Building Courageous Communities of Compassion

(Originally published on May 18, 2022, under the “Faith Matters” series in the Flamborough Review community newspaper.)

Compassion requires courage

We live in a world where being compassionate sometimes has a cost. It sometimes requires courage. Sticking up for people who need support these days can land you on the receiving end of venomous attacks. As we approach Pride Month, let’s acknowledge that even flying a rainbow flag can trigger vandalism.

I believe that the opposite of love is not hate; it is fear. Hate is merely a manifestation of fear. We live in a culture that is so fear-based these days, that acts of genuine love and compassion have become triggering for fear-based people. We perceive threats everywhere and we’re chronically on the defense.

Love is the antidote to fear

If love is the opposite of fear, then that also means that love is the antidote to fear. In fact, in the end, love and compassion are the only long-lasting antidotes to fear.

In October 2019, when grade nine Hamilton student, Devan Selvey, was murdered, it resulted in HWDSB establishing a Safe Schools Review Panel. I, and many others, became personally involved in that process. The panel’s final report had an overarching theme: there is a culture of fear present in schools. The antidote to a culture of fear is to create a culture of compassion.

Becoming a Courageous Community of Compassion

I believe places of worship have a unique opportunity and responsibility to be courageous communities where compassion is taught in the face of the culture of fear that we find in the world today. But the church has not always been a safe space for everyone in the past. We need to be honest about that fact or we can’t change it. Compassion can be its own barometer. Do you see acts of compassion being demonstrated or is it all talk? Let actions speak louder than words as you seek safe spaces to learn how to be more compassionate in the face of a world of fear.

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Exploring atheism and faith

This is part two of an article I wrote in January exploring the relationship between atheism and faith, discussing how I sometimes find that I have more in common with the worldviews of some atheists than some believers. In part one, I promised that part two would describe the God I do believe in. However, since that time, we, in Canada, have witnessed the Ottawa Occupation. Many of the participants were motivated by their faith. So, now I have to add a few more “I don’t believe”s before my “I do believe”s.

I don’t believe in a God of blind faith

I don’t believe in a God who is a shield that magically protects us from a virus. I do believe in a God who works through science.

I don’t believe in a God of blind faith that calls people on a cross-country quest of putting their own rights above others. I don’t believe in a God that values personal freedom above care for others. I do believe in a God who calls us to speak truth to power and stand up against genuine oppression on behalf of those whose voices are marginalized, diminished or ignored and those whose dignity is robbed.

I do believe in a God of love

I do believe, first and foremost, in a God of love – a God who calls us to love our neighbours as ourselves, not more than ourselves, and not less than ourselves. We have equal value to our neighbours in the eyes of the God I believe in.

I do believe in a God who calls us to drop everything to go after the lost sheep, who have been cut off from social support. Even though we all have equal value, some of us need more help. Equal value does not mean equal attention. Some lost sheep need more help and deserve more attention.

I do believe in a God who not only calls us to love our neighbours, but also calls us to love our enemies. Hearts are not changed by anger, resentment, demonization, or preaching like we’re right and anyone who disagrees with us is wrong. Hearts are changed by listening and loving, while at the same time holding people to account for their words and actions.

I do believe in a God of forgiveness. We all screw up at some point. Some of us badly. We all deserve another chance. But that does not include putting up with unacceptable behaviour. Unconditional love includes good boundaries.

Ryk Brown

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Pink Shirt Day/Anti-Bullying Day

My Trans Pink Shirt

My pink shirt says “Papa Bear” with a large father bear protectively embracing his pink, white and blue transgender bear cub. I wear that shirt because one of my cubs is trans and I love her for all her God-given awesomeness and I would become a ferocious papa bear if anyone hurt her. Of course, she’s an adult now and is old enough to take care of herself, but she’s still my cub.

Bullying in My City

On October 7, 2019, 14-year-old, Grade 9 student, Devan Selvey, was stabbed to death in full view of his mother outside his high school in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada by fellow students who had allegedly been bullying him for weeks. This tragedy garnered international media attention. It is tragic that it took a murder to get our attention. What held our attention was the number of stories that came to light in the following weeks of students who wanted to take their own life because of the bullying they had experienced at school.

