Choose Wisely

So, first of all, I need to say I’m sorry.  It was my every intention to be blogging at least once weekly and I've clearly not managed to do that.  I could tell you that my life as a pastor got in the way.  I could, in fact, tell you that Lent just about kicked my butt and that by the time Holy Week was done I was sick—I mean full on down and out ill.  And I’d be telling you the truth.  But somehow that still just doesn't feel good enough.  Partly because I value you, my readers and partly because this blog has quickly become an important part of my own spiritual practice.  So I’m sorry, dear and faithful readers.  And I’m sorry, me, for depriving you of your spiritual needs.

Which brings me to my topic today.  I've been thinking a lot about actions and consequences today.  It actually started this morning when I was playing Epic Mickey on our new Wii (Thank you, Easter Bunny, we love you).  Epic Mickey is pretty awesome, but it has a feature that drives the completest in me up the wall—it’s called “autosave.”  In Epic Mickey it bugs me because I like to find and complete everything and I keep finding myself saying, “Oh, I must have missed something.  Can I go back?  No.  And it autosaved just now, didn't it…?”  I hate to think how many times I’m going to have to play Epic Mickey through before I've found everything!

But the funny thing is that it’s irritating because it makes the game just a little bit more like real life.  We can’t unsay things, un-drive places, un-forget to pay that bill…  One of the things I love about games that allow me to save whenever I want is that I have more control over the consequences of my in-game actions—don’t you wish that you could save life just before trying something risky, so you can go back and reload everything if it doesn't work out so well?

The second reason I've been thinking about actions and consequences today is because I was working on the liturgy for Sunday morning and some of the prevailing themes for the service are going to be eco-justice, conservation and sustainability.  The United Church of Christ is engaging in a pretty cool initiative over the season of Easter called Mission 4/1 Earth  (You can learn more about Mission 4/1 Earth HERE), so all of the weekly theological reflections etc. have that focus right now.  This week, Dr. Christina Hutchins and Dr. Riess Potterveld of the Pacific School of Religion used Hosea 4:1-3 in their reflection.  The passage rather scathingly describes the horrendous way people treat each other and then comes to the conclusion, “Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish; together with the wild animals and the birds of the air, even the fish of the sea are perishing.”  In other words, when we start mistreating each other everything suffers.  Even if you don’t hold these scriptures as your sacred text, I think we all can understand that everything is interrelated and that our actions have much further-reaching consequences than we’d like to think they do!


The third reason I've been thinking about actions and consequences is because of a heated conversation that’s been running on my Facebook wall.  It all started with a pic my dad shared concerning two advertisements for JC Penney depicting families with same-gender parents.  What followed was a discussion around whether or not those ads resulted in a decline in JC Penney’s revenue—and the whole thing, of course, had a deep undercurrent of allies verses opponents of the queer community.

I found myself thoroughly distracted today when I found the following response on my wall this morning:

“Hmm, in all this talk of ‘equality’ and ‘tolerance’ there seems to be not only an undercurrent but an outright disgust for those ‘bigots’. Ah, I see -- no tolerance or equality for people who disagree with ‘your’ view. Would you say ‘hypocrite’? 

JC Penney is free to do as it wishes. Typically, alienating a large part of your customer base is not wise for a company. LGBT people are free to do as they wish. Are those who disagree free to do as THEY wish? Unfortunately, it seems that they aren't as they are forced to violate their fundamental beliefs, or be forced out of business or heavily fined. Such is the present mindset.”

When I disagree with someone, I try very hard to see things from their point of view before deciding to respond, so I have to admit that I was a little insulted with the above post.  It was really tempting for me to harp on certain phrases in the same way the author got on about “tolerance,” “equality,” and “bigot.”  In all honesty there were pieces of the post that literally made no sense to me.  Instead, after a great deal of thought and reflection, I cobbled together the following response:

"I know I probably shouldn't be speaking for everyone who weighed in here, but I'd like to speak to the concept of being intolerant towards people who disagree with our views. When we talk about bigots, we don't simply mean people who disagree with us. We're talking about people who are actively homophobic or standing in the way of the LGBT community gaining equal standing before the law. Is it hypocritical to be intolerant of intolerance? I think not. 

More importantly, it's really easy for folk who are historically privileged—like straight white males in the U.S., in this case—to mistake their privilege for fairness. When this happens, the privileged start thinking that raising others to privilege isn't fair to them and they end up claiming—sometimes without even realizing it—that equality isn't fair. 

JC Penney is free to do what it wishes. They chose to depict same-gender parents in two advertisements. That action had consequences, even if we disagree on how profound those consequences are. 

LGBT people, however, are not free to do as they wish. They are not afforded the same rights under Federal law, nor in most states. The consequences for simply being themselves is unreasonably high, so no. No they are not free to do what they wish. 

Are people who disagree with my beliefs free to do as they wish? Yes. But those actions have consequences, too. Those consequences seem to be changing, and that must be unsettling for the folk on the other side of the fence. They probably don’t think it’s fair. Sometimes people will call them bigots. If they break the law, they may be fined. They might not be able to open a branch of their franchise in Boston. 

What will not and cannot happen is that they will be forced to violate their fundamental beliefs. They can believe anything they want. But that belief does not afford them the right to act without consequence."

One of the things I love the most about the geek community is our ability to argue well.  Even when we don’t agree with each other, we are logical and—at the end of the day—we’re still able to sit across the gaming table from one another.

Be good to each other,
Rev. Josh
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