DEBATE

We United Methodists have been a in a steel cage match for years over the cluster of issues around homosexuality (marriage, ordination, etc...). The debate doesn't show signs of abating. It won't for some time, if ever.

It has turned into an increasingly frivolous argument with more than a little unctuous piety on both sides. One side boldly waves its red-lettered, cherry-picked  KJV and points, basically, to about four prohibitory passages the interpretation of which is highly ambiguous with an authorship that spans over a century.  The other side cries out for getting on the right side of history and social justice and moral relevance.  Then there are those in the middle, the peacemakers and the middle children, who propose plans of unity and pleas of 'why can't we just get along?'

All three sides are getting harder and harder to take.

Look. It's not complicated. Either your viscera can stand the thought and the sight of men with men and women with women or it can't. In spite of the scaffolding we erect around our respective arguments, in the end it all boils down to 'gut.' But it's your gut and therefore your responsibility to handle it. And no appeal to hermeneutics or reason or scriptural authority or scientific evidence or majority opinion is going to change anyone's mind. Nada. Zip. Not gonna happen.

So maybe the church should just get back to doing what it has always been supposed to do. Care for sick. Heal the broken. Build community. Preach the gospel as if your life depends on it because it does. Teach scripture as a library of faith rather than a blunt instrument. Host 12 step meetings. Disagree in board meetings and Sunday School if you feel you must. Oppose obvious injustice. Hunker down together for the hard times to come. And introduce people to the Only One who is ever really going to make a difference in their lives. 

You don't have to sit down at the potluck and eat with the people whose opinions and positions you think have them hellbound. But you do have to share the bread and wine with them after you have confessed, repented and made peace.

And then shut the f*** up. Please.