Indlela ibuzwa kwabaphambili. This is a Zulu saying which a Zulu couple wrote down for me at Bethel University. It goes along with our catch phrase, “Learn from History; End Religion-based Oppression.” The Zulu saying means, “Learn from those who have gone before.” Today on the bus one of the riders gave me a small booklet about Peace Pilgrim and her steps toward inner peace she discovered while walking over 25,000 miles spreading her message of peace. Several things she said have changed the way I think about our interactions at Wheaton, I wish to learn from her who has gone before me. She says, “It is said that hate injures the hater, not the hated.” “You cannot leave a situation without spiritual injury unless you leave it lovingly.” And most importantly, “There is a magic formula for resolving conflicts. It is this: Have as your objective the resolving of the conflict, not the gaining of advantage. There is a magic formula for avoiding conflicts. It is this: Be concerned that you do not offend, not that you are not offended.” www.peacepilgrim.org.
All of my interactions with Wheaton students were encouraging. We had been warned that Wheaton was the Harvard of Evangelical Conservative Christian Universities. We had been warned that students were so academically and biblically astute that they would not be concerned with the stories of our lives but with the level of our biblical exegesis. To be honest, I was afraid and intimidated before ever stepping foot on campus. I reminded myself and fellow riders before exiting the bus that we were only here for reasons of love; love and only love was and should be moving us. From my first to my last conversation with students, the warnings I had received were proved wrong; students were caring, students listened, and students wanted to love.
My frustrations developed solely in communication with administration and faculty. One professor who invited us to his class did so only in order to rebuff and discredit everything we said immediately after our presentation. He explicitly asked us not to mention anything about our personal lives, only presenting academic information. True, this is an academic institution, but the only reason we come is because these academic and religious institutions are detrimentally and unjustly causing irreparable damage to the lives of gay and straight children of God.
I was visibly flustered and to the point of giving up completely after conversing with Wheaton’s president over lunch. His life experience as a pastor counseling gay people has only brought him in contact with drug using, promiscuous, disease ridden, broken individuals. Understandably, this is his idea of what all gay people are like. He did not seem to understand that this reality is a sad product of the environment which their policy creates. When I told him that as an individual in the Christian Gay Community, all we ask is for the privileges that straights receive concerning relationships: straights’ relationships are valued, acknowledged, celebrated, and the Christian community holds its members accountable to the commitments they have made before God and the community. Gay relationships are ignored, thought of as “not real relationships,” our partners are often labeled as our “friend” or “roommate,” and we do not receive the accountability to stay committed, monogamous, and faithful as do our straight counterparts by our Christian communities of faith. I believe this is the main cause for promiscuity and premarital intimacy before marriage or union within the gay community; if no one else is watching or caring about our relationships, it’s that much harder for us to do so as well.
As well I more fully and finally understood the main difference between us; he said his and his schools’ faith begins with, ends with, and is sustained by and through the Bible. In a public forum the night before I asked the Wheaton panel, “The first Christians did not have the written New Testament on which to base their faith. Jesus promised that God would send the Holy Spirit after his death in order to further instruct the disciples. Are you not open to new truth from the Holy Spirit which is not biblically based?” The Provost Stan Jones’ response was as follows, “It is not in the nature of God to reveal anything contrary to scripture through the Holy Spirit.” I wonder then how we finally came to believe that the earth is round and not flat, that slavery and segregation are immoral, and that women are called by God to speak and teach in church if the Holy Spirit did not reveal new truth that is contrary to scripture. My faith begins with, ends with, and is sustained by my personal relationship with Christ, God, and the people of God. The bible informs, supports, and uplifts my faith, but is not the ground from which it rises and returns to. With such different starting points, I wonder how Wheaton’s president and myself may ever come to common ground or understanding.
After the visit I left upset, disheartened, and with a feeling of helplessness. To learn from Pilgrim Progress, I must not begin to hate or else I will be injured. I must not leave the situation unlovingly or else I will be the cause of spiritual injury. I have a ways to go to resolve this conflict, but must be careful to do so without offending. I guess that’s the reason that May 1st is not the end of this bus ride, but the beginning of a movement. Mel White reminds us that ”Religious leaders often protect and preserve the status quo while God raises up in every generation a handful of courageous prophets to confront the church and keep the truth alive.” I look forward to meeting these new prophets that will rise up to sustain and spread this movement of God’s justice and love.
