Jarred's Slice of Heaven

I'm going to start this post with a fair warning to everyone.  This post is going to be full of deeply personal and intensely raw thoughts and emotions.  If that's something that may bother you, you might want to stop reading you.  If you're one of my Christian friends who may be hurt by what I have to say, you might want to stop reading now, though I hope you push on through.  In some ways, I'd like to apologize for hurting you, but I don't know how to do that without also apologizing for saying what's on my heart and mind, something that I absolutely refuse to do.  So I hope you find a way to forgive me anyway.

If you think you might have somehow contributed to what I'm about to say, please don't take it personally.  It's nothing personal about you.  In fact, in many ways, it's probably not about you at all.  It's about everyone and everything.

Over the past few days, various events and conversations have gotten me thinking about Christianity and homosexuality.  I've discussed the matter with many people and heard many others' thoughts on the topic, so now it's time for me to express my own.

Regardless of whether it eventually comes to see homosexuality as a moral and acceptable expression of human sexuality, I doubt I will ever trust evangelical Christianity.

My experiences with and observations of evangelical Christianity suggest that it is and always will be about "us versus them."  The list of who qualifies as "us" and who qualifies as "them" may change over the years, but the underlying mentality remains the same.  Those who fall into the "us" category become embraced while those who fall into the "them" category remain outcasts, worthy of contempt, condemnation, and even discrimination.

I am someone who for numerous reasons has likely taken up permanent residence in the "them" category.  Even if gay people are accepted, there are other things that will put me in the "them" category.  Indeed, I suspect that as long as there is a "them" category at all, I'll be firmly entrenched in it.  And I've made my peace with that, more or less.

What I haven't made my peace with is the idea that politically, our rights as individuals and groups depends on which of those categories belong to.  What I haven't made peace with is the suggestion that part of the human rights process is convincing such people to redefine their categories to move us into the "deserving of rights" one.

What about those who will never make it into the "deserving of rights category"?  Shall we tell them (or more accurately, shall they tell us), "Sorry, I guess you're just out of luck?

To be honest, the fact that there are "us" and "them" categories in evangelical Christianity at all was one of the major reasons that I left the religion.  I knew too many of "them" to be comfortable thinking of them as "them."  And the idea that them being "them" could even possibly make them undeserving of rights would've driven me to froth at the mouth.

So I have to admit, I get pretty annoyed and even hurt when people suggest that getting our rights is still a matter of getting a bunch of intolerant people in an "us vs. them" religion to move us into the "us" category.  Because quite frankly, it feels like a betrayal to those of us who will remain in the "them" category long after we've run the gay rights order.  It almost feels as if we'll be told, "well, you're okay that you're gay now, but there still may be other reasons to discriminate against you."