Hamilton Wentworth District School Board boldly faced the apparent failures of their system and commissioned a year-long review panel to study the problem of bullying in local schools and make recommendations as to how the school board could better help reduce the problem. That study revealed that:

Hamilton students were experiencing bullying at double the national average. There is a real problem in my city. But I learned more:

Voices Against Bullying

The public outcry of anger prompted the founding of several local anti-bullying groups. One of which was Voices Against Bullying, founded by local mom, Julie Schaafsma. As a child, I was severely bullied – verbally assaulted, physically assaulted, sexually assaulted, forced confinement, and forced narcotic ingestion, repeatedly over a period of more than a decade. My teachers not only did nothing, absolutely nothing, to stop the torment in front of their eyes, some of them even encouraged it. Clearly the problem had not improved since I was a child. I needed to step up and be a part of the solution. So I stepped up to support Julie’s initiative as we put together a team of system-changers. And we’re seeing success.

[Jesus said:] 
Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. ‘If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. 
-- Matthew 18:5-6

My Bear Cub

My own transgender bear cub has thankfully been spared bullying and harassment for her God-given sexuality so far. I hope it stays that way. I want to do my part to help build a world where other pink/white/blue bear cubs can also grow up to be who God intended them to be, free of harassment, violence and oppression. I thank God that my trans bear cub is loved for who she is by her father, mother, brother, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles and friends. Not all her peeps are so fortunate.

Today, I wear my pink shirt to stand in solidarity with all victims of violence, harassment and oppression, but especially children, and especially my own bear cub’s rainbow peeps.

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Increasingly, these days, I meet people who tell me that they don’t believe in God. They describe themselves as atheists. As they describe why they don’t believe in God, they are usually baffled when I agree with them about nearly everything that they reject about God. I find myself saying, “I don’t believe in that God either.”

I don’t believe in a God that created the world in seven days and who is in opposition to science.

I don’t believe that when a tragic event or death occurs that it is “part of God’s plan.” That’s a cruel God who would inflict suffering on others as a teaching tool.

I don’t believe in a God who legitimates war, oppression, power, and control, or a God who directs our actions like we’re puppets.

I don’t believe God is a man.

I don’t believe in a God who condemns anyone just because of who they love or the gender they identify with. Love is love. And letting people love genuinely never hurt anyone.

The late Marcus Borg, PhD, former Distinguished Professor in Religion and Culture at Oregon State University, said:

“When somebody says to me, ‘I don’t believe in God,” my first response is, ‘tell me about the God you don’t believe in. Almost always, it’s the God of supernatural theism.”

Marcus Borg

The God of supernatural theism is a superhuman controlling power who is “out there,” beyond us, separate from the world, who intervenes periodically in our lives and directs our actions, as if we, as human beings, have no agency over, or responsibility for, our actions and choices. This is a God who is beyond scientific knowledge that we must take only on “faith.”

If I don’t believe in any of those Gods, then what God do I believe in? What God do I believe in enough to commit my life to serving that God, day in and day out? Well, I’ve run out of space here. I’ll have to answer that question next time I contribute to this column.

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Yesterday, I posted about the Pride flag at our church being vandalized and stolen. Since then we’ve had two replacement flags donated within 24 hours, because the majority of people in Waterdown believe that love should win out over hate.

The real haters are in the church

Interestingly, we also received a revealing piece of hate mail proving every point I made in yesterday’s post. It was from a local church-goer who was offended by having to drive by our Pride flag on their way to and from church every Sunday. They were smugly pleased with the act of vandalism and theft, and felt the need to tell us that. They had begrudgingly tolerated the flag through June, but felt that now it’s time for our love of neighbour to go back in the closet where it belongs. And we should expect no sympathy from them.

Sorry, not going to happen.

Again, I say: churches that teach that hate is love produce people whose hearts are filled with anger, fear and more hatred.

It needs to stop. Christian churches need to stop teaching hate.

Dear offended neighbour, I commend to you the story of the Good Samaritan. You are literally the Levite in that story, smugly looking down your nose at the injured party while you pass on by on your way to the temple, proclaiming that they got what they deserved, while the true believer, who came from outside the community of faith, stopped to help and care… or, in this case, donate a new flag.

The flag is back up!

Thanks you to those who donated towards replacement flags. You are the Good Samaritan. Thank you to the wonderful, loving people of Waterdown who aren’t offended on their way to church on Sunday mornings.

Love is love. We need to back that up with action.

PS – I put a hundred staples in this flag. I’m going to make them work a little harder for their prize if they try again.

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You can do better, Waterdown. I know you can.

Sometime over the weekend, the Pride flag in front of our church was ripped down with enough violence that shreds of it were left behind. This suggests that the vandal was very angry. This act of vandalism was intended to say one thing clearly: “If you are queer, you are not welcome here.”

