The Pro-Love Agenda
Dylan Hendricks | Friday, July 8, 2011 Dylan's argument for the equal rights of homosexual people stands on the back of the greatest commandment, to love the Lord above all, and the neighbor as oneself. In a world of nuance and division, this message simplifies the terrain and encourages us to enlarge our concept of the human family. This is the second essay in our series on homosexuality -Editor.
I was asked to write a "liberal" response to the idea of homosexuality, a subject that is being debated here as well as many other places in our culture right now. I don't want to do that. I think these two teams have already done a very fine job of establishing their talking points and worldviews by this point, and all the movements, laws, websites and other armaments are firmly institutionalized to support either position. This culture war is already a war of attrition, each side hoping...I don't know, that the other side will be worn down enough that they'll relent and admit intellectual and theological defeat? Or that maybe the issue will just disappear, and all the detractors with it? I doubt most people even have a strategy for how this should all play out. They have strong emotions, and convictions, and that's enough to dig in and swing away - thoughtfully at times, crudely and aggressively at others. Either way, it'll likely fall to our children to settle this debate, mostly by not being interested in it. They'll have the robot uprising to think about after all, and gay rights will be lumped into the "issues my parents fought over" bucket, along with Facebook privacy concerns and lamentations over the death of paper books.
So this is all fairly condescending, as though I've transcended any of these very natural and predictable human behaviors. I haven't, and when pressed, I will most definitely pull out a typical "liberal" defense of gay rights and gay marriage. I have gay friends, and I have gay friends who are in love. I love them, and I support them in their pursuit of happiness. That's all there is to my position, and any defense more intellectual than that would be inauthentic. I'm pro-love.
With that out of the way, I do have some other intellectual thoughts I'd like to share. I'm a big fan of intellectual thought, generally, and increasingly interested in intellectual thought accompanied by an optimistic, embracing tone. In a world full of altogether too much information delivered at an unforgivingly relentless pace, I'm more than ever trying to hone in on that Swedenborgian sweet spot of wise words spoken with loving intention. To that end, I'd like to endorse a video from The Royal Society in England about "Empathic Civilization". It's worth a few minutes of your time, but you don't have to watch it to read on.
In this video, Jeremy Rifkin talks about our very natural and predictable human tendency to make teams and dig in our heels. We've always formed an Us that is in opposition to Them and then treated Them with trepidation and uncertainty, if not open hostility. Christian or Jew, black or white, gay or straight. There hasn't been a time or place where we didn't pick teams and fight over something. You might even say we're hard-wired to do this. And in this way, humans are inherently flawed, etc.
And yet - Rifkin goes on to talk about another human behavior that happens with equal predictability but gets much less airplay. It seems that "other"ing groups of people mostly happens when we don't know much about them, and when we don't have direct contact with them. Empathy plays a role in this. It's also just more difficult to Other somebody to their face than it is from across the valley.
You can chart this historically. Before language and society took hold, families and tribes formed the first dominant Us group. Any tribe on the next hill, their intentions uncertain, posed a potential threat. As communication and travel increased, and human society grew larger and more organized, the Us group had to grow with it, and moved slowly from tribal to religious identities. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus and heathens were the biggest groups that we could recognize, summarize, contrast and compare. We fought wars and built empires based on these designations. But humans kept intermingling, and as economic markets increased in size, and the activity of trade encompassed multiple religions, the Us group grew again. The nation state emerged. Religion wasn't lost, but was subsumed into larger Us and Thems -- British, Chinese, American, Russian.
