choices.  And the “gospel” should not mean you come to Jesus and then get to live as you please.  Of course on the other hand, often the consequences we reap can lead us into pretty hellish situations, relationships, and lives.

So here we are today and the Supreme Court ruling giving gay/lesbian citizens equal status  in the U.S. (if not—yet—in their home states).  And we have Christians—little Christs (see Acts 11:26)—who’re supposed to be representing Jesus on earth instead filled with judgment…condemnation.  So who has the “good news”? 

Why should anyone have to go to the high court of the land to receive the good news of being treated as equals?  Where’s Christian unconditional love and service to “the least of these” (w/ no regard for who they are or their status)?  Are gays and lesbians imperfect?  Duh!  After all, they’re human… and we all bear our own scars and skeletons; suffering the consequences of thoughtless, self-serving, fear-induced, ugly, misinformed choices—which have NOTHING to do w/ sexual orientation.  They likely need Someone on the other end of a “HELP!” prayer just as much as any of us do.  

At least in my Bible, the  “gospel” writers narrate Jesus’s life:  his closest familiars, who he spent his time with, who he taught, who he touched,  and who he got most put out if not outraged with. But his rage is never directed at the “sinners” he was closest to, sought out, served. Rather, he exploded at those religious individuals who thought they were in a position to serve as judge, jury, and executioner while never looking at themselves in the mirror and their own “sins.”  He even had mercy on a woman caught with her pants down in a capital crime, daring her self-righteous accusers to cast the first execution stone…He brought peace to a heated situation, to a frightened woman. 

Now, in the 21^st century, our world has far too little truly good news.  We all have our daily joys, celebrations, and successes.  But we fear and face far too much violence, division, suffering, alienation…; when we collectively take a positive step forward and up, too often it is followed by several steps backwards…downwards.

Yesterday's news is great news--to be celebrated even though our national journey to equality and unconditional access to human and civil rights is far from finished.  We all--Christian, athiest/agnostic, Wiccan, Muslim, sojourner/seeker--have a lot to do in our own lives and as a collective to build and maintain a just and peace-filled nation and world...Christians certainly aren't the only ones casting judgment and causing problems.  But if we dedicated Christians who are especially called to serve and love unconditionally would fulfill the role that God has "saved" us for in the world, perhaps our collective thirst for good news would be quenched.  Maybe we would no longer have to go to court or fight each other to find it.