Not to worry. ; > )
Our very respect for fellow human beings means that we take their ideas and actions seriously. And the ideas of our Worthy Opponents, in this particular battle within the Episcopal church, we believe are poisonous to human beings and poisonous to our relationship with God. If their ideas are victorious, human beings will be worse off, not better. They will be harmed, and we will have an institution that claims to represent Christ and His gospel offering poison instead of medicine to the patients in the hospital. Because we take them and their ideas seriously, we do not smile and pat them on the head and swagger off, confident in our own strength and brilliance.
If in fact we believe that God has communicated His will for human beings in His word written, Holy Scripture, and if human beings are made in the image of God, and if sexuality is a part of who we are and how we express ourselves before God, and if there is a corrupting of humanity through the Fall and human sin, and if we are to believe that sexual expression in violation of God's will adds yet another cut and knick and scar to the image of God in human beings, and if we are to believe that there is real distinction between Self and Other, and that marriage between a man and a woman is an echo of how relationships between Self and Other are to be formed, as they reflect the human beings' relationship with the Holy Trinity, and if we are to believe that we must replace our selves with God as the ruler and master of our lives, and that sin obscures our sight of God . . . I think you get the picture here, but i could write for many, many paragraphs about what these particular ideas entail in the life of humans and God's project of reconstruction and restoration.
We are engaged in a great struggle with human beings who believe something very different from us, something is that far-reaching and long-lasting and of dire importance to the church and the fallen world.
In this way, then, we confess wtih honesty and integrity and clarity that our Worthy Opponents are . . . opponents. That is, they want something that we do not want, and they do not want what we do want. They are engaged in purposes within the church that are utterly opposed to our purposes and to what we believe that God's purposes are. Those efforts and actions and goals of our Worthy Opponents must be opposed.
There is no harm or wickedness in acknowledging that simple, basic fact. And in fact, if we do not acknowledge that fact -- that our Worthy Opponents oppose our worldviews and we oppose theirs -- than we are lying to ourselves and we are not honoring who they are and who we are.
Once we acknowledge this second aspect of why our Worthy Opponents are worthy opponents, then we can proceed with vigor to asking ourselves how we can oppose, in honor and integrity and character, their ideas and actions within the church. But if we continue to lie to ourselves and pretend that we are not engaged in a struggle of importance, then we will continue to be confounded over our Worthy Opponents' intensity, and sincerity, and hard work in their efforts to effect their will upon the structure and order of the church. We will continue to be naive and caught off guard and surprised by their actions.
Here we need to indulge in a little rabbit trail. Within the Episcopal church, our Worthy Opponents are *not* every person who is "progressive" in theology. Many such "progressives" are content to worship and serve as simply quiet progressives, just as many of traditional outlook worship and serve. While they may offer opportunities for conversion by Jesus Christ [or may not -- I am not speculating that all progressives are not Christians] -- they are not necessarily advocating change in the church.
Nor is every person who is engaged in the sexualized emotional attraction to the same sex a "Worthy Opponent". Many people who experience homosexual attraction are quite disinterested in either claiming additional "civic rights" or advocating that the church approve of their attraction by stating in word and sacrament that such attraction is a good and blessed thing approved of by God. They behave, in fact, similarly to me, a heterosexual. If they desire to hold investment property with another person, they hire a lawyer and draw up a contract. If they desire to be visited in the hospital by a particular person, they draw up a living will, and they appoint healthcare power of attorneys, and they name executors. If they desire that a certain person receive an inheritance they, as I have done, create a will and get it notarized by a notary public. They do not generally enter a party, or a group, or an organization and announce the nature of their sexual attractions, as nor do I.
Many of those who are Christians commit to a path of celibacy, and struggle with both sexual temptation and the claim of Jesus Christ on their lives -- as do I. Those who deem that they might be otherwise -- and desire to be so -- commit to a very painful and challenging path of attempted healing of their sexualized emotional attractions by embarking on a therapeutic path with a psychologist, counselor, or psychiatrist. And you know what? I, as a heterosexual, have embarked on that path regarding my own afflictions and desires for growth into something more and something better. God has accepted me as I am -- but He loves me too much to leave me the way I am. I have my own genetic heritage, environment, and sicknesses -- I am not yet who I was meant to be and I was "born this way" -- but God will help me to be "born again" and I have much work to do in the power of His Spirit within me.
So when I speak of "Worthy Opponents" and our opposition to their ideas, I must clarify that I am speaking of those progressives who have very particularly targeted our denomination and our working very hard -- and quite successfully -- at shaping that church into an organization that defies the teachings of the church and of scripture and that supports their own worldviews. As I stated in Little Stone Bridges, they have sought out this church for particular reasons.
Thirdly and finally, our opponents are Worthy Opponents because, quite frankly, they have cleaned our clocks for 30 years. They have displayed immense character in their efforts over the past 30 years, carefully and methodically working towards their goals. They have not given up over slight defeats. They have not given up when others have decried their actions. They have worked hard. They have been content, by and large, to advance their purposes incrementally. They have planned strategically. They have engaged the processes of the church with care and thoughtfulness. They have stood up when they are outnumbered, or retired into the backgroun temporarily when they thought it more expedient for their cause. They have used every tool in their arsenal for the cause, whether it is rhetorical, political, or in the developing of useful alliances. But always they have worked for their cause.
And here I will say something that is shocking to some of my allies and I have said it often and publicly.
Friends, if we cannot display the same character -- courage, steadfastness, strategic thoughtfulness, full engagement, hard work, unity of purpose, development of firm and loyal alliances, and much, much more -- than our Worth Opponents deserve each victory that they gain and the Episcopal church deserves what it gets. At the end of the day, institutions and human beings often -- not always, but often -- get what they ask for, and get what they deserve. Sometimes God says "you may have what you desire". I say . . . if we are unable to act with the same character and discipline and resolve, then . . . more power to them.