From this perspective, the noisiness of our world right now is a little more understandable. It feels in many ways like our culture is more divided than ever, that Us and Them has never been more prevalent. But we've also just finished exploding the remaining communication barriers that kept us apart, and only in the last generation has the world flirted with, then dived head-long into a fully globalized awareness of what's going on everywhere else on the planet. It's a confusing time for everybody. The economic and communication infrastructure has grown so fast, in fact, that we haven't remotely caught up with it on a psychological or cultural level. Multi-national corporations and global mass media have made national identity an increasingly complex situation, and have thrown into flux all the traditions and sacred cows that formed our pre-global cultures, religions and perspectives. And what do we have to hold onto? None of us grew up with a precedent for thinking of ourselves as anything more than American or Christian; global citizenship is still a very niche group, a Them to many established Us's. Will the Us group keep expanding, as it has always done, or is it now doomed to turn back in on itself, fracturing endlessly on however many cultural lines - gay vs. straight, black vs. white, Christian vs. Muslim?
I do think, actually, that most of us grew up with a precedent for global citizenship, with an Us that encompasses every other human on the planet. Jesus said many things, and every Christian-themed argument on controversial social issues has a supporting passage or two in its back pocket. But when pressed with complex, seemingly paradoxical matters, Jesus had a fairly simple answer.
And one of them, an expert in religious law, asked him a question to test him: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus said to him, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:35-40)
Of course, I say this is simple, and yet contained within it is enough ambiguous and interpretable language to support any kind of argument. Who is the neighbor? What is love? How is love communicated? There are plenty of Swedenborgian caveats and yes-buts here, but do me a favor and consider this passage for a second from the perspective of the growing Us. Love God, above all else. Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets depend on these two commandments. For me, it's hard not to look at this passage and feel the Lord's pro-love agenda. Especially because the Lord *is* Love itself (Divine Love and Wisdom 4), we can even take the commandment to be “Love [love itself] with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. Love.
The Lord anticipated that this message was maybe a little too straightforward for some, and followed it with several warnings for those who would skew its meaning.
“But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher and you are all brothers." (23:8-9)
“But woe to you, experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You keep locking people out of the kingdom of heaven! For you neither enter nor permit those trying to enter to go in." (23:13)
“Woe to you, experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You give a tenth of mint, dill, and cumin, yet you neglect what is more important in the law – justice, mercy, and faithfulness! You should have done these things without neglecting the others." (23:23)
I could now elaborate on these warnings to hammer my point, but for what? If I'm right, our children won't care about this issue because they'll have been in proximity to openly gay couples their entire lives, and their Us will already include this group. They'll have seen that gay relationships encompass the same range of love and lust as straight relationships, and manifest the same range of human emotions, yearnings, and spiritual desires. The conceptual conflicts that tie our hands will form the basis of their world view, and like every generation before them they will look at the world a little more broadly and openly than their parents did before them. If I'm wrong, it won't matter, because we'll just keep fighting.
This is just my experience.
My girlfriend and I are getting married soon. We got engaged a couple days ago as I write this. Talis is from Mexico, and I'm from Canada, but we met in America, and that's where we both live right now. I doubt many people would be able to peg our "true" national designations unless we told them. Talis looks Lebanese, and I look Irish. Talis was raised Catholic and I was raised New Church, but I've never met someone from any faith whose worldview and perception of God matches mine more specifically. Our diverse backgrounds put us in the increasingly common position of needing to co-create new identities for ourselves - our given ones just don't wholly capture our combined experiences, or totally reflect the world that brought us together. We relish the opportunity to discover meaning in the experiences we get to have that no society before us got to have.
We love each other, and we love God, and we want to be a team, standing together for our decidedly pro-love agenda. In addition to at least three countries' worth of family and friends, we're inviting our straight friends and our gay friends to our wedding, because we love them and they love us. This, for us, is all that it comes down to.
You're welcome to join Us.
Dylan Hendricks
Dylan lives in an underrated neighborhood of San Francisco, where he produces web videos and fervently ambitious notions about the future.Wondering about the inspiration for this article? Look up the New Church, which is based on the theological writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.
Reader Comments (58)
Thanks Dylan- I relate to this outlook a lot. Thanks for writing it. Without the ability to see into the other people's spirits and motivations, I feel like I cannot judge anyone. I have to trust that each person, gay, straight or otherwise is making decisions that bring them into a greater sense of integrity with themselves and others. Congratulations on your new engagement! Lovely!
