Mood:
a-okDear Brother Agitator,
A few weeks ago, Br. Eduard the Agitator, asked the question in context to Black History Month: “why do white people hate black people?” There was lots of suggestions from the Monday morning breakfast circle, and all gave insight to the question asked. However, Br. Eduard the Agitator gave another suggestion with the word, “comfort”. This word resonated deep within my soul and lead and me down another path of reflection. Below is an email to Br. Eduard on my contemplation of his suggestion. However, before you read the email you need to know a little of me and my history.
I am a lay brother with the Brotherhood of Saint Gregory that is religious community of the Episcopal Church. Not only am I a lay brother, I am also a homosexual: a gay man who follows Christ. I have been told most of my life that I cannot be both a Christian and a homosexual. I no longer accept that voice as the voice of Christ who invites all to the table to break bread and to share the common cup. Those who believe in that theology of exclusion need to work out their own issues and not project and lay it at my feet. All I can do is sojourn with them…that is if they allow me to journey with them.
Let me also share some of memories and experiences. I knew from a very young age that I was different, but I didn’t know why or what made me different. It was not until I was older that the word, homosexual, was the “why” and “what” that made me different. I though I was normal, just like everyone else with likes and dislikes. But I soon learned how much people hated those who differed from them, and for reasons that made no sense.
Twice in my life I was assaulted for being gay. Those assaults happened while I was in high school. Those years were years I dreaded and hated because I never knew from one moment to the next if I would be mocked, laughed at or beaten up. When I graduated from high school was a great day of liberation for me and I have never looked back at those days as golden or to be remembered. Many years after graduation I received an announcement of my class reunion. I ignored the invitation and filed it with the trash. Soon after I received a call from a member of the reunion committee who called to see if I was going to attend because I did not send back the invitation. I recognized her voice as one of my tormentors throughout high school. I told her that I would not be attending, however, she wanted to know why I didn’t want to see my classmates. I reminded her that my four years of high school were years of torment and that I feared going to school on a daily basis; and I reminded her as well that she was one of those who mocked me on a regular basis. She then said that was so long ago and that things are different. What she did not offer was an apology for her actions. I then told her that I forgave her of her past sins against me, but I have no desire to relive the darkest four years of my life. I then told her that I would never attend a class reunion and to take me off all future mailings.
To add insult to injury, after graduation from high school, I attended Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and Colorado Christian University. Both of these institutions were bastions of fundamentalism where people like me were considered abominations. I thought that if I genuinely experienced the love of God I would change. So I continued my education in self-hatred for four years all the while thinking that God’s love was elusive and exclusive. After all, that was what I hearing since the word “homosexual” applied to me.
During my second year at Moody Bible Institute thoughts of suicide entered my mind and one day I walked out to the Lake Michigan. It was a winter storm and the waves were pounding the surf and pouring over the peers. I slowly walked out on the peer hoping that a wave would catch me and sweep me away. I couldn’t swim and the bitter cold water would end my misery. I was crying as I walked further out on the peer, and I know that this will sound ridiculous and unbelievable, but I audibly heard, “God made you as you are and loves you as you are.” I turned and all I could see is the city skyline and waves…nobody was on the beach. I grabbed hold of the railing and let out all my self-hatred to the storm and to God. That experience was just the beginning of letting go my own internalized homophobia.
Coming to terms with my sexual orientation was not easy, but it a journey that I would now never trade. This journey has taught me much about people: the good, the bad and the very ugly. It has taught me much about myself. This journey has also given me glimpse of being marginalized and hated and what that does to a person and their self image and esteem. This journey has also led me to Jim, my partner for over 17 years, in which I have continued to learn what love is all about.
With that in mind God has lead me to the Open Door Community where I help serve the community and our friends who come through the doors. One strength of the ODC is the hospitality they offer to all who enter in and they do so without judgment and that alone creates a safe haven for those who have been beaten up (literally and metaphorically) by the world.
Last Monday at the breakfast circle you gave me much to think about, but when you said that "comfort", that is personal comfort, keeps people separated and keeps the walls of racism built up. When you said that another line of thinking entered my mind. All too often the religious right has used the Greek word, "malakos", as a way to build up wall against homosexuals, bisexuals and transgendered people and excluding them from breaking bread at table.
The Greek word, "malakos", as you probably well know literally means, "soft". Even though it literally means "soft", the biblical scholars have reinterpreted this particular Greek word to use religion as a way to justify their prejudices and bigotries.
Below is a list of how "malakos" is mistranslated:
Effeminate (KJV)
Male Prostitutes (NIV)
Homosexuals (Living Bible)
Abusers (Interlinear Bible)
Sexual Perverts (Revised)
Effeminate (J.B. Phillips)
Those who participate in homosexuality (Amplified)
Homosexual perversion (New English Bible)
Homosexuals (New KJV)
Effeminate (New American Standard Bible)
Sensualists (Barclay)
Homosexual perverts (Good News)
Effeminate (St Joseph Catholic Edition)
The two verses where “malakos” is used in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10.
