with apologies in advance…
“Love-On”
This is something that I actually heard quite a bit in evangelical circles. It was spoken (mostly) with the best of intentions. Usually it was spoken in a sentence something like, “We just need to love-on them right now.” It means, as far as I can tell, that a call is being issued to act in love and compassion towards another person or group of people. I became aware, in my time as a pastor, that “love-on” evoked very different responses for some than it did for others. For many people it produced not reminders of compassion, but rather just kind of an “ewwww”. I was one of those who winced at the term. Some people are just visual thinkers.
Anyway, best intentions.
Does Your Faith Make Sense Only to Itself?
This is not about American politics. So, stay with me. I just want to briefly use a metaphor from American politics. On January 6, after the storming of the Capitol, 139 Republican House Representatives and 8 Republican Senators voted to object to the results of the Presidential Election of November 2020.
Why so many more votes from the House? Why so few votes from the Senate?
Here is one major reason and it offers an interesting metaphor for a consideration of faith: Representatives from the House are elected to represent a district within a state. Senators are elected to represent an entire state. What this means is that Congressional Representatives answer to much smaller and often less diverse constituencies. Someone from a rural, mostly white, right-wing district, may need to appeal to a very limited range of political, social and even religious perspectives. A district in the state of Colorado, which is a blue (Democrat) state, may be made up of voters who are actually very right of centre, very conservative, very Republican.
The metaphor for faith is this; the backgrounds of many expressions of Christian faith have often included the tendency to congregate almost exclusively with like-minded people. Evangelicals have sometimes built not only their own churches, but their own schools, their own entertainment industry and so on. This can mean that they develop a faith that theologically works within these parameters, but not necessarily outside of them. In fact, the “outside world” can be seen as a threat.
Hopeful theology realizes that there is no “outside world”.
Good Christian theology helps us to see other people not as people we stand in contrast to, but as people we stand in solidarity with. This changes everything. It gives us a much more expansive constituency.
I applaud those who led me to hang out with Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Jews, Mormons and, yes, even non-believers and gays and lesbians.....as well as Christians.
I am okay hanging out with ALL the people that Jesus died for.
To “love on” also makes me wince and I do not apologize for that.
I do not apologize for those who choose to dehumanize, debase or demean.