Thanks Dylan, I really appreciate the context that your article offers for this topic - rather than an us vs. them, it is just us, trying to support each other. One point I'd like to make is that you seem to imply that the two options are that either people come to some agreement on the subject (or drop it altogether) at some point in the future, or else the fighting just continues. I think it's important to allow for the possibility for the loving principle that you talk about to govern our actions more and more without needing it to result in agreement. It is possible, if difficult at times, to strongly disagree with someone while still expressing love towards them. I don't mean simply saying that we love them, but actually having this come across in our personal interactions and in the ways we choose to express our opinions. This takes an effort, and especially an effort towards understanding the "other" side and coming to know them. I would rather live in a world in which I disagree with people that I love, and know that they love me, then one in which we all agree.
That being said, it is important at times to pause, as your article does, and be reminded that it is all about love, period. No caveats, no ifs, ands or buts. This doesn't mean that arguments and disagreements aren't worthwhile, they just must remain means to an end, not the end itself. So thanks for the reminder!
Dylan,
I believe homosexuality is spiritually harmful and I also have a "pro-love agenda". If Swedenborg is correct when he said "There is no mercy apart from means" and the means to heaven is shunning evils as sins against the Lord, then your argument lacks the true, 'tough love' necessary for the reformation of our souls.
Should we neglect judging evils for the sake of salvation in order to give the appearance of pro-love? Especially when the three-fold Word makes it abundantly clear that homosexuality destroys the Lord's image and order in a man?
"Love without wisdom is not love" - and yours is an 'appeal to emotion' rather than the rational mind. You prefer the Lord's pro-love agenda when he said to the woman caught in adultery: "Woman, where are thine accusers?"- but you neglect the Lord's wisdom when he said "Go, and sin no more". The "sin no more" part comes from the Lord's wisdom, or Providence in regards to her eternal salvation.
We are all born with biological (hereditary) inclinations that are contrary to the atmosphere of heaven, which is why we should allow ourselves to be brought back into the Lord's order. To promote disorder for the sake of temporary "peace and love" is to overlook the Lord's Providence- allowing temporary suffering for the sake of eternal happiness.
Frank,
I appreciate your thoughts about this- particularly the wisdom + love aspects- but I disagree with the idea that if gay people were reminded constantly that they were out of order, or an abomination, that this would make them willing to turn and "sin no more." Have you tried this? Do you know anyone who considered themselves homosexual before being verbally rebuked?
Alanna,
I agree with you. I never call homosexuals "abominations" or constantly remind them that they're out of order, as you said.
I bring those truths out in our general discussions on homosexuality. However, as a Swedenborgian, I respect the God-given free will of others. When in the company of Gays I never bring the subject up! It's different if they want to discuss it, then I try to apply what I know in an accomodating way, ever mindful not to impose my will on others.
Continuation: ......I don't think sharp rebukes change persistent habits, especially when those rebukes come from those who judge others for the sake of 'ego' -as many fundamentalists do. The individual has to be willing to change after receiving truth from the Lord. As the Church is the Lord's kingdom on earth, it must judge evils for the sake of salvation. To gloss over harmful behaviour would be negligence of duty. A good shepherd employs the services of a dog to nip at the sheep. I'm sure the sheep find this annoying, but they're unaware of the dangers.
Dylan,
You say: "This culture war is already a war of attrition, each side hoping...I don't know, that the other side will be worn down enough that they'll relent and admit intellectual and theological defeat? Or that maybe the issue will just disappear, and all the detractors with it? I doubt most people even have a strategy for how this should all play out. They have strong emotions, and convictions, and that's enough to dig in and swing away - thoughtfully at times, crudely and aggressively at others. Either way, it'll likely fall to our children to settle this debate, mostly by not being interested in it. They'll have the robot uprising to think about after all, and gay rights will be lumped into the "issues my parents fought over" "
Unfortunately, you are right. The sodomy-enablers are winning domino after domino. It is only a matter of time before they take over the General Church of New Jerusalem, and every other religious and political jurisdiction in the West.
