Can't Love God and Hate a Neighbor. God Is ALWAYS Love.

“I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear.” –the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Who will we next choose to hate? What group? What tribe? What community?

In twenty U.S. states it is now a matter of law or public policy that gender affirming care is banned for young people 13 to 17 years old. Even if their doctor believes that it is medically necessary. Even if their parents agree that this is good for the mental health and well-being of the child they love. Even if for these young people such care represents the chance for them to finally become the person they believe they were meant to be, created to be, as a child of God.

I think I might be a little less angry about these anti-LGBTQ laws if the insincerity and calculated politics of the legislators and governors who so often favor such actions, was not so clear and obvious. You see by hating the LGBTQ community, you can actually win votes, at least in some parts of the country. Hate the so-called “woke” crowd and you can run for President. Use your faith to justify such mean-spirited and soul crushing public policy and you even get to go straight to heaven.

Really?!

I know some might see my use of the word “hate” as over the top or exaggerated or strictly for effect.  I use that word “hate” intentionally but not lightly. Here, “hate” fits. Hate is defined in the Merriam Webster’s Dictionary as (in part), “intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury.” Works for me.  We humans tend to hate that which we fear; tend to hate that which we do not understand; tend to hate people we perceive are somehow making it hard for us to be who we are supposed to be.  It’s that last reason to hate someone or a group of “someones,” that most confuses me. 

How is someone following American Medical Association (AMA) approved guidelines for medical care a threat to anyone? In the words of the largest professional medical organization in the country, “The AMA opposes the dangerous intrusion of government into the practice of medicine and the criminalization of health care decision-making,” said AMA Board Member Michael Suk, MD, JD, MPH, MBA. “Gender-affirming care is medically necessary, evidence-based care that improves the physical and mental health of transgender and gender-diverse people.”  

Trans folks aren’t telling straight folks how they are supposed to live. Who they are supposed to love. How they are supposed to constitute their families. The last time I checked, my trans loved ones actually think it is my own business (and their own business too) about how to understand and then live into gender. You know. Live and let live. Privacy.   

It is kind of odd that so many of the same folks who worship at the altar of small government and libertarianism then also advocate for laws that represent government intrusion into private lives and medical care. And to tell a parent how they are supposed to make medical decisions for their kids? To dictate to people how they are to care for and understand their own bodies?

And the whole faith angle? Using the Christian faith as a philosophical justification to hate? To see trans folks as somehow less than human and to claim that God feels that way too? Pastors preaching contempt for LGBTQ folks from so many pulpits across America?

Look. I’m a Christian too. Have been for 62 years.  Have served the church as a working professional clergy person in the United Church of Christ for almost thirty-four years. Nothing in the Bible I read or the faith I practice or the religion I try my humble best to teach tells me that I have the right or the duty to hate someone else just because of their status as a trans person. As the author of the First Letter of John writes, “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” (1 John 4:20)

I get that for some people the changes in our cultural understanding of gender can be hard to understand. But instead of derision, what would it mean for more and more of us to just be curious about this issue and not so threatened?  What would it mean for us to actually talk to trans people and ask them to tell their story and then to listen in love and respect? What would it mean for us to honor the bodily autonomy of folks and not presume to tell someone else what they can and cannot do? What would it mean for us to just be a part of the conversation and not the condemnation?

Who is the next class of citizens to hate?

The thing is, once we give ourselves permission to dislike another because they are different than us, well then, the flood gates of intolerance, disdain and discrimination open wide, letting forth a torrent of self-righteous belligerence.  Which I think breaks the very heart of God.  Because the one faith truth I believe with all my heart and soul and mind and that I hold to with all my might is this simple declaration. God is love. God is love. And if God is love then God’s children are supposed to always lead with love too. No exceptions.  Maybe a little humility too. After all, who are we to stand in judgment of another human being for just trying to become who they truly are? 

Who is the next group to hate? 

How about this instead? Who is the next group to love? Who needs to be shown mercy? Who could use a little kindness?  I like those questions much better. How about you? Love? Hate?

I choose love. Love. LOVE.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.