I feel the need to say something about current/recent events. I realize that many of you would like for me to weigh in on these topics. I will write briefly on what I think about them and why, but that is not my purpose for writing this. Something else is giving me concern. I will get to that in a little while.
Most of you know where I stand on gay marriage, the Affordable Care Act, and racism. I basically don’t support any of them. Before you get angry, please hear me out and read on.
Concerning gay marriage: I hate discrimination. in a secular society (sorry my church friends, it is a secular society in which we live) where we have laws that favor monogamous relationships in matters of life decisions, financial arrangements, the raising of children, and other related issues, monogamous couples, regardless of gender arrangement, should be seen equally under the law. For those Christians who oppose homosexuality vehemently, it is your right to hold that position and to disassociate from homosexuals or to “love the sinner and not the sin,” or whatever you think is necessary for your moral compass, up to the point of acting coercively. As a Christian brother, however, I should remind you that your standing orders are to love, especially those who you think are unlovely. Your standing orders are to serve and to heal. The nature of your interaction with society should always have the end goal of reconciling people with one another in healthy relationships, and with God. None of that is possible while rejecting or being intolerant toward others. You were given no protocol, for the treatment of others with whom you disagree, besides loving practically or disassociating peacefully.
I also think it is time for the church to lay down its defensive nature, to put on Christ-like lenses, endeavor to be objective, and revisit the issue. The church has had a stance on homosexuality for some time; a stance of intolerance and the belief that homosexuality is a sin that holds a “special” kind of status in terms of the scaling of egregiousness of sins. It has been my experience that those who currently hold such a view tend to do so more on the basis of an inherited, post-early church tradition, of sorts, rather than on a well-structured, Biblically-based, doing-justice-to-the-text’s-spirit-and-law sort of way. For such an undertaking of consideration to take place certain elements will have to be considered. One such element is the quintessence of scripture and God’s heart; if God is love and the whole duty of humankind is to fear Him and keep his commands, and if His commands are to love Him with everything one is/has and to love neighbor as self, then it would be essential for scripture to be understood and deciphered under some kind of rubric of love. Elements like God’s unrelenting insistence, in a repeated, emphasized way, that the sabbath be kept, by all (not just those who were given the law directly, but all YHWH believers/ followers for all time), will need to be treated for what it is, especially since the church doesn’t seem to be too concerned with likewise emphasizing it; yet, the not-emphasized, by God, topic of homosexuality, as we define it in modernity, has become one of the church’s main emphasis. I will maintain that scripture’s handling of the topic is more holistic than the manner in which we have handled it. If taken in context, and thematically, as it pertains to God’s stance on morality and the problem of sin, the texts on homosexuality are more of a warning against coercive sexual acts in general, and the consequence of people’s insistence on obtaining and acting out unmitigated pleasure, than it is some sort of diatribe on consenting, loving, monogamous adults, who are law abiding, and of the same gender.
I digress. My point, here, is not to defend homosexuality, but to call the church to discourse and rationality over the consideration of things it conveniently does not, in legitimate ways, consider; to open a new diaglogue.
I stated earlier that I don’t support gay marriage. I should clarify my position. I don’t support the notion of the federal government being the legitimizing impetus behind contracts that are social and religious in nature. I think it unwise, gay or straight, to petition a body who, otherwise would not have governing authority, to govern the matter. Had my wife allowed it, I would have married her in a social/religious ceremony only, and not given the state any credence. I am a realist, however, and I stand for equal treatment of people under a body of law that exists. That is more important than standing from an irrelevant, metaphorical distance, shaking my finger, and saying that since my ideal is not a reality, others should suffer. I would prefer that marriage, in general (without gender concern), not be a federal matter. By seeking the approval of consolidated power, we legitimize its raw power where it would otherwise have no governing reach. Since it has become a federal matter, however, citizens (despite the church’s opinion of who has God’s grace and who doesn’t) should be treated equitably. I don’t, however, think the manner in which we got there is legitimate. More on that later.
