Being Right

Being Right April 29, 2016

“All I’ve ever cared about is being right.”

My mom asked me several months ago why I care about the status of LGBTQIA people in the church. Was there a person I cared about? Sure. Once you start caring about persons you find yourself changed. It’s called being in a relationship.

But underneath that there is this running thread that binds together the choices I’ve made, the path I’ve taken. What really motivates me is being right.

The thing that has changed is a transformed understanding of how “right” is measured.

J + 8 = Good Times for All

It’s like this: when measured by the Myers Briggs I am an off the charts J. Before you’ve finished your sentence I already know whether I 100% agree with you or think that you really shouldn’t ever open your mouth again. When a good idea is put out there I’m 100% sure that we’ve heard it and that we should stop filling the air with noise and start acting on what we just heard.

The first indicator of being a J on the MyersBriggs.com site: “I like to have things decided.” Yes, that.

I’m also an Enneagram 8. There’s an Enneagram book that entitles its 8 chapter, “The Need to Be Against.” Look, I don’t need to be against stuff, it’s just that it’s always my first reaction. 15629377956_f9c453ecd4_z

What does 8 + J look like?

Five-year-old Daniel goes to art class in kindergarten. Teacher says, “Hold up, everyone! We need to change the crayons. The big kids were in here before you, so the little crayons are out. We need to get the big crayons because they’re better for your little hands.”

Five-year-old Daniel thinks to himself, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. If we have small hands we should be using small crayons.”

See? I know what’s right. Nothing about your neoliberal child development theories can change my mind!

You may or may not be surprised to learn that whenever I’ve been asked, throughout my whole life, who my heroes are, I’ve never had any effing idea what the person was talking about.

The Call (of Love?)

I remember being totally taken aback one day while listening to Tripp Fuller do his podcast thing. (Okay, this happens just about every time I listen to Tripp, but this is one particular instance that I actually remember in detail.) He just made the offhand comment, “Look, everyone who goes into ministry goes into ministry because they love people.”

It was the damnedest thing I’d ever heard.

I spent a baker’s dozen years sure beyond all sureness that God had called me to be a preacher and that thought had never occurred to me.

God had just told me what to do. So I was going to do it. It was just right.

You may or may not be surprised to learn that when people talked about sorting through mixed motivations for going into ministry, seeking status or security or pride or whatever, I never had any idea what they were talking about.

Right as Theology

All of this made it very easy for me to be theologically conservative (and, yes, a Calvinist) as I came through college, seminary, and even grad school. Some of us used to joke that people who were willing to accept with their brains what the Bible actually said would be Calvinists, and Arminians were the ones whose emotions kept them from facing up to the truth.

Right mattered.

That’s the thing that I still deeply understand about my roots. It’s something I still appreciate. Because it is still me. For me there can be no uprooting the notion that right matters.

I know the power of the system that holds together as seamless whole–the right that can be defended, the right that can go on the offensive whenever needed, the right that pleases God because we are being courageous enough to speak God’s words after Him.

And in that world, in that way of reading and thinking and praying and serving, being right is the thing. I think that the Protestant Reformation was made for people like me. It dredged the stream of Christianity that said our faithfulness to the gospel is measured in thinking the right things. It recreated a way of striving to be faithful to Jesus that allowed the nerds like me to get our ideas straight in a classroom unleash them on the world.

Right as Love

For a person like me, jumping up and down and shouting that it’s not about being right isn’t going to make much of a dent. Even if we concede the point with our minds, it’s not going to change how we engage and respond to the world at a gut level.

My path was set not by leaving behind the idea of “right,” but by having my ideas of what is right scrambled by the gospel.

The apostle Paul would get all up in your business if you weren’t doing it “right.” And what was right?

Allowing the outsiders, the Gentiles, to be fully included in the church community even though they weren’t living up to the standards of the Jewish law.

Treating the servants of the gentry as equal members of the church alongside the landowners themselves.

Recognizing that Jesus’ face is seen in the face of the suffering and impoverished rather than the eloquent and powerful.

Jesus could get all up in your business, too, if you weren’t doing it right.

“Woe to you! Because you bind up heavy loads and refuse to lift a finger.”

“Go learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'”

This is a call to be and do what is right. It is a relentless pursuit of love and justice as the way that is right; or, put differently, as the way of righteousness.

Conversion

Richard Hays translates Paul’s call to be “transformed by the renewing of your mind” as “a conversion of the imagination.” For me, the Christian life has been a perpetual conversion of just this sort.

The answer to the ferocity of those, like me, who want to be right, is not to minimize the importance of being right, but to help us see and learn a better story of what a world set to rights looks like.

The biblical story is broad and expansive.

The world set to rights looks like people flourishing on a planet that produces abundantly for the provision of all. What is “right,” then, includes environmental advocacy and just distribution of its fruit.

The world set to rights looks like people from every tribe and tongue singing songs to God and to the Lamb. What is “right,” then, includes embracing people from every tribe without them becoming indistinguishable from my own.

The world set to rights looks like the love of God rescuing and restoring and reconciling all things to Herself. What is “right,” then, includes every person knowing that they are on the receiving end of the loving embrace of the creator who is recreating the cosmos through His beloved children, empowered by the Spirit.

And that takes me back to where I started. What’s right? How do I know?

I ask the question, What does the church’s position on this say about God, and what does it tell you about yourself? If it is anything other than, “God loves the world  you as God’s beloved child in it,” we have latched onto a message that steals, kills, and destroys.

Why am I, why must I be, a fierce advocate for LGBTQIA people in the church? Because only through fierce advocacy will we be able to say and show what is right: you are God’s beloved child.

 

Image: M. Appleman | flickr | CC 2.0


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