Earlier this year, Pastor Andy Stanley decided to host the Unconditional Conference at his church. It made huge waves and everyone in my life seemed to comment on it. Yesterday, the Vatican approved non-marital blessings for same-sex couples. I’m sure everyone in my life will make some comment about that.
I want to talk about these things too. I have thoughts and I have opinions. But if I’m really honest, I don’t think I’ve had a single novel conversation about queer issues and Christianity in a decade. Every conversation revolves around one of, like, four points. And, in my experience, the vast majority of people who want to talk about queer issues and Christianity want to talk – they have no interest in listening. That’s fine, and it really isn’t any of my business, but if I have only 50 or so more decades of life left in me, I want to be wise with how I spend my time.
The past Andy Stanley and forthcoming Vatican rhetoric is about queer Christians (or supposed Christians) but it’s just as much about women in leadership, how to take communion, how to vote in elections, whether Christians should own slaves, whether ordinary people should read the Bible, or whether Gentiles can get baptized.
Since our origins, we as Christians have been wrestling with each other on a quest for one thing almost more than Jesus – truth. The problem we have consistently run into, of course, is that truth is elusive, and the closer you get to God, the more mysteries you unravel and the less you ever solve.
For example, why is it that I’ve stood in an Episcopal chapel and a Catholic cathedral and a non-denominational and a Lutheran and a Mennonite and a Nazarene church and felt the breath of God in each? Why is it that my same-sex-attracted friend and ex-gay friend and same-sex married friends have told parallel testimonies of how God has moved in their lives? Why, in a prior draft of this post, did I find myself agreeing with scholars who assert that Genesis chapters 1 and 2 are the same creation story and why did I find myself agreeing with scholars who assert that Genesis chapters 1 and 2 are different creation stories we shouldn’t take literally?
The deeper in I get, the more questions I come up. The wrestling towards truth isn’t the issue; I think it’s an inevitable part of being human. It seemed to not just be a part of humanity for Paul, but a calling. The uncomfortable truth about God’s grace is that it is for everyone. Particularly to the early church, which may have been Christian in name but was Jewish in identity, the idea that gentiles could get baptized wasn’t just incomprehensible, it was offensive.
Paul calls this christening of gentiles, of which he was one as a “mystery”:
In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been reveled to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that is, the gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
Ephesians 3:5-6 NRSVUE
If you want to be right, go be right. If you want to be a know-it-all, go and know everything. Wait for the raucousness of the worthiness of your praise. To know everything is impressive but, I think, ultimately unhelpful.
We could talk about everyone’s sins. We could unravel the mystery of queer testimonies and call half of them false teaching and half of them blessings form God. We could call people faggots and tell our children it would be better for them to be dead than to be gay. We could do all of this because we had truth on our side. We could do it under a claimed authority of scripture. We could write essays and blog posts about Andy Stanley and the Pope.
We could post on our Instagram stories simple solutions to a decades-long conflict in Gaza. We could unravel the mystery of politics and decide easily which pile of dead bodies are casualties, and which are carcasses.
We could demonize and damn to hell everyone who arrived at a different truth than us. We could share our truth, loud and proud and unapologetic. We could make truth an idol. It is a choice. We get to be the ones that make it. We refine it in the fire of our hatred for lies.
But as I look around at a burning and lost world, I see only one absolute and irrefutable truth: Jesus. And he is a truth shrouded in mystery. He is a man fully man and fully God born of a virgin and resurrected from the dead. He walks and water and speaks in parable and makes expensive wine for drunkards who cannot taste the difference. He hollows hell and disguises himself as a gardener to even his closest friends. He ascends and is coming again and has always been. Even this absolute, irrefutable truth, is slippery.
Here’s another truth, one we all profess often with our lips, but rarely with our lives: if there were any fairness in this world, Christ would not have shed his blood for a wretch like me. I’m the prodigal son, who has lived a lot more lies than truths. I’ve squandered money, gossiped, been addicted. I’ve lashed out in anger, been worried about the future. And, friend, no matter how right you are, no matter how righteous you are, not matter how much you know and profess and believe, Christ should not have shed his blood for you.
But then, the first truth, that slippery one: Jesus. He did. He shouldn’t have, but he did. He shouldn’t have forfeited the protection of heaven for the discomfort of wood made into a manger and a cross. He shouldn’t have let gentiles in. He shouldn’t have hung around fishermen and betrayers and tax collectors. But he did.
What hope is there, with ways and thoughts so unlike our own (Isaiah 55:8-9), that we can fully unravel the mysteries of God? What hope is there, that I, a created thing, could fully understand a creator outside of my conception of time and dimension?
This isn’t, of course, to say that there is no truth, or that finding truth is a hopeless and asinine adventure. Rather, there are many truths. This is also, of course, not to say that there are no lies, that everything is truth. There can be many truths and there can be lies. There can be a God fully man and fully human who is born to a virgin and killed by a populace screaming for a sociopathic Barabbas.
It will not be easy to siphon all of it out, because it is not you who can discern truth from lies at all. It is only the Holy Spirit within you that can discern the truth, and to hear the deep as it calls to deep, you have to get deep. You have to be really, really quiet, and in total surrender from your culture. You can’t just soak up the truth like a sponge on a Sunday morning and hope that it is enough to understand this world and the world that encircles it. You can’t just read the Bible and walk away with the confirmation that everything you thought prior was right all along. You can’t discern in a Christian community consistent of perfect people who agree with you. You need the discomfort of the intangible mystery of God, and you need to be consistently reminded of it, not coddled into complacency with ideas that can always be swallowed instead of chewed.
I really believe, and it is a belief, and not a truth, that the deeper you go, the less you’ll be able to so easily shut out or dismiss everyone but your own people. I think the deeper you go, the slower you’ll be to speak. I don’t think you’ll kick your kid out on the street because they love someone.
I think if we all spend a lot less time arguing with each other about who is right, which of our sects holds the universal, unrestricted pathway to IAM, we’ll have more time to listen to that deep which calls to deep. We’ll have more space to revert to the proper order of things: God as God and people as people.
And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to everyone, an apt teacher, patient, correcting opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth and that they may escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.
2 Timothy 2:24-26 NRSVUE
Truth matters. Right and wrong matter. But I have been in a church like Andy Stanley’s and I have been in a church like Sam Allberry’s and I have found truth and lies in both of them. I could talk about who is getting into heaven and who is being thrown into the lake of fire.
I could build my fence posts and write blog posts all day about the idiocy and hypocrisy of the state of Christianity today. But I would rather hold my breath, praying that the prodigal son comes home.
We don’t need more certainty in the world today, more know-it-alls.
We need more fathers standing in the field waiting for the lies to melt to truth, waiting for sons to be hugged. We need more emperors to forfeit their kingdoms for barns. We need more sinners dining in upper rooms, tasting from the cup of the only perfect man.
This Christmas, let our idols of right and wrong fall. Let’s be children of the most high, incomprehensible God, wretches who give grace and wretches who receive it.
Bryce Van Vleet is the #1 selling author of Tired Pages and Before We All Die Let’s Have One Last Chat by the Fireside. He also hosts the podcast Death in Dakota and sells poetry art here. You can support him by clicking through blog posts or donating (scroll to the bottom of the page).
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