Kingdom Kindness: Love Burns
Author: Andrew Comiskey
June 03, 2024
We
celebrate Pride Month by showcasing Jesus’ Kingdom kindness: how His love
invites and enables sexually wounded people to become fruitful. May every
testimony we feature this June persuade you that ‘the kindness of God leads us
to repentance’ (Rom. 2:4).
‘You’re
burning me, but it’s like water you’re pouring to wash me. Please repent and
become a Christian like me.’ St. Charles Lwanga
No
way around it. Lwanga, a teen page in the court of a predatory king in Uganda,
was martyred for refusing ‘gay’ seduction. Today the Church honors him, and so
does every Christian who refuses to bend the knee to forces that conform us to life
under the rainbow. Empowered by Divine Love, Lwanga burned to death rather than
burn with lust for the powers-that-be.
It’s
profound to me that my successor and junior colleague Marco Casanova was born
on this Feast Day of that 19th-century saint. Every year, Marco celebrates with
Charles the noble virility of living a chaste life. It’s costly for someone half
my age. For the last 6 years, Marco has drawn near to the prophetic fire of
love entrusted to DSM. He never expected from us a magic cure for his same-sex
desires, just an opportunity to stoke devotion to the One who won His heart amid
his temptations to worship many gods.
Most
magnetic to Marco was DSM’s commitment to living prophetically, out loud, so as
to stay true to God in our sexual humanity. That means chastity: aspiring to an
undivided life and refusing a host of identity and relational configurations under
the rainbow.
And
true he is. Marco’s the first to confess his weakness and welcome the kindness
of Jesus. Now a lightning rod for naysayers in the Church and without, he holds
fast to the greater compassion of Jesus that leads all to repentance. He invests
his time and energy in nourishing healing communities around the country.
And
he’s stealth. When he sees compromise in the Body of Christ, he moves towards
muddy waters to impart a cleansing stream. Marco is bright and nuanced yet
directive. He pleases God first, hoping humans will listen.
The
other day, in a roundtable with Christian university leaders concerning their rainbow
group on campus, Marco posed a better way than integrating identity disorder. Using
his own story, he made an excellent case for how Jesus breaks the domination of
‘gay’ identity and desire and frees us for fruitful love. He did so in a way
that was hopeful and realistic, Jesus’ Kingdom reigning in his vulnerable
humanity.
Later,
Marco said this: ‘I want to live and die as a prophetic witness of true
chastity in an increasingly seductive and ‘queer’ culture, now apparent even in
our churches. I will not baptize ‘LGBTQ+’ selves! Jesus freed me to live my
God-designed sexuality; I want to lead others to do the same.’
Lwanga
and Casanova make clear that love burns up worldly notions of kindness. The
Kingdom God brings summons something radiant in His sons, a virile chastity
that discerns compromise and refuses it.
You
could say that the American Church is killing itself with such kindness. Under
the sway of powers that insist on making peace with disordered desire, the
Church appears to be settling on ‘you can be gay; just try not to act on it.’
Not
Kingdom kindness. Not what Casanova lives for. Not what Lwanga died for. His
blood seeded pagan Uganda which today is 81% Christian, a beacon for Africa. Pray
with me that Marco’s leadership will light today’s Church with thousands of chaste
lamps: humble, radiant witnesses that burn with Love Divine.
C.S
Lewis said it best in
The Problem of Pain:
‘By
love, most of us mean kindness—the desire to see others happy. What most of us
mean by God is not so much a Father in Heaven, as a grandfather in heaven—a
senile old benevolence who liked to see the young people enjoying themselves…
But
if God is Love, then He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness.
To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask God to
cease to be God.
Love
demands the perfecting of the beloved. Love may forgive all infirmities and love
still in spite of them but Love cannot cease to will their removal.
Love
is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.’
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