May I call you Dan?
We have never met and it is probably presumptuous of me, but I have read
so much of your writing and seen you interviewed so many times, Dan feels
ok.
So, I am writing because I am worried. I know that you have an edge to your writing
and speaking. Its part of what I like
about it. You are unflinchingly honest
and sometimes honesty has sharp corners.
That is a good thing. However, there are sharp corners and then
there are sharp corners.
The last year or so
it seems like you are getting more and more pissed off and I think it is getting
in the way. Now don’t get me wrong. I am pissed too.
I am pissed that teenagers are dying and whole segments of
our culture do nothing but give a halfhearted tisk-tisk and shake their heads
and say how sad it is. It is not sad it
is heartrending and a stain on our whole society.
I am pissed that people in my own faith tradition have
turned the gentlest thing in the world, the love of God for God’s children
revealed in the Bible, into a weapon to bludgeon and cudgel rather than comfort
and heal.
I am pissed that my government just doesn’t give a
shit. About anything. Or anyone.
Unless of course they have loads of money and power.
So, I am pissed too.
And I understand the temptation to live into that pissed-off-ness. I at least get to take a break from time to
time. As a public figure, you are out
there in the mix of it 24/7. But, Dan,
that is why it is so important for you to not let the BS get the best of
you.
You have become a critical voice for something more than tolerance. You have become a voice for the importance of
active engagement and healing rather than just passively putting up with one
another. I have had more than one young
person tell me how important watching or making an “It Gets Better” video was
for them. You really have made a
difference.
So you can imagine how disappointing it was to see you
speaking to a group of high school kids and, after a diatribe on the Bible
(more on that in a minute), calling the kids who walked out pansy-ass.
Pansy-ass!
Seriously?
It was like watching a really good guy morph on the screen
into the bully he has been cutting down to size for the last couple of
years! How does making fun of them do
anything but get a cheap laugh and deepen the divide between groups of already
divided kids?
And worst of all, it was religious kids you said it to. Like it or not, religion is a part of our
culture. And even as fast as our culture
is secularizing, religion in general and Christianity specifically are not
going anywhere soon. Those kids you
ridiculed are the next generation of people of faith.
I am a pastor. I work
in a church in a rural Arkansas community.
In fact, you were here this week at the university. It is a highly religious and very
conservative place. And I choose to do
ministry here because I refuse to surrender the church in any place to a
message of intolerance. I, and many many
more pastors and lay people like me, refuse to give up on the church because we
believe it is an instrument of incredible good when we will allow it to
be. Those kids you made fun of are the
next generation of leaders in the church.
I understand the temptation to just say go to hell. I understand the temptation to belittle their
beliefs and to dismiss the scriptures on which they rest those beliefs.
It is tempting and it is easy, but what purpose does it
serve? What purpose is served if I
belittle them the way they belittle me for my beliefs?
What was gained by calling those kids out? Yeah, their beliefs are wrong and can become
destructive. So why harden them against
hearing what you have to say? What is
gained by giving them a reason to tune you out?
To not see the error of their ways?
The way we stop the kind of biblical and ecclesiastical
abuse that so many kids endure is to never give up preaching a word of truth,
hope, love and inclusion.
I’m not saying that you need to be a preacher. I have no idea what your own personal faith
is. But I do know that if you are true
to your ethic of tolerance, you will respect that there are some of us who
still believe in that book you make fun of and we believe that it has something
good and hopeful to say about how very much God loves each and every one of God’s
children.
I can see how you probably get pissed off about the kind of
treatment those kids showed and I understand the temptation to knock them down
like tenpins. It feels good in the
moment but it really doesn’t serve any purpose.
I think you are better than that. In fact, based on some of the compassionate
writing and risk-taking you have done on behalf of GLBTQ kids, I know you are
better than that. So, I hope that you
will get back to doing what you do so well, speaking truth to power and
standing up for the powerless. Stay
pissed off; just try not to let it get the better of you.
Peace,
Robert Lowry
