Amendment One and An Angry Lament of a Native Son

May 9, 2012 By davidrhenson 80 Comments

I am a native son of the Deep South, born and bred in the land of cotton, Christianity and conservatism.

As a native son, I soaked up the homophobic culture in which I lived just as I soaked up a love of college football, the smell of fresh mown grass and cut wild onions on Sunday afternoons and July thunderstorms beheld on the back porch with iced cold sweet tea.

But I know now what I did not then. I know that I had friends who were gay, lesbian and bisexual, and I know that those friends overheard hate speech, cloaked in piety, fall from of my mouth as if it were righteousness. They heard me use the word “gay” as a pejorative. They heard me speak with confidence of how God condemned homosexuality. They heard me joke that God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. They heard from me what they heard from everyone else in the South and what they heard tonight in North Carolina.

I’d like to apologize to them all, because I am sorry, and I humbly repent. But let’s be honest. Right now, as the state of North Carolina codifies hate speech into a constitutional amendment, apologies don’t begin to cut it.

As a native son of the Deep South and of North Carolina, tonight, I am ashamed, and angry.

I am ashamed for being too understanding of my homophobic brothers and sisters in Christ, knowing personally just how difficult it is to unravel the hate that can be instilled by the Christian faith. I am ashamed for being too tolerant of intolerance and hate. I am angry that the moral arc of the universe has been so misshapen by so-called Christian morality. I am angry that our churches, by and large, have stood for spirit of the world — the spirit of sin, death and hate — rather than the spirit of God — the spirit of love, creation and just societies.

I’m angry that we’re still having this conversation.

And I am angry that the land I love — that I have loved — is now the last place I want my two sons to experience their childhood.

See, it took more than a decade to overcome my own homophobia, and I would spare my children from living in place where such hate and exclusion is not only accepted, but applauded as godly. Even after I became convinced that condemning LGBT+ persons was not supported by Holy Scripture, I still held onto an emotional reluctance  — embedded deeply within me by cultural conditioning — to embrace same-sex couples. It wasn’t until I left the South and joined a playgroup with gay and lesbian parents that I felt the final bindings of hate release, that I could emotionally as well as intellectually affirm equality for all humans, regardless of their sexuality. It wasn’t until I interviewed couples remembering with fondness the February weekend they dashed off to San Francisco to finally have their relationships recognized that I saw the genuine romance in LGBT relationships. It wasn’t until I listened to those same couples mourn the rejection of their relationships at the ballot box that I understood the fundamental inhumanity of heterosexists. It wasn’t until all this that I finally realized “they” were no different than me.

Mostly, though, tonight I am angry that the vote in North Carolina doesn’t surprise me one bit. Actually, anger doesn’t begin to describe it. I am angry to the point of rage, which is better than the alternative of despair, I suppose. I am enraged that the land of my mother and father has been turned into a den of robbers that break into people’s bedrooms and relationships, cover it in hate and steal away human rights.

Angry enough to overturn tables.

And, as a Christian, I think it is time to admit who bears responsibility for atrocities like Amendment One and all other anti-LGBT legislation.

It’s Christianity.

I might want to say I’m not like those Christians over there who stood for Amendment One and other such legislation. But they are my brothers and sisters in the faith, no two ways about it. I might want to say those Christians don’t represent what Christ stood for. But I bet they would say the same thing about me. I can try to split hairs and divide the Christian community so I don’t have to think about the hate my faith tradition has spawned and let loose in the world like a legion of demons.

But I can’t say any of that with a shred of integrity.

Tonight, Christianity is to blame. To say otherwise would be a lie.

So, perhaps, on second thought, while saying I’m sorry might not be enough, it might just be the only thing to do tonight.

Filed Under: Essay, Politics Tagged With: , 80 Comments

The Resurrection and Wounds that Won’t Heal

April 17, 2012 By davidrhenson 3 Comments

Some wounds do not heal.

When I was a journalist, I remember sitting with the mother whose son’s remains had only recently returned from the war in Iraq. I listened to her grieve as she told the story of how her son unexpectedly came to join the military, how she feared for him, how she found out about his fate.

I listened to her weep.

Later, I listened to her recount her family’s bittersweet meeting with then-President George W. Bush and watched her smile as she accepted a posthumous diploma on her son’s behalf.

At the time, I described her experience of her son’s death as a pain that had become as common as breathing, as if every breath was laced with broken glass.

One evening, I drank beer with her as we sat in a swing in front of her house, objectivity be damned.

She told me the same stories she had already told me.

I just listened, because some wounds don’t heal.

Months later, this mother sat in a ditch in Texas and demanded to speak with the president, this time on her terms. She became the Peace Mom under the glare of klieg lights and cameras. She became an anti-war hero, vilified and deified depending on your political slant. About that time, I got an e-mail from Andrew Breitbart and from the producer of the Bill O’Reilly show asking me for more information on the story I wrote on her. These folk used my story to smear her and to call her a liar and a flip-flopper. They wanted me to talk on the record.

I refused because when I saw Cindy Sheehan on television I still saw the mother grieving her son.

I refused, because I knew some wounds don’t heal.

The loss of a child is a wound I cannot imagine ever fully heals. Victims of abuse, of war and of terror all bear wounds that I cannot imagine ever fully heal. Truth be told, we all have wounds that won’t heal. Some we have created fancy names for like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental suffering. Others have a physical diagnosis like HIV, cancer, lupus.

We all have wounds that will not heal.

Jesus is no different, and this is the most striking element in all the resurrection stories we celebrate during Easter. Those unhealed wounds are the shadow side to all the trumpeted alleluias, major chords and celebratory hymns so indicative of the season. This is the season where we are to revel in the triumph of our Lord over death and its eternal sting. But we forget too easily that our Lord still has wounds.

In this week’s resurrection story in Luke, the disciples are seen touching and marveling at Jesus’ wounds just as Thomas did last week in John. Did they expect them to be healed? Or is it only by his wounds that they can recognize him at first?

Whatever the case, these wounds are not scars, faded blemishes where the skin has closed and only distant memories of cuts and skinned knees remain. Rather they are open wounds. Holes in each hand, each foot where nails of oppression, terror and state-sanctioned murder pierced him. A open, ragged gash where a spear tore into his abdomen, his vital organs.

The crucifixion does not heal. The wounds from the cross do not heal. They remain open, forever and always.

The resurrected body of Christ remains marked by his earthly suffering. Eternally.

But, the wounds no longer bleed, either. When Jesus touches his friends, he does not leave bloody handprints on their cheeks, nor do crimson footprints mark his trail in the Palestinian sand. When he ascends, blood does not pour down on the upturned faces of his friends watching him disappear.

This is the promise of the resurrection — not that we will no longer be wounded. No, we will always be wounded. Between hunger and poverty, war and terror, abuse and hate, our world will make sure that none of us escape unscathed without wounds that do not heal.

But as people of the resurrection, our promise is that our wounds will not always and forever bleed us of our lives, our vitality. The promise of the resurrection is not the assurance of a life without wounds but a life in which our wounds, even if they define us as they do Jesus, do not bleed us. The promise of the resurrection is that, eventually, after the bleeding stops, our wounds, while they won’t ever heal, might just begin to heal others.

__________________

 

For more information on the relationship between wounds and healing, check out Greek mythology, Carl Jung, Henri Nouwen and Dr. Gregory House.

Filed Under: Essay, Lectionary, Parable, Politics, Reflection Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments
« Older Posts