Facebook can be a bane or a blessing. I could say that differently: Facebook can be a blessing or a curse.
Without getting into details about why bane rather than blessing, I think it sounds better, and curse sounds so harsh, I received an email a few days ago that was both a bane and a blessing.
I don’t know my “friend” who wrote that, but he began with a word of affirmation blessing me, saying my ministry in Mississippi in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement had been a role model for him.
Then came the bane. He obviously knows something about me and the United Methodist Church now…my opposition to the ordination of self-avowed practicing homosexuals, abortion and same-sex marriage. He did not acknowledge that, but he goes into a litany on cruelty, beginning with masters insisting there was no cruelty to slaves, and “Segregation was not cruel to black people, so said the white majority. GMC and WCA claim same-sex couples are not treated with cruelty by invoking Paul’s admonition that precludes same-sex marriage.”
He was accusing, in a “backhanded” kind of way: that the positions I was tacking were acts of cruelty and that God was not cruel.
I was not willing to try to counter, on Facebook, his putting me in the category of cruel actions, but I did want to express gratitude. So I wrote: “You honor me with your Facebook post. Your affirmation is extravagant. Thanks. Someday maybe we can have a personal conversation. For now, I simply say, what shaped my ministry in Mississippi, must always shape and determine my decisions: Jesus and Scripture.
God’s order of creation is clear:
So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s rib and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. (Genesis 2:21-24)
Jesus’ definition marriage can’t be misinterpreted:
Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So, they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6)
I’m 87 and still active in ministry. Don’t pigeon-hole me. TAKE WHO I AM AS A WHOLE.