Wrong: A Personal Statement
I found the above dialogue/meme on Facebook, and as I meditated and chewed on it, my thoughts found themselves expressed in the following personal essay. Please take these thoughts with a grain of salt, as I am a man in the middle of a process, and I still have a lot to learn.
I have heard many discussions concerning the cultureâs need to hate the church because it does not approve of its actions. From my observation, this specific dialogue highlights how language has evolved, based not only on its literary meaning and context but also on its cultural associations. The word âwrongâ for many, especially in this generation, comes with a significant amount of traumatic emotional baggage.
Letâs go directly to an obvious example. A teenage boy comes to his conservative Christian parents and says, âIâm gay.â The parents, not knowing how to handle such a statement, say that the Bible says it is wrong for a man to lie with another man, etc. The boy immediately feels misunderstood and isolated because he wasnât talking about the act of âhomosexual sex.â He was referring to his orientation: he finds men sexually attractive rather than women. There is already a fundamental misunderstanding because the parent does not respond to the childâs expression of need and basic desire at that moment, which is acceptance and love.
For the record, the issue the parents are worried about, the actual act of two men having sex, is an issue that should be addressed, but it is not the primary issue for the boy. Thatâs what is most important. If you want my thoughts on the Bible and homosexuality, youâll have to wait for another post.
From this point, the parent, who conflates the action with the orientation, wonders how they went wrong in their parenting, how they might fix their child, or, at the very least, how they could prevent losing the boy to a life of sin. They react emotionally, doing whatever corrective action they find necessary to address what they think is the problem. At the same time, the boy feels more and more isolated and misunderstood with every step.
As this goes on, every single one of the parentsâ emotional actions towards the boy becomes received as personal judgment, as the boy is trying to address an identity question. From his perspective, through their words and actions, his parents are saying that who he is at his core is wrong, as being gay is an essential part of who he is and how he sees the world. On the other hand, his parents would say that they love their child, and it is out of that love that they are trying to save his soul from being lost to hell. The truth, however, is that his parents are terrified. They act emotionally in response to their fear, rather than responding directly to their sonâs words and actions.
As a disclaimer, this situation may not describe every gay personâs story with their families, but it contains some elements familiar to many.
It is crucial to examine this example step by step to understand the weighty emotional associations that now accompany the word âwrong.â
As the boy moves forward in life, he immediately reacts to that word with a strong negative response. It echoes in his ears as a resounding judgment and deeply rooted rejection of who he is as a whole. He does not understand the idea of âwrongâ as a boundary applied to action. Instead, he has internalized a negative self-identity, wherein he, himself, is âwrongâ and thus without value.
Now, I feel the need to address something tangentially related to this discussion: my opinion on the binary âright versus wrongâ dynamic. I firmly believe that the institutional church has misused this dichotomy from the time of its inception: when it joined the political sphere. However, this dynamic goes far further back into history. The need to know right from wrong, given in those terms, is a human one, as reflected throughout history. The Israelites described the revelations of God in these terms, but it was a beginning, not a perfect end. God worked within it and used it, but it was not from him. Over and over, Jesus urges us, both implicitly and explicitly, to embrace the spirit behind the law. He is talking about seeing the world through new eyes. He is talking about wisdom and discernment.
I believe that once adult Christians grow up, it is our calling to keep the law written on our hearts to the extent that we learn its spirit. The law, in this sense, functions as a scaffolding for us as young believers, just as rules help young children learn obedience. We need the law. But at a certain point, when we see Jesusâ fulfillment of the law by the spirit, we must follow his example and become the embodied, incarnated fulfillment of the law as he was. This transformational process can only happen through the development of spiritual discernment. It means the training wheels must come off.
When we learn to ride a bike, we begin with training wheels. We come to know the basics of how to pedal and steer without having to worry about balance. But when the training wheels come off, we must learn to use these tools we have gained to help us balance on our own. Riding a bike without training wheels is different than riding a bike with them. We must learn how to calibrate pedaling, steering, and braking all at once to achieve balance.
It is the same with spiritual discernment. Learning about the law and church tradition as young believers is helpful because it provides a structure that supports us and teaches us critical skills foundational to the Christian life. But it cannot end there. Once we have gained a certain level of confidence and independence, I believe God calls us to let go of our scaffolding.
Now, am I saying we throw out everything we have learned? Surely not! In the same way that we still need to remember to pedal, steer and brake, we must still have the lawâs imprint on our mind and heart, ready to call upon in time of need. Likewise, however, akin to that feeling when we remove the training wheels for the first time, our first season moving into living primarily by the Spirit, discerning what is good and beneficial, will be rough. We will experience two intense emotions, both of which mirror childhood experiences.
The first is the fear that we will fall. When the training wheels come off for the first time, our parents stand over us, walking with us to get us started. But then, after a few feet, they let go. We panic, afraid of what we know is inevitable, and we fall. We cry, whether or not we are physically hurt, because we feel betrayed. Why did they let us go? And our response many times at first is, âI donât want to do this anymore! I canât! Bring back the training wheels!â But how do our parents respond? Sometimes, depending on age and observed ability, they may say yes for a while. Most of the time, however, the response is usually something like, âItâs okay! Iâm still here. I love you. But weâre going to keep trying at this. I promise you will be happier when you get the hang of it, even if it doesnât feel like it right now. I know you can do it.â And so, still trembling in fear (and most likely still crying), we eventually decide to trust our parents and get back on the bike.