Evey wonder why Islam, in spite of its violent and (relatively) false ideology is ascendant, while Western (not African or Asian) Christianity dissolves into a post-Christian fog?
Even as I contemplate this sorry landscape, I am comforted by the fact that the Lord's Second Coming has occurred. Maybe this is a positive thing, this inexorable march of the West into a Sodomite Paradise. Maybe the resultant death of Western Civilization (and the racial suicide of the hedonists who poisoned it) will lead to a global, New Christianity that will embrace all cultures as part of a connected,ecologically conscious, energy-rich noosphere. I am sure this will happen within the next 500 (?) years, but I will not be here to see it. The cry from Sodom has to reach the highest heaven before Sodom (Western Christendom) is destroyed and supplanted by a new, global, New Christendom.
Roger Noah
Dylan,
I share many of the sentiments you express. I agree that with the way things are going our kids are going to think of the furor about homosexuality in the 90s and aughts as a strange tempest in a teapot. I already feel that way except that gay couples are denied many rights afforded to straight couples. Once gay couples achieve parity in the eyes of the state I doubt I will much think about the issue. And I used to think if I'd been born gay I would have stayed celibate and been single for life. Now a decade later, when I run that thought experiment I think I'd just leave the church. I attribute this change in opinion to a couple of factors -
1. Getting to know some openly gay people who were not conflicted about being homosexual.
2. I used to believe homosexuality was a choice and now I think that in the majority of cases it is anything but. I don't know many people who would choose the life of a pariah.
3. Therefore, I feel like it I'm crossing some boundry into another person's experience to tell them that their homosexual attraction is evil. And if I were in their shoes I'd feel misunderstood or rejected even with any number of caveats about still being loved as a person.
4. I am unable to see any harm caused to anyone by two people entering into a homosexual relationship.
Expanding on points number 3 and 4 - comparisons with other evils always come up short for me because analogies break down and instead simply conflate one thing that is generally accepted as wrong with something that many people now believe is good. For example, most addicts believe that addiction is a problem whether or not they admit to having said problem. Homosexuality is now in an entirely different realm where many, many people no longer believe it is evil. The cultural understanding of the issue has shifted.
All this brings us back to authority and how literally one chooses to read the Word. If we're willing to interprete the Word and Writings more liberally on some issues than the actual words would seem (as I would contend we in the General Church do regularly), then why not on homosexuality?
I listened to Jeremy Rifkin interviewed on the CBC program "Ideas" (which anyone can podcast for free) about his book, the Empathic Civilization - about a year ago. It was a great interview and "Ideas" is a good program, which I recommend.
As has been mentioned, people's views on this topic largely fall along generational lines, and I see this issue (among other "conservative" issues), pushing people of my generation away from participating in New Church organizations. It is best to look to the WORD first, and strike one's path according to it (not deciding on a direction, and then using the WORD to justify it). After all, this is the way of repentance and reformation. However, culture dictates so much of how we see the world, and also interpret divine revelation, often without our even realizing it. Swedenborg's writings have been used to justify all sorts of things - from the anti-vaccine movement, to anti-birth control, to anti-women in the priesthood. A professor of mine once said in a biology class that "science progresses one funeral at a time". The phrase seems to have some poignancy here as well. Where will the New Church be in 50 years if it continues to take only the most socially conservative views? I won't stick around long enough to find out.
I do not share Frank's clarity that the Bible+writing have definitive teachings about homosexuality. These works leave me in a theological fog (aka FREEDOM), from which I find my way out by light of the pro-love ideas Dylan discusses above. I take the homosexual community at their word, and BELIEVE them when they say they were born that way, that their relationships are loving and help them to become better people. My world would be grayer, dimmer, and narrower without my gay friends. In many ways it seems trite and silly to focus in on a person's sexuality. May the Lord bless them, and have mercy upon us all!
