When I was in college, I remember writing a long lil essay attempting to write a very empathetic approach to the Bible’s definition of marriage between man and woman.
I was in agreement then with what is referred to as “the traditional view of marriage,” but I thought the church’s focus on gay people felt unfair and unkind. It was basically my attempt at saying “we’re not explaining this well and we’re hurting a lot of people.”
I was arguing that the Bible is actually far more prohibitive 😂 and that marriage is a very specific semantic thing that doesn’t include all these other concepts.
I really went after it. So it’s not as if I don’t understand allllllll of these arguments people are using to keep standing against these communities. It’s not as if I don’t understand the obedience to the principles or the scripture and tradition behind it.
I don’t write anything without what I would call a deep understanding of where people who disagree with me now about this are coming from. I was THERE. Arguably more there than many people I have debates with now are there.
I was incredibly loyal to the concept.
There’s several stories in the Bible where Jesus seems to put people before people’s understanding of the law. He helps people when he “shouldn’t” and the religious among the crowd get so offended by it.
In my efforts to be obedient it was always apparent to me that I was hurting people. But I use to literally say. “It’s okay if the truth is offensive, it’s not okay to be offensive with the truth.” It’s okay if truth hurts people, but you don’t have to be a jerk about it.
But constantly I would encounter not repentance or healing but further pain in my efforts to talk about this with people who were gay.
I’m fortunate that it was a short list of people then, but it doesn’t mean I don’t feel terrible about it to this day. The reality was I didn’t find much opposition where I grew up, and maybe that’s also true for your like-minded communities, no matter your beliefs. Humility and perspective should always be anchored to the understanding that we are shaped by our people, but these are not the only ways, not the only stories, not the only understanding.
But the retrospect is so clear that so much of this telling I did did so little listening.
I wasn’t listening to these communities because I thought they were just trying to find a way to make it work, rather than be obedient to God. Everything I heard sounded like an attempt to ignore what scripture says. I was so confident, and rather than “hate gay people,” I just felt bad that they were in this difficult situation. I imagined it was very difficult to “struggle with these things” but I still had a very clear view of what I thought was “right.”
I eventually got to a point where I wanted to really be able to defend these ideas from those who disagreed. But in my intense studies I found ideas and background that actually deflated my certainties. Something I thought would be impossible.
I had to confront my idolatry of the Bible first. I use “idolatry” here very intentionally. I treated my Bible as God over my life. I mistranslated a passage about Jesus “the Word was with God and the Word was God” to be a passage about scripture. And so more often than not I did not go to prayer to listen to God, instead I read my English translation of a two thousand year old text to settle my questions. I let that silence the tensions I had within me, rather than listen to that tension and explore it. (Ya know, the real spiritual work.) But that only became more confusing.
We so often acknowledge that men wrote the Bible, (some say God guided the pen) but in my experience many people who lean heaviest on the Scripture, and use words like infallible and inerrant overlook all signs of humanity. They’re not hiding or anything. The text is right there.
I studied the Bible all four years of college and have been studying it since. The Bible my pastors, bible churches and youth groups gave me when I was a child, to put it spiritually, was a false idol. I bent all truth to its words, rather than be open to truth itself. And because of this I would ignore or reframe anything that unsettled or challenged me.
And I did this until I literally couldn’t anymore because the challenges became so plain. The Bible was not holding up to these categories that frankly, it was NEVER meant to uphold. The second I actually leaned into the humanity of the text, my God became bigger, more mysterious, more enduring. The humanity of the text invited me in and taught me how to listen, wrestle, pray, challenge, evolve, grow, mature. “For the Bible tells me so…”
Just as the Israelites grew in their understandings, just as the Jewish Christians found hope and mission in the gentiles, I got to see a faith that both expands, evolves, and goes deeper with each passing generation. It made it okay to look at barbaric passages and go, yeah…we don’t do that anymore. It made the warrior angry God obvious within the cultural contexts of the ancient world, yes of course they related to God this way, so did EVERYONE else. Blood sacrifices, dietary restrictions, cultural beliefs about what happens when we die. It’s all part of what it looks like to relate to and wrestle with the larger idea of the divine.
I do not look to the ancient world to understand modern science and biology because we have infinitely more tools than they did. We have two thousand more years of development and research to consider. And rather than bend all of that to their time and understandings, I look at how they wrestled with the challenges of their day, and how they went to God and community to wrestle with these things honestly, and I build that into my own spiritual journey.
The Bible is considerably not inerrant. Just read the dang thing. But the idol I grew up with taught me that if it wasn’t, then I had to throw it all out. And what a shallow disappointment that is to a very rich spiritual tradition. So many people have left the whole thing because they were taught and primed at a young age either it’s all true or none of it is. Or here’s what Christians believe and here’s what the world teaches and on an on and on.
We did not instill curiosity, we scared it with deceptive warnings of the “patterns of this world.” As if we couldn’t learn from all things and bring all things to God. As if there was Christian truth and everything else rather than considering that all truth would belong to God, no matter its form or religion.
It’s Pride here in Austin. And it’s been an unusually aggressive year against this community. Especially here in Texas. Almost exclusively in part to those with power who’d believe they are being loyal to their faith and to God.
My retrospect about how I used to be does help me see my actions as both hateful, bigoted, and ignorant. Hateful because I was dismissive, because I didn’t care enough to listen, because I was afraid of losing my certainty. Because I made other people’s experiences worse out of fear of my own ideas being proved wrong. Bigoted because I was so attached to my beliefs that no persons experience was sincerely treated as valid. Especially if it could challenge. Ignorant because I wasn’t curious enough about where they were coming from. Just curious of how I could become more convincing to them.
I say this all as an invitation. It’s okay to keep learning. It’s okay to take the leap of faith away from what you’ve always been told is certain. To me, this is the ego work and humility that Christianity teaches so well. Or at least could.
It’s the cross. That thing that’s supposed to kill you, actually brings new life.
It’s death and resurrection and it’s painful and difficult and lonely at times, your own people might let you down and betray you, but the new creation is a beautiful hope.
One that has delivered me again and again.
And that transformation, is some good news.
DevonBailey.com 