Faith as Resistance in Love

I believe in a God who adores everything that exists. This covers the gamut from adorable puppies to the ticks that latch on to them. This love includes misers as readily as it holds your doting grandmother. Grace throws a net wider than our imagination, around not only live oaks and molten lava but also the dirt under your fingernails, stars, all of it. 

Consider for a moment what it means to embrace this worldview, to try our best to see Creation just as we imagine God beholding the universe. It only makes good sense, if one agrees and embraces this sense of who and how God is, to try our best to follow suit. Clearly we have limitations that keep us from doing this unfailingly, but a fruit of our faith is - on our better days - persistence in trying. Adoration of the universe means we believe everything that exists has inherent value and goodness. It also means we behave accordingly, that we treat the other beings with care.

When we bump into someone with a different worldview, we minimally agree to disagree, doing so with as much of the aforementioned love as we can bring to bear. When we encounter another creature (say, "X") who demonstrates or states outright that they do not adore every other creature, we rightly feel a call to make it clear how we see things. I personally try to do this precisely because I believe that X is called to love and not hate, that X is actually wonderful at their core in spite of their behavior. X can do better. When we encounter someone like X and they are actively trying to hurt, oppress, or eradicate other creatures, we rightly feel a call to resist or stop them.

Churches have not always lived up to this call to love everything, and the forebears of the United Church of Christ (UCC) are no exception. Examples of this include the Pequot massacre of 1637 and the witch trials in Salem in 1692-1693, among other atrocities. Beyond our own in-house blunders, our Christian siblings joined forces for decades to operate Indian Boarding schools focused on eradicating indigenous culture by tearing children away from their families and subjecting them to neglect, abuse, torture, and more. In 2021, the remains were discovered of 215 indigenous children who died at one such school in Canada. The "Church" has regularly behaved in ways that violate the very faith we profess, and we do well to learn from this history in order to love more fittingly today. People of faith can do better. 

Just as indigenous culture was targeted for annihilation decades ago, U.S. politicians and leaders (including those who identify as faith leaders) now seem intent on doing away with our brothers and sisters who identify as transgender. The very use of the word "transgender" is being banned in a clear attempt to deny these friends and family members their right to express their full humanity. For those of us with the worldview laid out above, wherein every creature has value and dignity, we rightly - I trust - feel the call to take every chance we have to speak up. When we encounter those who hate based on fear and prejudice, we rightly - I hope - embrace our call to stop them. God within us demands it.