Transitioning Toward Grace
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine posted an account of her child's struggles. She and I were friends growing up in Brazil. An older sister lived in our home for a while. I have journeyed with her from afar over several months as she has struggled with how to support her child in an environment that has been anything but supportive.
As is true for a couple of other friends of mine, all of them steeped in Baptist church life from the cradle, sometimes the life of a parent pulls you into a context which is anything but familiar, anything but what your culture, society, and faith tradition has prepared you to experience with grace. Often as not, those to whom you would normally turn for support have not traveled the same road and do not have the background to respond to challenges that are wholly new.
The easy response to uncomfortable challenges is to seek the pat answers of our heritage and tradition. The question is which answers do we select and prioritize when confronted with wholly new realms of reality. A generation ago, interracial marriage was uncharted territory for many, especially when the church often taught that a person of color could not be allowed to enter one's home as a guest or participate in the worship community of an anglo congregation. A couple more generations back, we were still segregating our workplaces and schools. We were not allowing women to open a bank account, take out a loan, or purchase a car. Society in the USA has changed in recent generations, but there are still issues which are yet new ground for us to tread, especially in many of our more conservative enclaves.
Too often, our values conflict among themselves when we are faced with the dilemma of new challenges. We have to make decisions that break new ground and would usher us into uncharted territory.
This is what my friend wrote a few weeks ago. Please hear her struggle, her pain, her love for her child, her love for God, and her desperation to find an appropriate path forward where our traditions and education have not paved a clear path.
"My son left Facebook the day after 45 tweeted his complete rejection and blatant discrimination towards transgender soldiers. The reason - he could not block bigotry and hate fast enough, coming from young adult sons and daughters of conservative parents, regurgitating the ignorance they have been exposed to at their dinner tables since birth. Loathing what is different has always been a part of human culture, backed by self-righteous justifications to harm fellow humans in ways that span from threats to violence, ugly words to murder. It is ingrained and institutionalized, to the point that even those who wish to not discriminate, have to fight their own minds against decades of indoctrination. I try to remind my son of pioneers who came before him, and that what he is going through has happened to other minority groups before his. I tell him, "You are the expert, son. You are the one in the right. Do not let them make you feel as if it is not so. They are just swimming, or more accurately, drowning in their own ignorance." It is way too easy for the one being discriminated against to believe deep inside that they are bad. And isn't that the purpose of discrimination, to make the minority believe that they are less human, less worthy, less than... to manipulate others so as to stay on top... to overpower... to subjugate... and many things other than loving your neighbor as yourself?
"He is afraid, not of some distant enemy, but of his own people. Again I remind him of the ones who came before him and explain that the evils done to us by fellow humans are not extensions of God's thought about us, but quite the opposite. God helps us overcome.
"What will happen to my son? All the superiors in the military have received notice to cease transitions, a clear indicator that the powers have no clue what they are doing, for those who have received the instructions are unable to decipher them. What does that even mean, to cease transition? Anyone who is relying on ignorance to answer that question might think the answer is clear. I assure you, it is not.
"Even as I write this, I am well aware that all sorts of people are under attack, living a stressful existence at the whim of lawmakers and a president who does not give a d--n about real issues such as equity, healthcare, clean air, and middle-class quality of life, let alone the poor. My heart suffers at the enormous amount of hypocrisy within our government towards women's issues, and its misogyny has become an ulcer in my soul.
"What will happen to my son? And what will happen to my daughters if we do not fix this?"
Three of my friends steeped deeply in Baptist life have somewhat recently found one of their children transitioning in gender. These are not families living some abhorrent, evil, irreligious lifestyle. Two of them are the children of missionaries who were raised overseas and contributed to the cause of missions while growing up in their missionary families. One went on to seminary and served as a minister for many years. Another is part of a deacon family and plays an active part in the local church. Another has written and ministered in various ways over the years if not in full-time Christian ministry. Even so, the challenges life has thrown at them have been heart-wrenching.
It has never been for them a question of trying to push the envelope and encouraging their children to be whom they are not. Rather the issue has been one of discovering that the pat answers of life, tradition, and heritage do not always give adequate answers to life's complexity.
When your child is struggling with understanding their identity in a way society does not know how to accommodate, the place of a loving parent is to step into that same unknown alongside that child. Judgment and condemnation are easy, but they are neither loving, redemptive, nor expressions of the grace of the gospel. Writing off the struggles and challenges of others simply because they are not our own struggles or those of our children betrays a lack of compassion.
The gospel does not call us to respond to life's uncertainties, challenges, and difficulties by writing people off. Instead, it calls us to sit with them they way Job's friends started out doing. It calls us to listen. It calls us to learn. It calls us to seek the path of redemption, reconciliation, and understanding. It calls us to love and accept, even when our understanding fails.
We don't have to have all the answers. We are just called to love, redeem, and reconcile those who feel themselves lost or cast aside. We are to offer everyone the chance to see God's great gift of acceptance, granting us the authority to be called children of God. We are called to love, not to condemn. We are called to accept, not to reject. We are called to include, not exclude. It is in so doing that we become like Jesus who ate and fellowshipped with prostitutes, Samaritans, lepers, fisherman, and tax collectors.
—©Copyright 2017, Christopher B. Harbin
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