Out Beyond Ideas of Evangelism and Exvangelism There is a Field: I'll Meet You There
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
I’m jotting this down in between counseling sessions. I’m officially a counselor, and my going rate for the next month and a half is $0.00. My retirement plan is death and the 401k is the pearly gates.
Kidding aside, I rarely get a chance to shut my mind the hell up and write. Purge. Verbally vomit. Other visceral metaphors.
Work. Interning. School. Stupid ass work. Marriage. Good marriage. Really good marriage. Really really really good marriage. Community group. Dog shits. Going to the park. The ole two steps forward, one step back classic regarding certain chronic vices of mine.
It’s a whole lot of a lot and I can’t save my game yet. The checkpoint for me is the end of August, oh and the new level is a whole new freaking state.
In spite of this colossal volume of things to spin around clumsily, I still think about evangelism. And exvangelism. I suppose I’m on the “good guys” side if you’re born again, “bad guys” if you’re not. I have a client who is, I suppose, on the neutral side of things if I’m on the “good.”
He’s not evangelical but he doesn’t throw down with the raging anti evangelicals either. Per his reporting, they don’t want him either.
And frankly, even though I usually feel wanted at some level on my “evangelical” side, many times I don’t feel wanted. And many other times I don’t think I fit the mold of that side, or the other side, or even understand the sides at all.
“Side,” Tree-beard says to bewildered, worried hobbits who think he wants to kill them.
“I am on nobody’s side. Because nobody’s on my side, little orc. Nobody cares for the woods anymore.”
I’m a dreamer. I’ve used this metaphor with said client before. I ain’t a builder.
This clever, cutting edge, utterly brilliant metaphor of mine is not really any of those qualifiers. It’s actually just a way to explain how, in a way, I’m often imagining what could be over and ahead problem solving about what actually is.
Now, if you were to take a wild guess, what do you think builders do? I’ll answer; they get shit done. They don’t waffle, meander, or dilly-dally; they do what they gotta do to get it done.
I admire and respect the hell out of that. I need builders in my life to help me turn these dreams of mine into reality. Builders need me to inspire them with dreams about what the work they are doing now and how much meaning, value, and purpose it holds now and will hold in the future.
Yet the reason I even thought of this metaphor was because, per my client’s reporting and frankly a lot of my own experience, as a dreamer, we commonly don’t fit with builders.
There’s good reason for it. Truth be told, a lot of dreamers can be as arrogant as all get out. Thinking about things from a thousand foot perspective doesn’t suddenly make it glamorous for you to be a jerk to a person one foot a way. If in those dreams you destroy what’s being built, you’re just manifesting nightmares for others.
And yet on the other side, being someone who is less “tactical,” “methodical,” “grounded,” similar other adjectives, you do get plenty of side-eyes from those who are. As he explains it, more of his time is spent on explaining the potential of the dream rather than partaking in a dream alongside others.
So it is too with this whole us versus them thing we got going with evangelicals and exvangelicals. Now, are you saying that two sides of a complex issue are diluting this into an all-or-nothing, no holds-barred philosophical fistfight? I think a few rather loud, dogmatic voices who people believe to be speaking for the opposing side certainly think so but as always, the truth is definitely squarely in the middle.
I didn’t know much about the Rowling tweets. Frankly I know even less about issues facing trans people. My time working with kids and adults, I’ve worked with people on the autism spectrum, those who have experienced trauma, and multiple people of color. As such, even though I’m obviously pasty white, fairly untraumatized, and only somewhat diverse in my thinking patterns compared to the norm, I have some grasp about the issues of these community groups because I know people within these communities.
Not so the case with the trans community.
It’s been curious, however, to learn more about the now notorious tweeting of J.K. Rowling. Again, everything I’m writing about this stuff from here on out is based mostly on a singularly binged pod, The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling. The way I see it, being a straight guy who was born and identifies as male, is, of course, something to be taken with a grain of salt. But I suppose what grieves me is the lionhearted vitriol coming from some of Rowling’s tweets and some of her detractors who are trans supporters. Violence, silence, aggression, vengeance. It doesn’t help women, doesn’t help trans people, doesn’t help our society help women, trans women, and anyone who identifies anyway.
This is the extent of what I’ll say on the matter mostly because I wanted to parallel it with the ongoing evangelical/exvangelical divide.
In essence, these extremes don’t enable dialogue. They don’t generate understanding. And they openly discourage critical thought.
Yet even critical thought isn’t even the main point.
The primary message of Harry Potter is love. Truth be told, so much and I mean so much of Potter thematically is derived from Scripture. Love saves Harry. Love saves us from sin and death. Love saves us from hate, distrust, and resentment. Love doesn’t mean it’s ok to post tweets disparaging evangelicals or trans people or TERFS or exvangelicals ; it also doesn’t mean it’s ok to respond with venom either.
Love is in the middle because love draws two opponents to the center. The cross was taking violence and transmuting into compassion. The true perils of how white evangelism distorted us was how it convinced us that to be right is to then behave however is necessary in order to force your rightness on others. This we now see in much of progressive thought, too.
But love, true, genuine, messy, complex, frustrating, emboldening love. That is the middle. It’s not centrism or being moderate; it’s being an extremist about putting the other ahead of yourself, even if you are the other in the power dynamic and even when that’s impossibly difficult to do.
Some things are best left said by people who illustrate my point better than I ever could:
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Martin Luther King Jr.