Queer as Faith is a weekly column by Nathan Gunter.  Unconventional and thought-provoking, Nathan writes as a gay Christian struggling to live authentically in the real world.

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Week 9:
Revolution

[Important Note: This week's edition of Queer as Faith includes discussion of some highly controversial political issues.  As is always the case, Nathan's views are his own and do not necessarily represent those of the GCN management or the rest of the GCN community.]

The biggest question with which I wrestle is, "What does it mean to give faith hands and feet?"

In the mean, dark little part of my brain that likes to get a heroin dose of legalism, it looks like doing everything right: ironing my jeans, keeping my room picked up, driving the speed limit, and always having a witty, unshakeable answer for those who question what I believe.

But I tried that and it lasted all of three hours, so now I find that my impending move to Atlanta and our seemingly inevitable war with Iraq can make me think I have leukemia and that God doesn't exist.  Because it all just seems so impossible.

We've all seen those Wile E. Coyote cartoons where the coyote somehow ends up holding a giant boulder which he has failed to throw at the Roadrunner.  He's standing there, his legs shaking, when suddenly a feather drops down on top of the boulder and sends him down.  For me, that feather was Fox News.

They like to shout a lot on Fox News.  It's kind of a thing they do.  They get a lot of emails about it, actually.  I was watching a Fox News special report on Iraq when I began to sweat and hyperventilate a little bit, because I just couldn't get behind my government on this war and the whole thing was so up in my face that I had to turn down the volume and go stand in another room to listen.  And it's not just because I blame George W. Bush for my joblessness.  I was worried that we were going to blatantly defy the U.N. and turn the court of world opinion against us.  I had enough experiences abroad with people who hate Americans, and I have plans for more world travel in the future.  I don't want to belong to a country that takes such horrible measures for such flimsy reasons as we've been given for this war.

Since my teens I've been saying that my generation needed its own Vietnam.  We needed something to rage against.  Can I take it all back?

I just didn't know how to hope in the face of this war.  I truly wrestled for a long time with the morality of it all and decided I simply couldn't support any U.S.-led military action in Iraq without U.N. consent.  It just seems like such a royally bad idea, and I just think the administration sounds like it's trying to convince itself that war is necessary.  I feel like the concerns of those of us who have marched against this war have fallen on deaf ears, for I've heard no one address them.  This isn't how democracy is supposed to be.

How do we hope in the face of all of this?

Well, thank God for Margaret Cho.

I had second-row seats for her show in Tulsa last Sunday, so in addition to getting to sit very close to her as she did her comedy act, I was also incredibly inspired by what she had to say.  All of us minorities, she said, when we join together, we become a majority, a strong voice.  We become a revolution.

So how do I hope?  I speak.  I write.  I am heard and maybe someone else speaks as a result.  All of a sudden, I'm a Who trying to speak to Horton.

Today it was 70 degrees in Oklahoma and sunny, and I took myself on a quiet drive to Red Rock Canyon in Western Oklahoma.  There, among the tall sandstone cliffs and picnicking families, I laid down in a patch of soft grass and began to ask God about the war.  "What do you think?" I implored.  "I need to know!"

Nothing came.  But I stared into the blue of the sky and watched it fold and unfold with clouds and shades of blue and flocks of birds, and just listened for awhile.

How do I hope?  I pray.  I listen.  I meditate.  I go before the Throne of God and express my concerns, and believe that yes, "the Lord scoffs at them, then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath."  I'm a drop in the ocean of faith, and the Lord hears me, even if my president does not.

How do I hope?  I don't give up.  It all can seem so impossible.  War or no, none of us queer folks can get married, and too many of us aren't allowed to have children.  If we believe in the Gospel, I believe that we can't sit idly by and let our dignity be denied us in this fashion.  "I have given you life to the full," says Jesus.  And yet that fullness is denied us by our government and by our fellow believers.

How do I hope?  I believe.  I believe that I really am God's beloved and that no authority on earth or in heaven can deny or grant me that.  I believe that if I've pledged allegiance to my country, then I must be dedicated to the ideals of that country, which state that "all men are created equal" (yes, I see the irony).  I have to continue to believe that those ideals will hold out and protect us.  I have to believe that the Gospel will be my eyes and hands and that by grace we're all moving along toward redemption.

My temptation toward inaction belies my secret, hidden fear that God doesn't care.  My defiant, revolutionary hope in the face of that lies in my refusal to give in to it.  Our revolution lies in our refusal to listen when our government tells us we'll never have equal rights, or that war in Iraq is inevitable.

So to the people at Fox News, I plead, turn down the volume.  To George W., I plead, pull us back from the brink of a terrible mistake.  And to the Lord, I beg, justice and mercy for Your people.  Help us to carry Your justice to the nations.  Equip us with the grace and humility to do Your work in the world, Amen.

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