Normandy,
Like yourself, I also believe many gay people were born that way, so why does the Lord say "Ye must be born again"? Swedenborg declares that if we all continue in our biological (hereditary) evils, our spiritual bodies (which are formed by deeds) would not be able to stand the atmosphere of heaven.
We read that the angels rejoiced after the publishing of Swedenborg's book "Conjugial Love". It clearly details the Lord's 'Divine design' in the male- female union, but it also warns against the perversions of his order, which are disorders. Homosexuality is a disorder.
Man's seed contains the rudiments of another human being. That's why angels consider the abuse of man's seed to be "heinous". Hell endeavers to pervert the exalted USE of the man in procreating a heaven from the human race.
That's also why Swedenborg quotes the prohibitive laws in Leviticus: "Man shall not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is abomination"! He also calls these abominations- "Foul Conjunctions".
The male-female organs have a heavenly correspondence, and an exalted use. I'll spare you graphic examples of thier mis-use, of which Swedenborg and an angel quoted Paul's words to the Romans: "No abusers of man with mankind shall enter the Kingdom of heaven". Not because the Lord excludes anyone from heaven, but because the inverted state of the soul is ill-formed to receive heavenly atmosphere. We must be born again! IT IS WHAT IT IS!
Frank,
While I agree with the gist of your ideas, I would not say that all homosexuals are automatically destined for hell. If it is a disease, then there is healing and teaching in the World of Spirits prior the individual's final choice of heaven or hell. I am sure homosexuals who have struggled with same-sex attraction will find an opportunity for healing at that juncture. (That goes for all sins - we choose damnation because we insist on persisting in those sins in the Spiritual World, contrary to the loving and wise counsel of angels.)
Roger
Roger,
I never said all homosexuals are going to hell! We know that the Lord regards a person's intentions. Only he knows a person's final place in the spiritual world. We must uphold the IDEAL of marriage, and the Church must judge evils for the sake of salvation.
.......continuation:
Roger, I whole-heartedly agree with you. I believe there will be healing for many people in the spiritual world who are predominantly good.
Frank,
Leviticus also makes quite clear that eating shellfish "is an abomination" (Leviticus 11:12). How many in the General Church read that law literally? I doubt very many.
Edmund,
Leviticus 11:12 was superseded one millenium later by Mark 7:19: "Jesus declared all foods clean."
God has the right to abrogate a time-bound rule, as he explicitly did regarding diet restrictions.
Show me a single verse in the two Testaments or in the Heavenly Doctrines where sodomy is declared clean by the Lord or by someone speaking in His name.
Unless you want, with Dylan, to write a sodomy-enabling, "pro-love" Gospel.
Roger
Edmund,
Swedenborg also calls the prohibitive laws in Leviticus (which includes the "abomination" verse) as "foul conjunctions".
Why is homosexuality a "foul conjunction"? Because it perverts the Lord's order. Disorder is the precise reason why there's a hell. To bring us back into the Lord's order is the purpose of repentence and reformation.
Edmund, I respect your point of view. I'm not in the habit of judging people, just impediments (evils) to true happiness.
I have a "Pro- LOVE AND WISDOM Agenda. Let me explain:
As Swedenborgians, we know that the heart corresponds to love and the lungs to wisdom. The heart sends the blood throughout our body and the lungs PURIFY that blood.Without purification from the lungs- the body would become diseased, and death would be the result. WISDOM PURIFIES LOVE!
We're all born into unclean 'loves'. Even evil spirits are "pro-love", but their loves are hellish. They never allowed wisdom (understanding) to purify these loves while they walked the earth!
Swedenborg said: LOVE WITHOUT WISDOM IS NOT LOVE
To love a child- without the wisdom of purification- would be negligent on the part of our Mother Church.
Roger,
Perhaps the food law wasn't the best example I could have found. My point was that citing Leviticus as a source of authority on how to act in the world is shaky ground since we all disregard many of the rules laid out in that book.
