…I would love to see a mass uprising of “Christians” outraged about poverty. Or hunger. Or the corrosive effect of great wealth. Or anything that actually appears in the four canonical Gospels, or anything at all, really – just something that puts them on monkey tilt to one-quarter the degree that the existence of homosexuality appears to. Seriously, in a world of hunger, poverty, abuse, neglect, the Hobbesian “poor nasty brutish and short” of life, why do “The Christians” only get bent out of shape about The Gay?
Part of the problem with Christianity is that for the better part of two thousand years, huge swaths of it have been administered from the top. And the Gospel is about those on the bottom. Sell all you have and follow Him. Easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The backlash against the authority of the Pharisees, the Saducees, the priests and the scribes of the Temple. This is why at heart I still sympathize with the thrust of what was originally the Baptist mission: priesthood of the believer, independence of individual church congregations, power and authority and doctrine flowing up rather than down. By this logic, of course, the Southern Baptist Convention ceased to actually be Baptist by 1990, but I digress.
Here’s the thing: a religion that exists for those on the bottom cannot be administered by those whose interest lies primarily in keeping them there. The letters of Paul said there is no more slave and free, we are all brothers together in Christ. And yet the Confederacy came up with all manner of Biblical justification for why that didn’t actually count for, you know, slaves.
But no, it’s all about TEH GHEYS. If I see one more Tweet, Facebook status, Instagram post, whatever – if one more person wails about how Jason Collins comes out as gay and gets praised while Tim Tebow gets persecuted for his faith, I will fucking lose my shit. Top tip, holy rollers: Tim Tebow isn’t being persecuted for his Christianity. He’s being mocked because no amount of piety makes up for being the worst quarterback in the NFL not called Rex Grossman. (Seriously, what is it with former Gator QBs who suck out loud at the next level?) If your job is “quarterback,” you can try to change the job description to “Christian quarterback,” but being great at the first won’t cut any ice with your employer if you’re no good at the latter.
Take a hint, Timmy: the Hebrews wandered in the wilderness for forty years. You can at least condescend to one season in Montreal and see what happens. You could even stuff the whole paycheck in your Lottie Moon envelope and think of it as one big act of foreign missionary work. And for the rest of you: go back and make a list of all the times Jesus mentions the gays, then make a list of all the times he mentions the poor – and see if you can learn to prioritize like Him.
Amen, sir, A-!ing-men.