We must accept that we will fall. We will mess up. We will miss the mark. We will sin, whether or not we mean to. But God is our Daddy. When we fall, he picks us back up, assures us of his love, and encourages us to keep going!
Then, there are the moments where we will pedal for a few feet and think, âIâm really getting the hang of this!â But suddenly, the bike starts rolling faster, and we panic, forgetting how to brake. And we fall. We repeat the process of crying, begging our parents to pick us up, and listening to them comfort us, urging us on, until we finally get around to trying it again.
Every time we practice something, we will find these moments that surprise us. We are actually doing it! Until weâre not. Every time we choose to try again, we incrementally improve until it is eventuallyâŚas easy as riding a bike! But the process must always play out in full and in its time.
We will be afraid of falling. We will laugh with joy at the glimpses of freedom we experience. And through both of these moments, these steps in the process, we will still fall down.
When we choose not to enter this process â when we decide to keep the training wheels on indefinitely â we are depriving ourselves of the joy that comes from growing up! Would you want your child to stay on training wheels? No. We want our children to keep learning until the skill is natural for them.
One more thing to remember here: just because we eventually become natural at riding a bike doesnât mean we donât fall from time to time. We still have more of that process to go through where we experiment with different things, like popping wheelies, doing tricks, or attempting a challenging trail. Why? To see what works. To see what is us. Through it all, we will still panic. We will still make bad choices. But the key is that we learn from them. Our experience teaches us and guides us.
If the law has been written on our hearts, then we have a foundation for what is good. The Spirit himself impresses upon us through our experience what the whole point of the law ever was: the Dance of Love. Iâm not going to take the time to explain examples in the Law, as expressed through the Old Testament. Thatâs not the point of this. The critical point to remember is that God built all of creation, with all of its natural courses, right down to our very skin, with the DNA of love embedded in it. Love is the foundation of our faith because it is who God is. God himself invites us to abide in Him --within His love-- and to be one as He is One. And His love is not like our love. It is far more perceptive and profound.
To summarize my central premise, Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. That is the point of the entire law. The law must bend to love at every turn. If the law is not loving, then it must be carefully examined. To examine the law doesnât mean that we necessarily throw it out. It does mean that we must abide more within Godâs perfect love so that He can give us the eyes to see.
So what does this all have to do with the word âwrongâ?
When viewed through the eyes of reason, there is nothing evil about the word itself, and we should take it by its primary meaning in most cases. However, when viewed through the eyes of love, using our empathy muscles, we must recognize that our generation just does not know how to grow up. I donât have the time to unpack that statement fully here. However, I have observed a correlation that may be worth considering. We who have lived through a physically or emotionally traumatic event have not yet fully learned how to deal with the scars left behind. We are stuck, enslaved to that pain inflicted upon us with the word âwrong.â To many of us, this word does not refer to something objective. It relates to who we are and how we see the world. Why else would young people be leaving the church in droves? Itâs because we come to a point where we cannot abide abuse, whether it is against ourselves or those around us. âWrongâ has become a weapon.
I would like to make a case for different vocabulary that expresses the same things more maturely, using Paulâs language in 1 Corinthians 10. âBeneficial,â âConstructive,â âHelpful,â âBuild up,â âProfitable,â âEdifyingâ⌠These are the words we need to use when asking questions about actions. Is this action primarily all of these things? How is it not all of these things? In weighing the answers, testing them against both the law as written on our hearts AND the love of God as proven through our experience, we can discern with the best of all intention the answer that is most like something God would do.
For me, I would love as God loves rather than be right. âRighteousnessâ does not mean what we think it means. It refers to a right spirit, a heart of pure intention, focused on the mark. This idea is most evident to me in two moments from Scripture. God says to Samuel, âthe LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.â Later, Jeremiah quotes God: âI, the LORD, search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.â
The heart behind our actions. The fruit of our actions. We must have eyes to see these things, for it is through these things alone that we will be measured and judged. While I also no longer personally believe in the doctrine of a torturous, eternal separation from God called Hell, I do firmly believe that God will count us according to Love. The proud will be brought low and the humble lifted up. The old man â the ego â will be thrown into the fire, while the new man will live eternally on the new Earth.
Our job is to love. Is it good that we observe trends, analyze them, and recommend solutions? Absolutely. All of this is helpful information. However, we must go beyond the simple study of these trends through the lens of rational judgment. Instead, we must learn how to see them through the eyes of the Love that loves us so.
So, when a child of this generation responds angrily to the word âwrong,â what might be the wisest response, the one bathed in the love of God? I donât know for sure. But what I am learning from my own experience with Him is that there is often a middle way between harsh judgment and no truth at all. But that way is often slow, messy, and full of tension. We donât like those things. We want certainty, one way or the other. But it is only through abiding in the love of God, sitting in that space with the tension, observing it, and ultimately embracing it â learning how to love it â that we might finally meet God Himself. And it is only through that meeting that the middle way will appear before us, for He will give us new eyes to see as he does.
