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When I was a child, growing up in a fairly strict home that centered around
Lutheran fundamentalism, one of the most punishing things that I remember
hearing from either Mom or Dad, in terms of correction, was the phrase,
"Shame on you." In my memory, it seems to have echoed fairly frequently,
though I suspect that it wouldn't take very many repetitions to be burned
into my consciousness, as well as my conscience.
"SHAME ON YOU." It had less to do with sinful or evil behavior than with
what was considered (by those in authority)appropriate and correct behavior
for a "good person," a child of God. It wasn't so much an accusation that I
had violated the rules, as it was a pronouncement that I had disappointed,
that I had not measured up.
"SHAME ON YOU." It wasn't so much a judgment that I was "bad" as it was a
dismissal, a rejection because I had proven myself unworthy. Unworthy of
the people who were supposed to love me best. Father, mother, family,
pastor, teachers -- God. Unworthy of their love.
"SHAME ON YOU." To this day I hear it whispering from deep in my superego,
telling me that, hard as I have tried, I am NOT the "best little boy in the
world." Echoing in my consciousness is the incorporated suggestion that I
am unworthy, disappointing, unlovable - a reject.
"SHAME ON YOU." Very early in adolescence, I became aware of hearing it not
just at home, where my parents were the ultimate arbiters of wrong and
right, punishment and praise, loving affirmation or shameful distancing ("Go
to your room and stay there"), but also at church, where my childlike
understanding and appreciation of grace was quickly overwhelmed by the idea
that the person whom I was beginning to understand as "me" - essentially,
unalterably ME - was an abomination, to the church and to God, a state of
shamefulness for which there was no grace.
"SHAME ON YOU." To this day I hear it in the confessions of women and men
who come to me for counseling, for healing of their spiritual exile, for
reconnection with the God they were once taught loved them unconditionally -
unless it happened that they grew up to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or
transgendered.
"SHAME ON YOU" is what the church tells us today. It is blatant in the
hate-mongering and huckstering of million-dollar media ministries which
build their earthly empires out of the beaten, bloodied souls of other
believers, who would scarcely have made an informed choice to be created
lesbian and gay, bisexual or transgendered, but who now would not
second-guess God's wisdom, judgment, plan for them.
"SHAME ON YOU." It is inherent, too, in the words of stiffening
denominational policies of correctness and exclusion, in the fear and
refusal of local congregations to speak openly about the rightful place of
LGBT people as full sisters and brothers in Christ, in the stern disapproval
and "shunning" we face when we are called by God to witness openly about our
own integration of spirituality and sexuality.
"SHAME ON YOU." It is what the church tells me when it affirms my call to
serve God in ministry, acknowledges and blesses my gifts, and sharpens my
skills to optimize the effectiveness of my service, and then says, "But we
don't believe you should be ordained." Inappropriate, unseemly,
disappointing, unworthy, rejected, shameful.
"SHAME ON YOU." To me and to thousands of others, many of them still
sitting undeclared in the pews of virtually every congregation, and more
looking in from exile outside the stained glass sanctuary, the church has
declared itself not a bearer of good news, but an enunciator of doom. Not a
blessing, but a burden. Not a resurrection to life in Christ, but unending
punishment on a cross of sexual integrity.
"SHAME ON WHO?" I remain in the church today, wearing my membership in the
PCUSA like the fabled albatross about my neck, because I believe in the
essence of goodness in God's creation, the women and men I am called to
embrace as my family of faith, my sisters and brothers in Christ. Because I
believe in the ultimate victory of God's will over human weakness.
Because - sometimes against all visible evidence - I believe and trust in
humanity to be God's evangels in this world, since Jesus himself placed that
mantle on our shoulders. "Go, teach, preach, serve ... be," as he was.
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Sex and the Church : Gender, Homosexuality, and the Transformation of Christian Ethics Kathy Rudy Rev. Troy D. Perry
Also In This Issue:
Against All Odds
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