Dear Caldwell,
The weather seems fitting for today’s voting in North Carolina. One moment the clouds crowd the sky and the rain falls hard – the next, the sun breaks forth and pushes the clouds aside.
If the polls turn out to be right, the proposed Amendment One to the N.C. constitution is likely to pass today. For many of us, this probability stirs mixed emotions, just as with today’s mixed forecast. How might we reflect?
Yes, our state constitution is likely to be different – harsher and more bigoted than before, a standard of law that many of us will regret deeply. But our state is already different in other ways. A new network of straight allies has been awakened by this debate, a set of voices that span the public, private, faith and non-profit sectors. By speaking up or putting out a “vote against” yard sign, these allies have visibly engaged and said, with one voice, we can see a different future.
In the meantime, if the amendment passes, how might we conduct ourselves tomorrow and going forward as disciples of the One who ministered to the outcast, the oppressed and the “different” (whom Christ actually proved to be mostly like the rest of us)?
First, we can keep in mind the quote that our member Carl Brinson has been using as his email tag-line, Martin Luther King Jr.’s statement that, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Let us pray for a day of justice and equality for all.
Second, we can continue to build the kinds of relationships and human connections that move society past fear and prejudice. Tomorrow, each of us might make a point to tell those who have “outed” themselves as straight allies “thank you for speaking up.” As important, we can tell those who are harmed and discriminated against that we will continue to stand with them until that brighter day comes.
Third, we can keep in mind that familiar passage from 1 Corinthians 13 that ends, “faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.” Many associate this passage with marriage. But the Apostle Paul wrote this passage as a guide to how people in a community of faith are to live together … in Christ, across their differences, peacably and respectfully. So, now or in the morning, after the final results are in, I encourage you to read the full passage from 1 Corinthians below, perhaps in quiet meditation or in a group of friends, as a shared prayer for our society, an appeal to God that, despite whatever setbacks occur, we might move steadfastly toward what Paul had in mind when he wrote these words:
1 Corinthians 13
13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Amen.
Yours in Christ,
John