1 Corinthians 6:9 (Contemporary English Version): “Don't you know that evil people won't have a share in the blessings of God's kingdom? Don't fool yourselves! No one who is immoral or worships idols or is unfaithful in marriage or is a pervert or behaves like a homosexual.”
1 Timothy 1:10 (Contemporary English Version): “The Law was written for people who are sexual perverts or who live as homosexuals or are kidnappers or liars or won't tell the truth in court. It is for anything else that opposes the correct teaching.”
From these two passages an arsenal of hatred is launched against homosexuals, bisexuals and transgendered people by a people who claim to follow the Prince of Peace and the One who said, “love your enemy.” These self-acclaimed followers of Jesus have developed the belief that GLTBQO (Gay, Lesbian, Transgendered, Bisexual, Queer, Other) individuals are: immoral, perverts, idol worshippers (and some of these self-acclaimed followers of Christ say that GLTBQO individuals worship the sexual parts of the body as a form of idol worship), unable to tell the truth, kidnappers and pedophiles, and incapable of knowing spiritual truths.
I can understand why many hold this view because it touches and feeds into many societal fears, because a good and healthy society would reflect the opposite of that list we read in those to passages. Plus, for those who believe the rhetoric that these self-acclaimed Christians promote, there is a face to this so-called problem: the homosexual. When there is a “face” to all the problems in society, then the rationale for laws to be passed and violent actions against such individuals are found because of the objectification self-acclaimed followers of Jesus indoctrinate society.
If, however, we applied the literal meaning of the word that is translated as the word homosexual, then these two passages cannot be used against others. If the word, soft, is used instead, then these two passages begs the questions: “soft what?” I do believe that the Barclay translation of scripture is getting close to the spirit of what Paul is trying to say by using the word, “sensualists.”
So what is a sensualist? The dictionary defines a sensualist as, “a person given to the indulgence of the senses or appetites.” This definition implies sexual indulgences, but is not limited to sexuality nor is it limited to GLTBQO individuals, but includes heterosexuals as well into the biblical texts.
This is probably a personal preference, but I believe Jesus, that radical and crazy man, gave us an idea of “soft”.
In Matthew 11 and in Luke 7 we read were Jesus was talking to people about John the Baptizer. John has just been imprisoned and he sends his disciples out to find more about this Jesus and what he is doing. John’s disciples want to know if Jesus is the Christ and Jesus responds by, "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.” (Luke 11:22 ESV).
Jesus, the one who comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable, tells John’s disciples that those who are marginalized and partitioned away from polite society…or acceptable society…and from institutionalized religion: there the good news of the Kingdom of God is actualized.
Then Jesus ask the crowed concerning John the Baptizer, "What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who are dressed in splendid clothing and live in luxury are in kings’ courts. (Luke: 11:22-23 ESV). We read these words of Jesus in both Matthew’s and Luke’s gospel narratives.
Here the word “soft” is used. Even though it is not the Greek word, “malakos”, we get an insight what Jesus understood. Jesus is saying to the crowds that John the baptizer is the polar opposite of those in position of power. That those in positions of power, position and wealth are the sensualists who indulge in the debauchery of luxury and comfort (going back to your word, Br. Agitator).
There is a sharp contrast of people in these two gospel narratives. We have the poor, blind, lame, sick – in other words the outcasts and disposables of society…the untouchables; and then we have those dressed in the newest fashions and living in luxury and exclusion. Even though it does not state it here in this passage, history teaches us time and again that the lives of the privileged is at the expense of the working class and the poor.
Yet Jesus in a great insight continues to comfort the disturbed and to disturb the comfortable. The text in Luke’s gospel continues, “When all the people heard this, and the tax collectors too (another group of people condemned and ostracized), they declared God just, having been baptized with the baptism of John, but the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him.) (Luke 11:20-30).
The conservative religious leaders, as well as those making the laws, did not like what they were hearing because it was a treat against their comfortable way of life: their lives of privilege and power, their lives in which they could legally continue the abuse and then find the religious rationalization to continue their assault on others in order to live their lives of comfort.
Now going back full circle…this continues today with the assault from lawyers (government…elected officials or those running for public office) and the Pharisees (the religious leaders regardless of their sectarian affiliations) on the marginalized which now includes the GLTBQO community…those marked as outsiders. But it seems that Jesus isn’t condemning such individuals but just the opposite. That within the GLTBQO (and Br. Agitator, I consider you and those at The Open Door Community and other communities and individuals who are outsiders fitting into the GLTBQO community) the Kingdom of God is actualized and made manifest. The warning of Jesus is against those who use their position of wealth and power to continue their oppression against the GLTBQO community in order to live their lives of comfort.
You have given me much to think about this Lenten season.
Thank you!
Br. Aelred