May There Be Peace To All This Christmas

Alright. I must make this quick, as I have to get to work... I've been holding off for months on saying this, as I wanted to articulate it well. But alas, lately I've felt as if I don't say anything, especially around Christmas, I'll just burst. So here's the short and sweet.

I work with folks with special needs. Throughout the years they have been marginalized and shuffled off to 'keep with their own kind'. As a society, we believe there's something wrong with them. Health insurance companies largely don't want to touch them and no one wants to believe that they can love, develop true relationships, get married, and have children. It's almost a joke to some to believe that they could possibly be successful in life. As a society, we're so scared of our babies being born with a deficiency, that we'll abort them. Some of us believe that a dead baby is better than a "broken" one.

I tend to want to punch people in the face for thinking such thoughts. I believe we're all cut from the same cloth by the one true God who created us all.

So it got me thinking... who else as a society, and especially as a church, have we marginalized because they don't look like us or it just seems 'unnatural? Minorities. Check. Women. Check. Homosexuals. Double Check.

For thirty years I believed what I was taught - that if you're gay, you're less than. You're dirty. Flamboyant. Filthy minds and lying tongues. You're cheap and promiscuous.You must be fixed. You've chosen to be this way. You can't really love Jesus and you must never ever be given any form of power, lest we all turn into perverts and child molesters. But a surprising fact began to emerge... some of these homosexuals, really did seem to love Jesus. And they didn't have fangs. And I wasn't going to catch whatever this horrible thing was that they must have all carried to make them this way.

And I started to think... if I believe that we're all cut from the same cloth by the one true God who created us all, why did I believe that he couldn't really love the gay population? Why did I think that he was so disappointed in them as a whole? What type of kool-aid had I been given? As a church, we're embarrassed that our forefathers treated folks of a different color worse than animals. It's almost horrible enough, that we kinda block it out. We were a pathetic example of Jesus. As a church, why are we going down the same path then, with the gay and lesbian community? Do we really want our children blocking out our deeds and pathetic beliefs?

If Jesus really came to save us all. If he really came because we are all jacked up. If he really existed and is searching out those who have been discarded and unloved and are seen as misfits... then he must love us all. 

May your Christmas be filled with much love and peace.