Call Me Whatever You Want

Stand for truth and righteousness. Love one another.

How have these two maxims become such complex enemies in mortality?

I think the whole Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner thing is fine. I don’t dislike it.

But I also don’t like it.

You’ll call me a fence sitter. You’ll say I’m not standing firm in my conviction. You’ll write a response blog. And then another blog will come up. Blog blog blog blog.  

Here’s my own opinion based on what I’ve seen in the news, social media, and interactions.

1.     We are too hesitant to say what we believe.

2.     We say, “Respect everyone’s opinions,” but we only mean it when they agree with us.

3.     We jump to the far right or far left and center our lives on controversiality.

4.   We think posting something online means we are on the leading edge of knowledge or forming a popular troupe of supporters (I realize this is hypocritical with this blog).

5.     We have forgotten the central hope and message of the gospel: the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

6.     We are blinded by Satan’s sneakiest tactic: contention.

Five and six are crucial: most of the time my response about anything controversial and trivial (you’ll argue this is the most important thing in the world to transgender people, and I don’t discredit that. But it’s trivial for me to exaggerate someone’s gender change/sexual preference and perpetuate arguments) is “God will take care of everything. I don’t need to worry about all of this.”

You’ll say I’m blindly following. You’ll say I need to know the facts—the reports, the articles—I need to know where I stand. But honestly? I stand with God. And that doesn’t mean I’m pulling up scriptures saying something is a sin or so-and-so is going to Hell. My thoughts go to the timeless retort, “What would Jesus do?”

And honestly? I don’t know. I cannot tell you exactly what He would do in every trivial instance. I don’t know if he likes coffee. I don’t know if He has a beard or if He loves Hitler the same as He loves Ghandi.

But I do know some things.

I know He is good. He is simple. He is calm. He is gentle. He is kind. He is love. And I will happily scroll past any Facebook post or comments in order to be more like this Savior: the Christ I know. I may not have the clearest convictions, I may not hold picket fences with my strong-and-fast beliefs—I may not know sometimes. But that’s OK. I think standing for truth and righteousness doesn’t require a megaphone, but a love of Jesus Christ. Even if that means not knowing every single thing.

Notice the “we,” because yes, it is all of us. Even if you haven’t posted anything, even if you love everyone all the time, we are all apart of this. 19^th-century pioneers could not imagine the social struggles we face today. We all want to stand for something, but then we reach a problem: we stand in the wrong place, we stand in the right place but do it wrongfully, we slouch a little bit, or we cannot find a place to stand at all. And with all this social media talk and arguments, frankly, I just want to sit.