Here it may help to use a metaphor or "parallel example" to illustrate what I mean.
Many of us have been involved in sports and I believe that sports is an excellently useful metaphor for what we are experiencing in the Episcopal church.
I happen to love tennis. In a tennis match, one must acknowledge a sad and tragic reality.
The person you are playing desires to win. He or she desires to beat you, desire to cause the score, by his actions and brilliant play, to be *lopsided* in his favor. A person who goes out to play a match without the knowledge that their opponent is . . . well, an *opponent*, is in for a rude awakening.
A person who decides to approach the blood-sport of tennis by -- rather than playing well and with character -- decrying his opponent's lifestyle or personal habits or false theology -- however true those decrials may be -- will lose the match. That is the cold, hard, brutal reality of sport -- people win based on how they play the game.
At the same time, sports provides a marvelous opportunity for us to respect the qualities of our opponents in that sport. I may not like or agree with a person -- but if they exhibit character while they are on the courts -- those cathedrals of grass, clay, or asphalt -- then I can respect those particular character traits.
In the professional sports circuits, I may not like Leyton Hewitt's propensity to deliver hammer fists to the ground, a la wrestling matches, when he forces an opponent into a mistake on the court. But I respect his unique intensity and ferocity of purpose. I may not like, even, Terrell Owen's seeming arrogance, ego, and self-will in his ruination of several teams. But I respect his work ethic, his perfectionism, and his fierce competitiveness.
Even further, every coach will teach their proteges to bring respect to their opponents' games. One learns to analyze the game, the tactics, the character, the strokes, the physical fitness, the chess movement of typical plays, even the psychology of the ebb and flow of their opponents' action on the fields of sport.
Such analysis and interest in the games of our opponents eventually brings us to a respect -- even if grudging -- for our Worthy Opponents. If we do not recgonize our opponents in the games of sport and the much more important Games of Life as Worthy Opponents, then we will not approach the field of battle with the appropriate amounts of preparation, hard work, energy, anticipation, and skill. We will lounge onto the courts, in our tennis whites, expecting an easy victory and then act surprised and outraged when our opponents beat us coldly and publicly.
But with every sports figure of character, you will find that even the best performers will say "I knew that this would be a tough match. I knew that my opponent was ready and well-prepared and fit and had tactics and skills that were fearsome to behold." Even when the match looks easy, and the scoreline deeply unbalanced, the victor will say "the score reflects the trepidation and energy with which I prepared for this match -- I came out with all cylinders firing because one does not let an opponent like this one get up off the mat to effect his will. My opponent is so good, that I knew that I had to play with excellence from the outset."
Such an acknowledgement of the skills and character traits of opponents also, ironically, allows us to be objective in our work. We don't have to personalize battles, or make our efforts about other people and who they are. In fact, the actions of opponents are not about *us* either, even if they wish to make it so. It's not really about whether we ourselves are "diminutive", "fat", "homophobic", or "mean-spirited fundamentalists", even if those are the terms used in the rhetorical tactics of opponents. It's really about the objective, honorable battle in which we are engaged. Acknowledging our Worthy Opponents allows us to take any meanness and personalization out of the battle. It allows us to act and think objectively, rather than spitefully or pettily. And it allows us to act and think directly and honestly, without anxiety that we are somehow being "bad" by engaging in the battle. It simply is what it is, a hard-fought war of ideas.
On the other hand, once we have acknowledged the deep respect with which we hold our opponent, and the vastness of their skills and preparation, we also learn not to focus myopically on those opponents.
Instead, we prepare with them in mind on the practice courts, take stock of our own strengths and weaknesses, hone and bring to the forefront our strengths, attempt to shore up our weaknesses, and create -- no, *sculpt* -- our very own game.
When we take to the courts -- we take our own games. We execute our own games. We allow our games to dictate the battle. We win or lose based on our game, not that of our opponents. Often times, in fact, the winning and losing on the fields of sport is based nearly entirely on the strength of will of each opponents. When all things else are equal, when both parties have prepared thoroughly, it is often the one with the strongest will who wins the match.
I must tell you, friends and allies, that all of the above bodes very ill for our team in this battle within the Episcopal church. From preparation to teamwork to hard work to the strength of our wills -- we have been inferior opponents in the past.
Let me bring all of this back to the field -- the arena -- of the Episcopal church. Our Worthy Opponents bring fearsome skills, honed tactics and creative strategy, a strong work ethic, singularity of purpose, and unity of alliance, to the field. We respect that. They are . . . Worthy Opponents, not "minor, poorly skilled, trivial opponents". They are people who may well win their victories, at least in the short terms of present-day history.
For this reason -- because they are Worthy Opponents -- they will arrive on the courts, the fields, and in the arena -- well prepared.
We must do the same.
With those thoughts above setting the context of with whom we are doing battle, I need to say that we have our work cut out for us. This is not for the faith of heart.
We are engaged in conflict with Worthy Opponents.
Comments:
Something else to keep in mind is that our “Worthy Opponents” feel heartache when they taste defeat. I am not saying that B033 represents victory for the Reasserter side, but its passage is widely regarded as a defeat by the Reappraisers. B033 is considered a betrayal and after it passed in Columbus I saw a number of vocal Reappraisers huddled in small groups with looks of shock and pain evident on their faces. A few were crying openly.
Typically when Reappraisers believe they have lost (such as was the case after the 1998 Lambeth Conference), they redouble their efforts and strike out in a slightly different direction. It is wise to regard those who want to change traditional Church teaching as opponents and to respect them for their accomplishments to date.