On Evaluating People and their Works
I
t has now been revealed to the world that Pope Francis met with Kim Davis. People are of course losing their freaking minds over this. Liberals feel betrayed, haters feel vindicated, and people are thrown into a tizzy as they now choose whether to feel completely and totally good about the Pope or completely totally bad about the Pope.
Anyone genuinely shocked by this has not been paying attention to Pope Francis – he is not what you would call liberal or supportive of LGBT issues. While he did NOT call transgendered people nuclear weapons (read the actual quote), he is certainly not an ally.
What I am going to suggest is apparently a radical notion completely foreign to most people in the spiritual community: You can like what he is doing for the poor and the environment and still dislike his statements on LGBT.
This way you can applaud the changes he has made to the church’s positions, which for an organization like the Catholic Church are truly radical and good and at the same time hold his feet to the fire for stances on LGBT issues, birth-control, and a whole host of other things.
You don’t have to choose. It’s true. Try it.
Don’t let your support for LGBT and women’s issues diminish your support for his stances on Poverty, Environment, and Religious tolerance.
Don’t let your support for him on Poverty, Environment, and Religious tolerance ever be a mask for his truly shit statements on LGBT and Women’s issues.
In short, evaluate his work as you would anyone elses: not with a resounding thumbs up or down, but with a nuanced well-considered view.
Then try this with other things.
Politicians, entertainers, community leaders, your favorite occult authors….
It is kind of amazing what happens. You start to see the world as it is, not as one side or another would have you see it. You even start to empathize with these folks for being real people who have habitual patterns and flaws and feelings and all the stuff that makes you and I real people.
Next thing that happens is that you get so used to seeing things this way that your BS detector goes off any time you feel entirely positively or negatively about anyone or anything. This is a good thing.
Here is an exercise for you today: take someone you cannot stand, lsay Donald Trump, and come up with five things that you like about them or support them on. It is actually REALLY easy.
