This Hurts

Maybe objectivity is the devil's spade.

That's just a hunch that's grown the last couple of days, after almost a week of reading reaction to the actions of my church's General Assembly (stop here if you're a Not Prince Hamlet reader for whom this subject is uninteresting--but do come back soon, as this will be the last post of its kind).

An objective reading to the fallout wants to balance the expressed commitments and convictions of the respondents in parsing their statements. It's no surprise that a conservative interest group would decry an assembly that voted to clear the way for the ordination of gay clergy. Neither is it surprising that a coalition of churches founded and sustained upon a threat of secession would be again rattling sabers. Objectivity knows all of this and accepts it, just as objectivity knows that the glee coming from interest groups that have long advocated a change in ordination standards has to be taken for what it is, the victory song of a band that has finally won an institutional victory after a long string of losses.

But objectivity doesn't serve friendships very well. Friendship requires bald subjectivity. For affection to flower and for loyalty to grow, something beyond objective analysis of the facts on the ground has to operate. And so you invest in the church as a friend. You make friends with colleagues you don't agree with, because you know that friendship is the sum total of the gospel, because in Jesus the world has been befriended by the God it has sought to deny. So you leave objectivity aside in the faith that we are, after all, friends.

And then they tell you that there can no longer be a "common framework of conversation" between you and them, your friends. They tell you that your church exists in a state of "spiritual jeapordy." Because elected commissioners to a general assembly acted to regard as relative standards of sexual behavior when it comes to ordination to church office, they say that your church has "rejected unequivocally what has long been considered—and still is in the global church-- the biblical standards for sexual practice."

Here's what this is: this is your friends (who's own ordinations involved the taking of vows to be your friend) throwing you under the bus. Objectivity can't grasp that.

Yet objectivity is compelled to correct their inaccuracy. The commissioners to the assembly didn't do what your friends say they did (yes, you continue to call them friends). Nothing was unequivocal, and the action was less of a rejection than a reconsideration. And your friends posit too easily a global consensus regarding "biblical standards for sexual practice."

So much for rebuttal.

What hurts these days in a gnawing loneliness. Your friends are bad mouthing you to their other friends and even to strangers. They're proposing to share space with you but not talk to you (at least not so long as you continue to talk to the rest of the church). It sucks.

You may not have complete confidence in the actions of the general assembly. You may worry if it's the right thing to do. But what you shouldn't be worrying about is your friends, whether they will do like they said they would and remain your friends, or whether their conscience will allow them to take a more expedient route that leads to easier times with different friends with whom they have more in common.

You still call them friends. So you can't help but feel stupid as you watch them search the room for more desirable company.