What boxes are you stuck in?

Yesterday I posted a second video to YouTube in an on-going series exploring faith, sexuality, and gender: “God, the Garden, and Gays: Homosexuality & the Creation Story”

My friend Emily West was one of my many who shared the video (thanks to everyone else who did too!). One of her friends left a comment on the Facebook post that caught my eye. He wrote,

This was a unique argument I hadn’t heard before. I wonder about a couple things: “God is ready to play wingman,” and that God will “trust my decision.” I think if we extrapolate these, they start to sound a bit off. Is God a sidekick? Is God someone who wants us to ultimately take charge of our own destiny and to make our own decisions, regardless of what those choices are? Or does God demand self-emptying and, ultimately, to recognize that he is Creator and we are all his creatures, not in burdensome slavery but in joyful surrender?

I don’t think the video was trying to deny God’s sovereignty but I do think that that mentality somewhat informs the whole argument. Another question would be Was Adam’s choice a once-and-for-all choice for mankind? Or do we each get to choose anew? That’s the question that sticks with me after watching this.

Did you notice how he described the video? An argument. Does this seem like an argument to you?

(click here to view the video on YouTube)

I didn’t set out to craft an argument. I was sharing a mix of my own personal story and my understanding of the Creation story in Genesis.

I remember when the only way that I could talk about “homosexuality and the Bible” was in arguments. Exegesis, eisegesis, translation, original intent, extant literature, Biblical scholarship, centuries of tradition… Talking points, and facts, and arguments. Someone always had to win (ideally me).

With this video, I didn’t try to argue, certainly didn’t try to win anything, or  to even really persuade.

Here’s one way that I read this particular text. Does it resonate with you?

That’s really all I set out to share and ask. I remember being stuck in that box and I’m glad I’m not in it anymore.

I wonder then, to pay tribute to the Bible, if I’m not missing the plank in my own eye to point out the speck in another’s. What boxes am I stuck in? What boxes am I so stuck in that I don’t even know I’m stuck in.

That’s where the real work comes in, isn’t it? In constantly insepcting and exaiming myself. To be courageous and unrelenting. This is scary stuff. To question one’s self. One’s foundations. The things one holds dearly.

That is my challenge to myself: to find my own edges, the walls of my own boxes. And to then be willing to tear them down.

What’re some of the boxes you’ve escaped from?