There Is No Cool Kids' Table
LGBTQ Christians aren't all just trying to score cool kid points in the culture war.
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“This Church loves you!” reads a semi-viral rainbow sign outside one St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
“No, they don’t,” posted a guy who describes himself as a “reformed Catholic” in his bio. This set off a round of exhausting and predictable discourse and there’s no need to recap it all here. But I'm going to recap it a little here, if only to highlight one particularly irksome recurring part of it.
One pastor who posted in agreement with the “No, they don’t side” seemed ready to tear his hair out. “This church isn’t loving people. They’re lying to people. How can so many Christians miss this?”
“Modern Christians act like love means simply blanket affirmation of everyone's sexual desires,” he continued. “That just isn't true. Stop perverting the scriptures and calling it ‘love.’”
Another commenter posted that: “This church is like the tired mother in the grocery store, giving her kid a big candy bar that is no good for him at all, in order to shut him up and buy peace.”
What’s striking to me about this general attitude is not that these Christians “disagree with the homosexual lifestyle” or what have you. But it’s the broader underlying assumption — from the original “No, they don’t” on down — that anyone they disagree with must have some cynical, selfish motive for believing what they do. In short, the assumption seems to be that queer Christians and those who affirm them are just ignoring the Bible so they can sit at some imagined cool kids’ table.
For a certain type of non-affirming Christian, it is taken for granted that queer Christians and those who affirm them are choosing to ignore the Bible, trying to score cool points with the mainstream culture or looking for an excuse to indulge deviant appetites. The possibility that queer Christians and those affirm them might have reached their convictions sincerely — in humility, prayer and obedience — is never entertained.
If I’m a non-affirming Christian and I just assume that everyone who disagrees has some ulterior motive for doing so, then I don’t have to engage with them or even really consider what they’re saying in any serious capacity. After all, in my mind, they don’t even really disagree with me. They’ve just decided the Bible doesn’t matter, so there’s nothing to discuss. I’m obviously correct and deep down, they know it. They just can’t get over their addiction to “capitulating to culture” or “winning the approval of the world.”
It’s tempting to live this way, smugly satisfied in the belief that you are so clearly correct in all your beliefs that anyone who disagrees with you must have a sinister motive for ignoring the obvious truth. It saves you an awful lot of time that would otherwise have to be spent exploring other ideas, getting to know other people and learning about their perspectives in humility.
But there are a few problems with this theory. One big one, in this case, is the idea that queer Christians and those who affirm them are just “obscuring the clear truth of God’s Word” so that they can take the easy way out. I would invite anyone who thinks this way to turn on the news and really ask yourself how coming out as queer could, in any capacity, be “easier” than the alternative. The array of resources currently being marshaled against the LGBTQ community at the state and social level is harrowing, and queer Christians also have a not insignificant portion of their own faith community telling them that not only are queer Christians not Christian at all and are not loved by the churches that say they love them, but that they are grooming children and even worse horrors. Does any of this really strike you as taking “the easy way out?”
But more broadly, what I really want from non-affirming Christians, is just the simple, human courtesy of accepting that there is such a thing as actual disagreement. Not everyone who affirms LGBTQ relationships is just trying to sit at the cool kids’ table. Absent any actual evidence to the contrary, it’s best to assume that any church that proclaims “this church loves you” really means it, and your disagreement with them doesn’t materially impact their sincerity at all.
On the contrary, many, many LGBTQ Christians continue to have full, flourishing faiths in thriving communion with God. This is very clearly the case and while it may not in and of itself change every non-affirming Christian’s mind, it ought to at least warrant serious and humble engagement — not from an assumption of cynical or sinister intent, but one of humility, curiosity and genuine love.
Maybe then, we’ll see that there is no cool kids’ table. There is only one table, big enough for everyone, and everyone who once sat at the foot of it is always being ushered ever higher to the place of honor.
Speaking of LGBTQ Christians, it was fun to see my Twitter mutual Natalie and her wife Heather get to tell their story at RNS. Natalie is a trans woman and a rad person and I’ve learned so much from seeing her faith at work in the digital space. I know you will too!
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Haven’t finished the second season of The Bear yet but I plan on writing about it a little later this week.
A refreshing voice and a good ally as always, Tyler
Thank you for this. I’m so tired of hearing people talk about being queer or transgender as a trend, when coming out is actually one of the bravest and most dangerous things one can do.