Playing Hot Potato

How do you win the game of "hot potato?"

As a kid, I played a game called hot potato. A hot potato (we generally pretended a ball was the potato) was tossed from person to person as quickly as possible. Because the potato was hot, catching and holding it would result in getting burned. Thus, the objective was to get rid of the potato as quickly as possible by tossing it to someone else. Getting rid of the hot potato kept you from getting burned. Tossing it to someone else required them to deal with it. Of course, they dealt with it the same way you did, by tossing it to someone else. As did the next person and so on.

It seems to me that society and culture (think "church") has created a number of hot potatoes. They are "hot" issues - issues that are so emotionally charged they are too hot to handle. Our preferred way of dealing with them is to avoid talking about them. We are in the game but hoping the hot potato doesn't come our way. When someone raises the issue, we seek to pass it off as quickly as possible by instinctively reverting to our already-held position. We assert our position, defend it, and attack any position that challenges it. In doing so, we toss the issue back to the other side who does what we just did: assert their position, defend it, and attack any position that challenges theirs.

LGBTQ+ issues are one of those hot potatoes in The UMC today. Well, to be more accurate, LBGTQ+ issues are a hot potato for people over the age of 40, which is the majority of the members within The UMC. LGBTQ+ issues are not an issue for most of the younger generations.  That fact might be one explanation for the absence of many of those younger generations in our congregations.  But I digress.

It seems The UMC has being playing the game of hot potato with this LGBTQ+ issue for years. We keep tossing it back and forth to each other by stating our position, defending it while attacking any differing position. This game of tossing the issue back and forth avoids the hard work of dealing with the issue OR our position on the issue OR our emotions that reinforce our position OR any different position that another might have OR the people who hold another position OR their reasons for doing so. That's a lot of avoiding!

It seems that the Commission on a Way Forward has actually engaged in the hard work of listening that leads to hearing that leads to mutual respect and understanding (not agreement!). Now it is time for the rest of us in the local congregations to stop playing the game of hot potato with this issue and engage in the hard work of listening and hearing one another. The objective of this hard work is not to reach agreement, but to reach mutual respect and love as brothers and sisters in Christ.

One challenge to this kind of hard work is the emotion surrounding this issue. Is homosexuality incompatible with Christian teaching? Is it "unnatural?" Is marriage between a man and a woman only? Is an individual engaged in a homosexual lifestyle actively engaged in willful sin? Can a person who identifies as homosexual be called of God into ordained ministry? Each of this sub-issues stirs strong emotions. Those emotions are what make the issue "hot." They are what keep the hot potato game going with the LGBTQ+ issue.

When strong emotions get involved, we lose our ability to think clearly. We lose our ability to listen and hear opposing positions. Instead of thinking, we react. We passionately defend our position. We attack opposing positions and, sometimes, go so far as to attack the people who hold them. We use Scripture to justify our position as "the biblical (i.e., right) position." We end up polarized, divided into us versus them camps. We set up a win/loss scenario in which no one wins and our Christian witness is severely damaged.

This emotionally fueled way of dealing with the issue grows out of our human nature (what the Apostle Paul called "the flesh" in Galatians 5). We cannot come to any mutual respect or understanding, much less mutual love, by living out of our default human nature. Something more is required if we want a different outcome. That something more is spiritual maturity. Paul identified love as the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). Only the Spirit can guide us to love the other. In other words, dealing with this hot potato issue calls for Christ-shaped, Spirit-empowered spirituality. It calls us to manage and move beyond the strong feelings tied to the issue, i.e, self-control, another one of the nine characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:23). Self-control puts us in a position to think more clearly. It allows us to listen in such a way as to genuinely hear the other person. It positions us to choose to love.

I don't remember playing the game of hot potato very often. It really wasn't a fun game to play for very long. There was seemingly no way to win the game.