We’re not alone. Neighbouring Millgrove United Church had all their Pride flags stolen in June. Many churches had their Pride displays vandalized in June; ours was not. It lulled me into a false sense of hope that Waterdown was different. In truth, we are no different.

The sad thing is that I’m not surprised this happened. I’m just surprised that it took so long. We put the Pride flag up in June. We left it up past June because we’re not called to love everyone on the sex and gender identity spectrum only for one month of the year. Jesus commanded us to love one another all year long.

Some hate-filled people have come to begrudgingly tolerate Pride displays in June. But it would seem they are not welcome past June 30.

This is how it looked in before Friday:

Why does a Pride flag on a church provoke such anger? Because it was the church that taught that being anything other than straight, cis-gender, and monogamous is sinful. And far too many churches are still teaching it and hiding behind their interpretation of a handful of scripture passages as cover for their hatred and fear. And when people are taught that hate is love then it causes deep confusion in their souls. So, when they see another church that flies a rainbow flag and proclaims that love is love then it causes them to question the hate-filled held beliefs they’ve been taught. And that’s threatening.

To quote the film Easy Rider, when people feel threatened, “it doesn’t (just) make them mad; it makes them dangerous.”

Churches that teach hate need to understand that what they teach leads to violence. And they need to stop teaching it.

Love One Another

Jesus taught us to love one another. Jesus taught us to love our neighbours as ourselves – our gay and lesbian neighbours, our straight neighbours, our transgender neighbours, our cis-gender neighbours, our bisexual neighbours, our Two-Spirit neighbours, our pansexual neighbours, our non-binary neighbours, our queer neighbours, our questioning neighbours, our genderfluid neighbours, our neighbours who identify as male or female or both or neither or somewhere in-between, our polyamorous and mono-amorous neighbours, our black, brown and white neighbours, our indigenous and settler neighbours, our young and old neighbours, our rich and poor neighbours, our Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Pagan, and atheist neighbours, etc. ALL our neighbours. Jesus didn’t put conditions on who to love.

Love the sinner; hate the sin

Love is love

There are some churches that still teach the hypocritical slogan “love the sinner; hate the sin.” That expression makes me want to puke. What it really means is “we’ll claim we’re loving queer people while at the same time telling them that the way God created them to be is sinful, against God’s will, an abomination, etc.” That’s just base hypocrisy.

If your interpretation of God’s love leads you to act in an unloving way towards anyone else, then your interpretation is wrong.

Until churches and other religious institutions stop teaching that hate is love then these kinds of displays of public hatred and anger will continue. It’s exactly what got Jesus killed in the first place. Preaching “love one another” is threatening enough to get you crucified.

Vandalism won’t stop God’s love. Vandalism won’t stop our church from teaching God’s love. We’re still here and we’re not going away. And the flag will return.

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(Originally submitted for publication, April 15, 2021, under the Faith Matters series in the Flamborough Review community newspaper.)

From its earliest days, the church has always used the latest technologies available in order to convey God’s message of Love and Hope.

First, we used the human voice and memory. Stories of faith were passed on orally and were committed to memory. Often, they were put into poetic verse or song to make them easier to memorize.

When writing was invented, we used scrolls to record and pass along the stories of faith. They were cumbersome and had to be copied by hand.

During the Dark Ages, when literacy rates were low in Europe, we utilized stained glass windows as early as the 7^th century to tell the stories of faith through pictures for people who could not read.

When the printing press was invented in the 15^th century, the very first book off the press was a bible. It was the first book to be mass printed. At last, people could have the stories of faith in their own hands instead of having to rely on a priest to tell them the stories.

Similarly, with the invention of microphones, radio, television, digital projectors, and now the internet.

COVID has forced us to alter how we worship. Now we worship online, either through livestreams, Zoom meetings, pre-recorded YouTube videos, podcasts, or otherwise. During this time when we are forced to be apart from each other, virtually every place of worship has adapted to virtual online worship in one form or another.

There is no question that worshipping in person is preferable to worshipping online. It’s kind of like watching a video of a woodland scene and feeling like you’ve gone for a walk in the woods. It’s not the same. But, when we cannot be together in person, God’s Spirit works through the technology that God’s people invented in order to bring us together and continue to experience the stories of faith.

In this time of isolation, if you are feeling disconnected or empty inside, your local house of worship likely has an online means by which you can connect. Google us. We’re here waiting to embrace you…virtually.

Rev. Ryk Brown

St. James United Church

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