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One of the fun things about writing a newspaper column is how varied and passionate the responses may be. Occasionally I
will write a column that seems to me to be utterly persuasive in its reasoning and wholly compelling in its heart. How could
anyone find fault with something so obviously convincing? And then some good neighbor will regale me for my wrong-headedness
and chastise me for my lack of heart.
Have you ever thought -- if I can just explain the situation thoroughly to my friend, showing him the obvious superiority
of my line of reasoning and the inadequacies of his own thought, he'll see the error of his ways, change his mind and, of
course, agree with me. Right!? And how often does that actually happen? Almost never.
If living in peace and community with others were dependent upon our agreement, our communities would be very small and our
peace quite circumscribed. Happily, agreement and resolution are not prerequisites to community or to peace.
Bishop Steven Charleston who visited St. Paul's recently likes to put it this way. We are not called to resolution but to
reconciliation. Change, conflict and challenge are unavoidable. Nevertheless, we can live reconciled to one another.
Conscientious people disagree about many things. Rarely do we convince one another to change our minds by our arguments.
Many important issues simply will not come to resolution, at least not in our lifetimes. And even if we do reach a place
of such consensus that disagreement evaporates over some things, new disagreements will rise to take their place.
Living with other human beings, we will never resolve all that we disagree about. But we can live together in a spirit of
mutual care and respect.
When I was a child, the most passionate conflicts which surged around me were racial conflicts. I saw churches split, ministers
fired, and friendships shattered because of disagreements about the Civil Rights movement. During my earlier decades, Episcopalians
were particularly conflicted over women's ordination and a change of our Prayer Book.
For the most part, we've come to some technical resolutions about some of these divisions. Racial discrimination is illegal,
though racism remains deeply imbedded in our culture. Women are ordained in all but a few of the Episcopal Church's jurisdictions,
though sexism abounds. And a new Prayer Book guides our worship, although a handful of congregations have left our denomination
to continue their prayers with the old book. Even when a conflict appears "settled" there remains some unsettledness to it.
Before we could reach a semblance of consensus about race and gender, new disagreements about sexual orientation rose up to
take their place. On the horizon -- cloning and designer genetic manipulation.
It's hard to imagine Christians reaching anything approaching resolution over conscientiously held beliefs about things like
abortion or the interpretation of scripture, at least not in my lifetime. The apostle Paul gave this instruction to his congregations
where people from contrasting Gentile and Jewish cultures were struggling to live together: "Let all be fully convinced in
their own minds." (Romans 14:5b) Although we may never reach resolution about many contentious issues, we can honor each
other's consciences and achieve reconciliation among us as we live with together with our differences.
It is possible to respect the dignity of all people. It's not easy, but it is possible. It is possible to recognize and
accept that good people come to different conclusions about things that matter deeply to them. It is possible to love one
another and to disagree. It is not only possible, but it is critical to the peace of the world that we do so.
As our congregation was beginning to struggle with our disagreements about whether we should bless the life-long committed
relationships of our gay couples, we invited a small group of people to talk together, half of one opinion, half of the other.
To guide their conversation, they used a booklet written by Bishop Charleston, Good News: A Congregational Resource for
Reconciliation. When the group had finished their work, one participant summarized their process: "Nobody changed their
minds, but I left loving everyone in that room."
Charleston is convinced that justice can be served without one side having to be “right,” that compassion can
be practiced with a forgiveness that overcomes fear, and that reconciliation can occur without the need for resolution. He
puts it this way: "Our faithfulness will not be measured by how 'right' we are, but by how loving we are."
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