It has been a while since I posted for many reasons that are not important.
I choose to post today as I learned of a sadly all too typical religious war that is a spiritual outrage.
I heard this second hand so the information may not be accurate but the outrage and call to action is the heart of the matter.
It seems that owners of a Bakery in Oregon was asked to do a wedding cake for a same sex couple. They refused as they could not in good conscience contribute to their life of sin or their desecrating the sacred moment of marriage. They declared war!
The same sex community declared war back. Boycotts are successful in winning a war but not in settling a dispute. The bakery went out of business. A pastor on the other side of the country used this story to say, "they are coming for us". War is not the way to peace, to proving who is right, or to settle any outrage.
As I listened to this story I had a different reaction. Instead of outrage promoting more of the same, what if we took notice of Jesus and how he responded to the woman at the well or how Ghandhi responded to people, or how in our day the Dalai Lama and many others promote hearts of peace and acts of love and kindness.
We would do two things simultaneously:
1) We would get some funding to reopen the bakery and set the owners back into their livelihood for the sake of their family and life not because they were right but because it is right to do acts of kindness from a peace core.
2) We would also offer one free cake for every same sex couple who were offended by the prejudice of the bakery's owner and operator, and a free wedding cake to the next same sex couple who requests it. We would not be stating what is right or wrong but we would be doing what is right: to act with loving kindness from a peace core!
I wonder what would happen to these two parts of the community if both parts supported both actions.
This may be true "Affirming Action". Taking two wrongs and making them into something right does not make either right or wrong. It is, however, right and a sacred responsibility of those who want to know and live out the God of love and peace!
About Me
- Don Paine
- I am a pastor and a clinical psychotherapist. My life's passion is defining healthiness from a human perspective and paralleling it to the holiness of God, divine perspective. Shifting perspectives creates a paradigm that is alongside of rather than over and against. The parakalein of God and the paradoxes of humanity are redefined. Humanity is all about winning and yet we are losing ground everywhere. Divinity is all about letting go of the desire to win and the fear of loss. The Divine embraces the world with loving care regardless of anything.
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