The Good and The Bad

There’s this man with whom I teach. I have to say that he can be a real pain in the ass. He’s not exactly what you would call a team player, so, from time to time, he makes it rather difficult to get things done. The truth is that the guy is a real iconoclast. He loves to piss people off. He refuses to teach using the same curriculum we are all supposed to use. He never disciplines his students and they get away with breaking myriad school rules in his class. As a result, other kids feel envious of his students because they get away with murder. On more than one occasion, various principals of our school have tried to have him fired. They have given him bad evaluations. They have talked at him until their faces resembled images of Hindu gods. It has never done any good. He will never change.

For many years, I have to say, I agreed with the opinions of most people about this teacher. His practices could be very annoying. He was often the topic of conversation at lunch in the teachers’ lounge (since he never went there). Everybody complained about what a bad teacher he was. And his students drove me nuts. They continue to drive me nuts. Until one year he switched to fourth grade. As you know, I teach fifth grade. So I received his students the next year. And I cannot tell you how many times I began to teach a lesson only to hear from his former students, “Oh! Our teacher taught us that last year!” I soon discovered that his students were better prepared than most other students entering the fifth grade. So he must have been a pretty good teacher. Things aren’t always what they seem, are they?

You just can’t tell about people. Many people consider Ronald Reagan to be one of the best presidents we’ve ever had. Yet he was responsible for a program that raised money to buy arms to help the Contras in Nicaragua who were fighting a duly elected communist government by selling drugs to poor blacks in Harlem and other poor communities. He also arranged for the government of Iran to wait until after the November elections to release the hostages being held there in order to ensure that Jimmy Carter would be defeated. He also actively helped the House of Un-American Activities persecute actors, writers, and directors in Hollywood during the McCarthy era. Does that sound like a good guy to you?

So Jesus told the people another parable. “You could say that the kingdom of God is like a guy who planted good seeds in his field. But, while everybody was asleep, his enemy came and planted weeds in the field. So when the crops grew, the weeds grew right along with them.

The man’s slaves could not help but ask their master, ‘Where did all these weeds come from?’

The master answered, ‘Some enemy of mine has done this.’

‘Do you want us to dig up the weeds?’

‘No. You might pull up some good plants with the weeds. We’ll just wait for the harvest. We’ll know which are which then. At that time, I’ll have the workers pull up the weeds first and then bind them together and burn them. Then I’ll have the workers harvest the crops.’” (Matthew, Chapter 13, Big Daddy Translation)

This was Jesus’ way of telling his students that it isn’t for people to judge one another. Much like the sprouting plants, we can’t really tell the good from the bad. It was the teaching of Jesus that we treat all people as children of God. It isn’t our place to judge.

Sadly, a lot of people who claim to follow the teachings of Jesus seem to forget this. And that is a black stain on the church of Christ. Nowhere does this seem more true than in the attitude of the mainstream Christian church towards homosexuals.

In truth, Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. He didn’t really talk about any kind of sexuality. Some of his followers did, but Jesus didn’t. Jesus did talk about anger and about the love of money. He did talk about lying and betrayal. But he didn’t talk about sexuality. It seemed to be a lot more important to Jesus that we be kind to one another. I don’t think it really matters with whom we share our naughty bits.

The simple truth is that Jesus recognized that there isn’t one person who is holy and righteous by human standards. Nobody can live a life in perfect accordance with the rigid demands of what people considered to be holy and righteous. Jesus maintained that the only laws with which we need concern ourselves were to love God and to love one another. Love is holy. And in this is contained, according to Jesus, all the laws and words of the prophets. It’s not very loving to call somebody else a sinner.

Jesus also maintained that one sin was the same as another. Being angry, according to Christ, is just as bad as murder. Lusting after someone is the same as committing adultery. What you think is as important as what you do. What you feel is as important as how you behave. And so making a loan that results in a poor widow losing her home is just as bad as child abuse. In other words, there are no degrees of evil. Evil is simply evil. And evil gets the best of all us from time to time. I know I can be arrogant and prideful and selfish and greedy. I am so grateful that God (or whatever you want to call that power) loves me anyway.

And so, for anyone to claim that someone is somehow less acceptable to God because he or she happens to be gay is just ridiculous. We are all children of God. And none of us has the ability to see into the heart of another person. We have no idea of anybody’s motivations. Moreover, we are not equipped to judge the relative good or evil of anyone’s actions. Actions which may have seemed right and proper two hundred years ago would be considered evil today. People have lost their jobs for saying things that would not even have been noticed forty years ago.

Is homosexuality a sin? Who knows? I don’t pretend to know anything about what God thinks other than what Jesus said and he said that God wants us to love one another. That’s all I know. If homosexuality IS a sin, it is certainly no worse a sin than any other. And since I think it is safe to assume that all of us have failed to meet that perfect standard of perfect living, then none of us is any better than any other one of us. In other words, my own sins of arrogance and pride would make me just as much a sinner as any hooker on Century Boulevard in Los Angeles (now you know where to find them), probably worse. So I have no good right to claim that any person has less a right to come into my church and worship than I have. We are all the children of God. We are all of us a part of the God-spirit. When I judge you, I judge myself.

It is my own belief, based upon the teachings of Jesus, that anything that keeps us from loving one another, and therefore being connected to the divine power, is a sin. That could be homosexuality, if being involved in the homosexual community keeps a person from making that divine connection and being a loving, giving person. But it could just as easily be stamp collecting, if stamp collecting dominated one’s life to the point that one neglected to give and receive love.

Jesus said time and again that he did not come into the world to condemn it. Jesus never condemned anybody, except those people who thought they were holier than everybody else. And in this week’s reading from Matthew, Jesus makes it pretty clear that it isn’t our place to judge one another. We should leave that to God. I don’t know that God is going to judge us at all, but if S/He does, it will be based on two things. Did we love one another, and did we do our best to find that divine spark within ourselves? I know that I find love by tearing down the walls that keep me from reaching out to other people, not by building up those walls.