When Love isn't Enough...

"Can't we just love everybody?" This is a question I have heard countless times throughout my 34 years in ministry. Would you be surprised to learn that the question is most frequently used to "defuse" a tense situation, or to stop short an important discussion about someone who has been either dismissed, disrespected, or excluded? It's a valid question for church members, people of faith (virtually any faith, for all faith traditions tend to have "love" as a central aim) to ask, but it is too often disingenuously asked. One way this happens is when the person asking it is seeking to stop the pain they are feeling over being challenged by someone else who is protesting his or her own disenfranchisement by others, or an organization of others, such as a church.

A similar protest has been lodged, from time to time, against our congregation's "welcome statement," which, in the midst of its welcoming verbiage, spells out various marginalized persons or groups which may typically be excluded from the "church community." "Can't we just say we welcome ALL?" persons have asked. My answer is usually to ask this inquirer a question in response:  "Have you driven by many local churches whose signs say, 'All are welcome'?" In virtually every case, they answer in the affirmative, to which I ask two followup questions: "Do you KNOW that church? Are 'ALL' really welcome there?" Again, in virtually every case, the answer this time is in the negative. Hopefully this little exercise helps the questioning individual realize why our "welcome statement" spells out specific groups, some of which would most definitely not be welcome in a majority of those "All are Welcome" churches.

So, you see why "Can't we just love everybody?" is not an adequate response to some of the exclusionary issues facing the contemporary church, and most specifically at this time, the United Methodist Church? While the statement certainly sounds "Christian" enough, it glosses over and stops short of addressing persons who are not feeling very loved right now in this denomination. Recently, Keith Boyette, President of the Wesleyan Covenant Association (a splinter group of United Methodists who helped create and then backed the "Traditional Plan" that excludes LGBTQIA+ persons from marrying or from being ordained to ministry) wrote an apologetic piece about how that Association "loves everybody," including LGBTQIA+ persons. One had to read the "fine print," though to understand that they are "loved" only to the degree that they let Jesus "fix" them from their "sin" of being different, and as long as they eschew their "lifestyle." Not exactly a good way to make friends and influence people, I might say. I hazard to think how my marriage covenant would be holding up if I had decided to add a bunch of extra "rules" and conditions for Dara to maintain if she wanted to continue to be loved by me. I might even be dead by now.

Jesus did some stuff to demonstrate his understanding of love: healed the sick and the lame; ate with "tax collectors and sinners;" hung out with the outcasts (lepers, women, and Samaritans, to name a few); railed against the religious leaders who "strained out gnats and swallowed camels;" oh, and suffered and died on the cross in a final redemptive act, for all of humanity. I don't seem to remember him spelling out the names of the groups or persons he wasn't dying for, nor do I remember him shouting a bunch of conditions to be met in order to deserve his forgiveness and love. In fact, I believe he told a thief--whom we often call the "penitent thief"--that he would join him in paradise. The Bible doesn't seem to say anything about this "good thief" actually repenting, though, to receive this promise from Jesus. He just asks for it, and Jesus says, "OK."

So, might not our "Can't we just love everybody?" fall short of the actual Gospel version of loving others according to the teachings of Jesus? If we spend more time defining what "self-avowed homosexual" means than accepting and loving LGBTQIA+ individuals as redeemed children of God, might we be guilty of the very form of "empty love" Jesus condemned in the religious leaders of his day?

I don't want to be a part of a church that makes some of its members into "second-class citizens," and I don't believe the Bible endorses this either. If your definition of "biblical authority" isn't centered in the kind of love Jesus taught and practiced, then it has lost its power, and has turned the Bible into a rulebook. The world has enough of those. What part of "For freedom Christ has set us free" doesn't this church get? "God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind." The author of II Timothy got it right. Maybe some of these "biblical authority" mavens should read a little further? When Jesus rebuked the disciples, "Let the little children come!", do you think he was just talking about "little children"? The mature Christian realizes this is a very, very wide invitation, friends. I, for one, will do all within my power to let them come. Better yet, to welcome them home. Shalom.