God Don't Make No Trash

So I’ve been listening to Bare almost obsessively for the past week. If you don’t know it, it’s a fabulous musical about two guys, Peter and Jason, who are carrying out a closeted romance at a Catholic boarding school. There’s way more to it than that, but that is the general baseline. It’s extraordinarily heartbreaking and beautiful and I recommend it to everybody.

Anyway, the show has really gotten me thinking. One of the central tensions of the show is obviously the catholic church's condemnation of homosexuality. Peter and Jason spend a good portion of the show trying to reconcile their feelings with their faith and looking for empathy from the church. In the end, the church fails them and the result is fatal. I won’t give away the ending, but let’s just say it’s not a happy one. We’ll leave it at that. I think the failure of the Catholic Church in this show mirrors the failure of the church as a whole. This isn’t about Catholicism or Evangelicalism or any denomination. It’s about the church—the body of Christ—and how deeply we’ve failed the world.

Our failure is that we have forgotten to love. We get so caught up in what makes us different, on the tiny details, on what is a sin and what isn’t that we lose sight of the bigger picture. Don’t get me wrong, I’m guilty of it too because, God knows, I love to argue about anything and everything. But I think we all need to take a step back and remember that this isn’t about doctrine or rules or traditions or who is right. It’s about people. But we forget that. We get so focused on arguing about pro choice vs. pro life that we fail to help with pregnancy prevention and improving options for people with babies they simply cannot keep. We get so caught up in insisting that homosexuality is a sin (actually I remain extraordinarily unconvinced but that is a different matter) that we forget that these are human beings with real feelings, fears and hurts. Whether it’s right or wrong, they don’t need condemnation, they need empathy! We’re playing with people’s lives here and if we fail to love them because of doctrine or tradition then their blood is on our hands.

Now I love to study theology and dig into all of these nitty gritty little things. I mean heck, I’m a theology major. But sometimes I think we need to step back from the academic side and remember that all these issues we bicker over aren’t scholastic issues. They’re human issues. It’s about real people with real emotions and struggles. Lives are so fragile. We need to be so much more careful about we say and do to people, especially in God’s name. After all, God is love. If the things we are doing are not done in love then we have no place pasting God’s name on them.

So that’s where I am right now. I think we can all work on loving better. Remember: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:1-3.

Nothing matters more than love. We need to start loving everyone, no matter who they are, where they come from, what they are going through or what they've done (or are still doing). Because in the words of one of Bare's characters, Sister Chantelle, "God don't make no trash".