Edmund,
What exactly will make you happy? If you want that homosexuals be treated with civility and fairness, then I am all for it. If they will not dwell on their sexuality, then neither will most of us. If you want to assert that everyone needs healing and the divine influx (not just homosexuals), then no Christian should object.
What else does the "pro-love" agenda entail? Where will you stop?
(1) Rites within the General Church and every other church in the land to solemnize buggery, as they do in the Swedenborgian Church of North America (Convention)?
(2) Redefinition of the institution of marriage to include man-man contracts and woman-woman contracts by every government, including Saudi Arabia and Iran?
(3) Inculcating the acceptability and celebration of homosexual behavior in our children while they are still young?
(4) The appointment of Sodomites to places of religious authority? A Sodomite as Bishop of the General Church of New Jerusalem? A Sodomite Pope? A Sodomite Dalai Lama? Sodomite imams in the Middle East, so that there is more "love" to go around?
(5) More depiction of Sodomite love in Hollywood movies and other media all around the world? Uncle Sam-recommended viewing of Sodomite movies by Afghan children so that they do not grow up into Taliban?
(6) Forcible inclusion of gays in close, tight combat situations, so that our brave troops are distracted by whether a physical touch was sexual or not?
Roger
I have to say that the gist of movement in the comments on this subject has been very disturbing. I discovered Swedenborg late in life and was excited by the different perspective he has to offer, both in terms of spiritual insight and its relation to natural life, and the liberating attitude that we are not to judge others on spiritual matters. Yet much of the language I am reading here I recognise from the old church I left behind many years ago because of its narrow views. Notice, for instance, the constant references to 'Sodomites', as though the New Church view identifies the episode of Sodom with homosexual behaviour, even though in an earlier comment I pointed out that Swedenborg insists that it has no such meaning. 'Conjugial love' makes no reference to the evils of homosexuality, but clearly outlines different types of behaviour not with reference to the acts themselves, but to the cravings for power and dominion that these represent and which act to block influx.
If individuals find these behaviours repugnant, then that is fine. But one's personal leanings cannot be used to make judgements as though we know the mind of the Lord. We should keep in mind that the very externality of the Israelite nation is what made them fit for being representative of the church, and thus maintain some kind of connection with heaven until the Lord himself re-introduced the lost internal perspective.Why can we not therefore see how the subtle details of the rules under which they laboured was to prevent their very externality from corrupting further.
Have we, with the deeper meanings made available to us, suddenly reverted to an external view alone, that our concerns draw us to Leviticus as though we know their internal meaning?
When you read the very complex meaning concerning the spotted and speckled sheep of Jacob, and how these possessed the real zeal that made them redeemable, while the others did not possess such an affection, we should identify with those sheep and look to ourselves and be thankful for what the inner sense provides us with. Instead, it seems as if new church thinking has gone down the same road as other churches. It is in great danger of forgetting its first works and therefore having its lamp taken away from it.
There are plenty of places in Scripture that have reference to what appears to be sexual beviour, because this most intimate of acts is the source of the greatest correpondences. Hindu scriptures are full of it. Yet the rule of thunb is that heaven is 'like' it, but it is not it. Keep in mind the genealogy of Christ in Matthew, and we find that prostitutes are also part of the bloodline of the Lord as a human, not forgetting the wife of Uriah and so on. The Bible has its eye on our salvation, and it is achieved through what we are, warts and all. In fact, those warts actually make us redeemable. So let us not make a log from a speck that is in our own eyes, which has a talent for seeing the logs everywhere else since our own sight projects them.
Karl,
You seem not to be aware of Swedenborg himself mentioning the prohibitive laws in Leviticus- which includes the command: "Man shall not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is an abomination". Swedenborg refers to this as one of the "foul conjunctions". It's also clear that Swedenborg took Paul's view on homosexuality as an evil because Swedenborg quotes Paul's verse in Romans.
Yes, we are all sinners, but never should we hold up our evils as standards for others to follow. The ideal of marriage in "Conjugial Love" is the standard we should strive towards.