Loving the poor
This is something I have a really hard time putting into words. I want to try, but please bear with me. If it doesn’t make sense to you, I’d love it if you’d ask questions to help me flesh it out.
…
It’s time for the church to get serious about loving the poor!
It’s time for the church to be more inclusive of / welcoming to / connected with GLBT people.
It’s time to give women a voice!
It’s time for me to fess up about why these statements make me cringe.
I love the sentiment. I love the intention to include. I love the idea of people loving each other. Rich people loving poor (and vice versa), “straight” loving queer (and vice versa), men loving women (and vice versa).
But something about these pleas (It’s time for the church to get serious about loving the poor!) just hit my gut, and sits there, like a stone.
I think it’s because my church is a bunch of people under a bridge who don’t know where their next meal is coming from, or whether they’ll have a dry place to lay their heads that night. Getting serious about the poor isn’t the advice I’d give them. (In fact, it’s nearly universal that when one member of this church has a bite to eat, they share it. When one has money, it gets spread around.)
And that’s ok with me. Not all advice needs to apply to all people. But the thing is, the statement about “the church” really assumes that “the church” is made up of a particular kind of person.
If I say “How can we be more welcoming to black people?” you know I am probably not black, right? And the people I’m talking to probably are not black. Probably, they are white people. So I’d really love to hear “How can we, as white people, be more welcoming to black people?” But to ask “the church” to be more welcoming to black people is to talk as though “the church” is the white people. To ask “the church” to be more welcoming of GLBT people is to talk as though “the church” is straight.
When someone says “How can we give women a voice?!” I think I’m not in that “we.” I don’t mind men getting together to talk about such things, but when it’s my group, and I think of myself as involved, to hear that just tells me I was wrong.