I have arrested your attention and I must be responsible with it so I will make my take on the Affordable Care Act more succinct and brief. The greatest defeating force in the affordability of health care in America is the regulating muscle of insurance on the medical industry. I am currently an employee of the federal government and have served in the active Army. I have come to believe that the bureaucracy of consolidated power, especially when it comes to a nation as geographically and populace vast (in number and conviction) as ours, is an inefficient mechanism to handle the particular needs and desires of the individual. The Affordable Care Act marries the insurance industry and the federal government while making the goods and services of that marriage mandatory. In my mind, that is not a winning recipe for lower costs, greater quality of healthcare, or the fostering of personal liberty. So though I disagree with the very relevance of the Affordable Care Act, as a reasonable realist, I must concede that it is the law, and abide by it, or protest it in relevant, valid ways. However, if the law itself proves to be unconstitutional, or inherently contradictory or invalid, or if the law makers break the law as it is written by enforcing it, my expectation is that the Supreme Court would rule on it accordingly. The manner in which it has been upheld this last week is illegitimate. More on that in a bit.
Concerning racism: it is wrong! There is no getting around that, there are no exceptions. This past week’s Supreme Court ruling on Texas Housing v. Inclusive Communities is not helpful to our culture at large or to our country in general; it provides us with no long-term advancement in the area of maturity as it pertains to racism. The greatest thing we as a non-racist group, or a group vying for a non-racist status, could do is to not make exceptions for people, based on race, no matter how charitable or benevolent the motive. Even in the case where the motive is pure and well-intentioned, if an act or stance keeps some in a category and others not in that category, and is based on race, then both groups have been segregated from each other in invalid and divisive ways. There is no gain against racial barriers in the case of overcompensating for the way things should’ve been in our history, but weren’t. I know this next statement will not be popular, but it is necessary if we are to grow past our current sophomoric level of race-relation maturity. In the case where an unjust police force is systemically and racistly mistreating a minority group, the best thing we can do is stand as a united front, as Americans, in solidarity for the victim(s) in the name of brotherhood, and intolerance of injustice, and not on the basis of racism. We should be taking such things from the injustice-based-on-race realm, even when the racists keeps putting it there, and placing them in the realm of injustice-based-on-humans-being-treated-unjustly. We have no gain, and will experience no growth as a result of codifying the idea of “unconscious racism” in the way the Supreme Court has done. Our collective energy needs to be completely invested in each human citizen of this nation experiencing equitable treatment under the law. Furthermore, labeling something a hate crime brings us no gain. As an example, murder is wrong and we should all be incensed when it occurs because a neighbor of humanity was victimized; the motive of the perpetrator influencing our feelings or decisions on the matter is a little sick. The problem with a murderous act (but really with any unjust act) is humankind’s inhumanity to humankind, not that someone has a certain brand of hate (which may be more or less socially acceptable based on its popularity at the time), in his, heart at the moment he/she commits an intolerable act. In, Texas Housing v. Inclusive Communities, it is worth considering that the Supreme Court has brought us no gain, and greater division, at the cost of more threat to our personal liberties.
The reason I am writing this is because there is an angle on all of this that people aren’t seeing. I wanted to give voice to it before that angle was swept away under a label of bigotry. It is possible for one to be pro-equitability while not being pleased with the procedural way in which it has taken place. Function and form do matter. A disturbing thought occurred to me this week. I was thinking that the manner in which the Supreme Court has handled the recent sensitive topics it has ruled on is not in keeping with our historic protocol. While some were busy rejoicing, and while others were busy being pissy, very few were talking about the procedural irregularities of the Supreme Court, and their certain long-term precedent-making implications, for future constitutional matters. I was thinking about how people got really upset last year concerning the procedural matter of inflated (or not) balls. I don’t know a lot about football, but my understanding is that the deflating team in question would have won regardless of the amount of air in their balls; still, procedure matters in the important dealings of things like official ball games. It should matter infinitely more to us, as a society, that those who are in the sacred position of governing for our liberties do so in accordance with the procedural processes which are in place. Americans enjoy freedom on the philosophic premise that their liberties are inalienable and inherent, they are not given by rulers. Appealing to a ruling class for liberty is, at least philosophically, counterproductive to the idea of liberty, for it predicates that same liberty on the hope of an elite’s benevolence, and forgets that it is not the elite’s to give; it is the willingness to surrender one’s self and one’s power to someone who doesn’t have it in order to obtain the freedom one already, inherently possessed. So, despite how you or I feel about the matters that were in court this past week, we have the responsibility to care about how they are handled as much as we care about the outcome of their handling. Lest you get caught up in all the hype and polarizing narratives, consider that the dissenting judges in the past week’s cases were trying to stay true to their position and function and resist the temptation to rule based on favoritism. It will be easy for people to think the dissenters were being bigoted, or opposing equal rights. They were trying to say that rights don’t come from their desks, laws don’t come from their pens, and that for them to function as though they do, is to create the unintended ripple of division and liberty loss down the road. Lex, Rex.
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