Ever known a person that seems to take everything you say or do in the most negative context? Like, when ever there is any room for doubt, they assume the most negative option? Its even worse when you actually like the person that acts like this, but they are out to find the demon behind everything you say and do. I was trying to explain to a new friend the other day why I don’t seem to get along with our mutual acquaintance… but I just drew a blank. Sometimes its just a mystery.

I think we all have people in our lives like that, but today I was pondering how those types of people seem to signify a greater problem in our society. In drawing up lines of “us vs. them”, when tend to attach negative connotations to everything the “other” side says. It tends to blind us to the problems on “our” side, while magnifying the problems on the “other” side. I think 99% of all political articles fall into this category. But sadly, a huge number of religious/spiritual writings also take this tack. When 10,000 children were dropped by their World Vision sponsors when World Vision recently announced support for gay marriage… you have to wonder how that was justified. I would gamble big money that if any of those 10,000 sponsors were to comb through the theological stances of every World Vision employee, they would absolutely find who knows how many workers that don’t match their theological stance on something major – be it divorce, or spiritual gifts, or worship style, or the trinity, or something.

But for some reason, these differences seem to still get classified as being “on our side” by most evangelicals. You can think someone is going to burn in hell for all eternity if they don’t speak in tongues, but for some reason you will still support kids through an organization filled with people that don’t speak in tongues (and many that do, I am sure). But if they happen to be a gay couple? For some reason, many evangelicals have put the whole gay issue into a category of “other”, and no matter what they do, it is demonized.

I’m just baffled how some people will work with atheists, sexually active college students, blasphemers, and people with radically different views of salvation…. but just not gay couples. Its like they have characterized everything a person who is gay will do as “bad”, and therefore will not work with them. You are a Calvinist, while I am an Arminianist? No problem. Sure, we disagree on waaaay more scriptures with each other than we do with a gay Christian… but they are “other” and we are “right.” So, sorry starving kids. You are just an interchangeable faceless starving kid that we can just easily swap out for another interchangeable faceless starving kid at another organization like we would change out an inanimate battery.

This weird division should disgust us as a church. We can do better.